Customer Reviews

Pro Apache Beehive (Expert's Voice in Java)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have been using beehive since it was in alpha, but, I still found some parts of this book informative, enough to where I may have to change one of my applications, to make it better.

I did find that there was too much talk about BEAs product, but, for those that may be coming from that framework to beehive, this may be important.

Understanding how to use the various development tools, such as Pollinate, is useful, so their coverage of that is reasonable.

I do think that if you are looking for an intro to intermediate book on beehive this is a fantastic book.

I was quite impressed with the way this book was presented. While there were some sections that weren't quite right for me, overall the introduction sections and lead up, examples and prose all hit the spot and as such it was an enjoyable book to read.

The book provides a "from the ground and upwards" introduction to Beehive so it does not require any prior knowledge to get started. This isn't too surprising for a framework with a comparatively smaller user base. It also has a very nice introduction to the available Beehive tools so that you can start working efficiently.

While it is not approached as a Beehive marketing exercise (and this was a relief), I was a little confused between the BEA and Beehive offerings in the earlier sections. Maybe it is of worth for people moving to Beehive, but at the point where you're still confused about the starting concepts I found it a bit distracting.

While I wasn't a complete fan of the framework itself, the instructions and examples provided make this a very useful book if you intend to give Apache Beehive a go yourself.

I am a seasoned WebLogic developer and this book allowed me to get up to speed with Beehive quickly. I was able to get the examples to work - but just had to make sure I use the version of Beehive that this book was written against.

In general I was very disappointed with this book. The coverage of the Beehive toolset is disorganized and shallow. In many cases the authors simply copy text and diagrams from the Beehive online documentation. In fact, while covering the NetUI tags on page 59 they offer the following rational:

"Note: The reason I've simply cut and paste [sic] the information from the Javadocs is because, at the time of writing this book, Apache Beehive is still in beta stage. Therefore, some of these methods might change."

Got that? The documentation might change so we'll just copy it verbatium and stick it in the book. In the end it is probably a good thing because if the authors had just provided a URL to the documentation it would have been out of date by the time this book hit the streets.

In point of fact, dispite being published less than six months ago, much has changed and this book is hopelessly out of date in many respects. For example:

o The Eclipse Pollinate project, which all the books examples are based upon, is now in archived state. This means the project has reached the end of its life. No work is being done and the Eclipse update site is no longer active. As a result the only GUI tooling being offered for Beehive is a commercial product from BEA.

o Most of the URLs listed in the book for resources are no longer functional. Try to find all the sample controls discussed at http://www.controlhaus.com.

Surprisingly the bright spot of this entire book is the coverage of XMLBeans. I found the discussion lucid, understandable, and educational. Still, it's hard for me to justify the purchase of this book based on this 20 page chapter.

In all I would recommend against purchasing this book. If you are interested in learning Beehive the documentation available on the Apache site is far superior and much more up to date.

The appeal of this book was in its small size: a well-crafted, essential guide to this now-orphaned niche library, I thought. Alas, the true value is that little time is necessary to realize none of the material is even at the level of the tutorial offered with the Beehive distribution.

Written in the "dude" style, its pretentious informality is a shell with little substance, and a shelter hiding lack of structure. For instance, one-fourth of the book deals with the history of what later has become Beehive, namely the previous work-alike implementations in older WebLogic releases. That could have been interesting if it had been related to the current implementation, but the opportunity is missed. Only the syntax differences are presented and the most superficial analysis: That may be cute, perhaps, and easy to understand (yes, it looks different, thank you very much) but is also pointless if my goal is to understand Beehive now.

The structural aspects of Beehive are perhaps circuitously discussed here and there. Numerous examples are also scattered here and there in a manner I found difficult to appreciate. However, I was constantly patted on my back for a presumed understanding I was supposed to be maturing (in the opinion of the writer).

Most of the information available in many technical books like this is also available for free on the net. At the Pro level, where time spent reading does matter, a printed book justifies its price by the paper it uses, and also by a presumably thought-out selection, structure, didactical organization, and rapid delivery of meaningful content given that the basics may be assumed.

This book egregiously fails its promise to help improve one's understanding and usage of Beehive at the Pro level. Read instead the tutorials with the Beehive distribution, save a tree, and avoid having to toss the paper you paid for in the recycle bin.

The book basically instructs you on how to install eclipse, pollinate and xmlbeans. Has very shallow coverage of the beehive related technology - java page flows, netui, controls and xmlbeans plus a shallow coverage of annotations. I am frankly surprised as usually Apress books are very good. They should change the name to Beginning Apache Beehive. There is nothing done in this book that can't quickly be gleaned from the beehive.apache.org site. These guys should truly be ashamed of themselves. Where is the code intensity that was promised. I'm glad I got it for 1/2 cover price. Please go look at this book before purchasing you can't always depend on the publisher.

This is not a bad book like some of the reviewers have pointed out. The explanations are simple, easy to understand and overall quite clear. The technology itself is very young, so I can see why there is not more depth to the book - but if you are interested in Beehive, this book is a good place to start.

This is a good book - the chapters are well written, easy to read and have some good content. Overall the examples were easy to follow and very direct.

Thisis a must have if you are using Apache Beehive or planning on it.