Customer Reviews

Art of Java Web Development: Struts, Tapestry, Commons, Velocity, JUnit, Axis, Cocoon, InternetBeans, WebWork

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a tome, but don't let that fool you, it covers a variety of front end technologies but doesn't cover the back end very well. It clocks in at 600 pages with judicious screenshots and lots of well annotated code.

What makes this book interesting is that it takes the same application and builds it using six different Java frameworks (JSP, Tapestry, WebWork, Interbeans, Velocity and Cocoon). What detracts is that while it provides pros and cons to each issue it fails to assert the best overall, or to provide an analysis of which would be best for a particular scenario. Chapter 11, which is about how to evaluate the frameworks actually doesn't do the evaluation. That is an exercise left to the reader. So if you like to choose between well documented options, you are in the right place. If you are looking for some Gartner style analysis and conclusions, you are in the wrong place (but there is no right place that I know of.)

The interesting chapters:

Chapter two provides an implementation in JSP and then covers the cons of that approach.

Chapter three provides a nice introduction to Tag Libraries as a way to increase reuse from the straight JSP model.

Chapter four is an excellent introduction to the Model 2 architecture.

Chapters five through ten cover the various frameworks. Strangely Velocity and Cocoon are covered when the author himself doesn't even consider them frameworks.

Chapter eleven provides a detail set of criteria to evaluate the frameworks, but does not itself evaluate them.

The chapters that follow are lumped into 'best practices' and cover a grab bag of technologies and issues including EJBs, performance, caching, debugging and unit testing, and axis. As if to provide a fitting end to a grab bag section the last chapters covers everything that 'would'n't fit in the book'. This whole section could probably be dropped with little damage to the overall work.

The book is fairly well written and edited though it does make some sweeping generalizations and grandiose statements that are all too often the hallmark of Java books.

If you are looking for a way to get information about a cross section of front end technologies for your Java application then this is a good book to look at. If you are looking for something that makes recommendations, you won't find them here. In addition, if you are looking for a book that covers the entire Java technology stack for web applications, this is probably not it. The book was probably mis-named.

(Full disclosure: I am a Manning author but I in no way allow that to effect my reviews.)

This book is about using frameworks for developing Java web applications. The author gives a thorough overview of some of the most popular frameworks and discusses the pros and cons of various web architectures. The discussion is almost exclusively in the Servlet/JSP realm with little discussion of back end applications servers. The audience that will find this book most useful are those who have some experience with Java web development and are looking to expand their knowledge of modern web architectures.

The first part of the book is a discussion of Java web architecture in general with a concentration on MVC architecture. The second part is an examination of some of the most popular frameworks in use today. This part is interesting as the author demonstrates the same application developed in the various frameworks. The section finishes with a list of criteria to use when evaluating any framework for your own development projects. The final part is a discussion of best practices in various aspects of a web architecture such as resource management, performance, and debugging. This section reads almost as a series of articles.

The book is not really a how-to guide to using the various frameworks. I had trouble getting a couple of the examples working exactly as provided and some of the discussion was a bit confusing. But the overall view of how to choose and then incorporate a framework into a well designed architecture makes the book a very worthwhile read.

This book provides many interesting ideas and examples, I am glad that I have purchased it. However I was most interested in Java Web frameworks comparison, and this is where this book is much less helpful.

The idea of building a two-page application to compare different frameworks isn't a good one. What can you demonstrate in such a no-brainer? Logic/presentation separation? I18n - l10n possibilities? User input validation? Code and functionality reuse? So what is being compared then?

In fact, the author has a rather fixed opinion about what a framework should do, and his ideas rotate very close around Struts and Struts-like frameworks. As a result, he completely failed to understand Tapestry, which is based on very different principles.

He states that "As demonstrated even by basic examples, Tapestry is a complex framework. To create the simplest web application, you must understand a fair amount about the architecture and components".

This is completely wrong, because Tapestry is a very user-friendly framework, if only badly described at a beginners level and having very few tutorials, but to prove his point, the author creates a 'hello world' application using Tapestry and doing this he extends Tapestry's ApplicationServlet to add some custom logging facilities. As a result, this 'hello world' application looks really frightening.

However, it should be noted that you don't usually need to extend the ApplicationServlet, even in the most complicated of web application. Not to mention that you would hardly need ANY logging facilities in a 'hello world' app.

To summarise, this is a good book in many respects, such as it shows a good style of coding and demonstrates some convincing examples of design patterns. But don't expect it to say anything useful about frameworks comparison. All the comparison in this book boils down to documentation and samples available, which might be useful, but far from being essential.

This book is not for beginning web programmers as it assumes an understanding of the Servlet & JSP API's. It additionally is not a guide to Java Web Development as the title might indicate but rather a review of how and why to use several popular Java Frameworks. The books usefulness is that it compares and contrasts various ways to create "industrial strength" web applications.

Often it is difficult for a developer to understand the consequences of selecting a particular framework. This text resolves that dilemma by presenting six of them side by side. After reading these summary chapters a knowledgeable choice may be made or at least the options are narrowed down and a more exhaustive text obtained.

The author follows a teaching style as he explains his points using clear (and short) code examples. Practical loosely coupled designs are advocated thoughout the text. A section is devoted to summarizing common performance and debuging tips. It was nice to incude two IDEs although I'd have liked to see that part expanded to include *** WebSphere, WebLogic, NetBeans, Eclipse.***

One of the few disagreements that I have is about a common code oversight involving database resources.

The text provides a code sample showing how to connect to a database with all of the resources closed in a single finally block. IMHO, That's not a good style. I prefer to wrap each close in separate try blocks inside of the finally so that every close executes even if there are exceptions. Then reset object references back to null.

example:
// -- clean up all db resources after the usual try catch code
finally {
if(resultSet != null) {
try {
resultSet.close( );
}catch(SQLException sqle) { /* log or do nothing */ }
resultSet = null;
}
if(statement != null) {
try {
statement.close( );
}catch(SQLException sqle) { /* log or do nothing */ }
statement = null;
}
if(connection != null) {
try {
connection.close( );
}catch(SQLException sqle) { /* log or do nothing */ }
connection = null;
}
}// end

Another nitpick is the short publisher specific bibliography but, most would understand that choice as a marketing decision!

If you are considering using a web framework then you can save research time by reading this book first.

This book provides a fantastic overview of the frameworks and technologies available to the Java web developer. And best of all (at least for my skull full of mush), the author takes you through the evolution of several projects, from a CGI approach on through to the employing frameworks.

Java expert Neal Ford's Art Of Java Web Development is a solid instructional text and resource for Java web developers who have already mastered the basic ins and outs of servlets, JSPs, statelessness, and other fundamentals. Art Of Java Web Development specifically focuses on frameworks, such as Struts, Tapestery, WebWork, and others -- the class libraries of pre-built web parts that all web applications need. Unit testing, caching, pooling, performance tuning, and other issues involved in working with frameworks are all studied in depth with examples, sample code, screenshots, and much more. Neal Ford's Art Of Java Web Development is confidently recommended as being a superbly organized and presented website development resource.

This book is terrible. There is nothing in this book that you can't find with a little searching on the internet.