Customer Reviews

BEA WebLogic Server Bible, Second Edition

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I learn best by doing. When I buy technical books, I prefer those that include a lot of working examples. I have recently had an immense quantity of J2EE architecture poured into my somewhat leaky old brain, and I was looking for something that could get everything to gel together when I happened on this book. Since Weblogic Server 6.1 is the server in use on my current assignment, I bought this book with the intention of cobbling together a test environment and working through its many examples.

At first the going was pretty good. Zuffoletto has an easily readable style and, with his guidance, I got the server up and running without too many traumas. I was OK until I started to work through the RMI examples in the book. They didn't work. After some fumbling, I went to the website and downloaded the updates examples. They were quite a bit different, but still didn't work. Fortunately, I have knowledgeable friends, and we eventually filled in the gaps and got everything up and running. My first issue with the book is that this pattern repeated itself frequently.

The text itself is great, but from a practical viewpoint, the supporting examples have many gaps in them. Sometimes the errors are glaring - failure to qualify the class name when running it in the JVM. Sometimes they are quite subtle. I frequently got the feeling that the book was really written for Weblogic 6.0 and then given a slight makeover to adapt it to 6.1. In addition, the book often fails to provide the kind of detailed practical explanations of how to compile and where to place code that are vital to beginners.

I also think Zuffoletto should have spent more time working through the intricacies of managing the Weblogic Server. As it is, the book is more focused on being a general introduction to using the technologies that WLS 6.1 supports. This isn't necessarily bad, but I found myself struggling to figure out whether I had set up the parameters correctly a few too many times. In addition, I had some problems because I use MS SQL Server for persistence rather than Oracle, and so was left out in the cold a bit.

On the good side, this is a very well written book that covered an immense amount of material without getting bogged down anywhere. It starts from scratch and takes you from setting up the environment and the development team, to the various API's (JNDI, RMI, JDBC, JMS, JTA, and JavaMail), and then through the major development patters (JSP, EJB, etc.). The final third of the book focuses on Weblogic administration and support and then some time is spent on what I think of as more emergent technologies (such as SOAP). If coverage isn't always as deep as it could be, one has to keep in mind that this is a 900-page book as it is.

I guess my real problem is that the book doesn't quite live up to its hype. Which is, perhaps more the fault of the publisher than Zuffoletto and his team. It is Hungry Minds, after all, that put the '100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, and What You Need' on the books cover. Well, it's a bit more like 70%, but that isn't all bad. Had the examples been a bit more workable (perhaps by expanding on the books website) I would have been very happy with it. As it is, I don't regret reading it at all,

I'm currently preparing the SUN Java2 architect certification. In this context, I read almost everything that gets published around J2EE. There are a lot of good books around but this one is special. It covers a lot of ground (JDBC, JNDI, RMI, JTA, JMS, JavaMail, servlets, EJBs, security), and at least it does this in the context of one of the most popular J2EE application servers, whilst most of the other books remain quite theoretical.
As a developer, you don't want to invest a lot of money in an application server for trying out things at home, right? I tried to make code run either in SUN's reference implementation, or by mixing open source containers like JBoss ant Tomcat (or Resin). Those are also very good products, and at the end of the day, you'll get the code running, but it's by no means a trivial task. Here, just download a 30 day free trial version of WebLogic 6.1 from BEA's site, install it, and you get the examples running immediately.
Also, considering the popularity of the platform, it's a small investment that could pay back very quickly in your next job.

In just one word: Wow!

If you are new to WebLogic, I suggest that you get this book. If you have been working with WebLogic since before the EJB .8 spec., I suggest that you get this book.

I really enjoyed reading the Weblogic Bible. I've been using WebLogic off and on since before EJB existed, and I still learned a bunch of new tricks. This is an excellent reference that can be read from cover to cover. I liked the small examples and the emphasis on deploying the examples. I especially like all the examples of setting up the configuration with an explanations of what the different parameters are and when to use them. I like going from concept to implementation, and that is what this book does. Unlike some other WebLogic centric books, the coverage of EJB CMP/CMR was pretty good.

A couple of things I did *not* like as follows: 1) A few times the examples were WebLogic centric when they could have been written them in a cross platform manner ( wrt J2EE ). (Note: A prerequisite of this book is a working knowledge of J2EE.) 2) The EJB examples hard coded the JNDI parameters instead of using the jndi.properites file in the classpath, which is the preferred approach for cross platform J2EE development. I realize that at times you have to write things WebLogic centric to utilize their extensions to J2EE, but I found the book also did this at times when it was not really necessary to do so. A J2EE veteran will catch the difference, and a J2EE novice will not. Bottom line... have a working knowledge of J2EE before reading this book and there will not be any problem.

The coverage of performance monitoring was really well done. And, the ideas for optimization and thought process behind it was also really well done.

Consider this book recommended!

At last, a book that makes J2EE accessible, in the context of a real-world application server!

I found this book to be impressive at every turn. It's well written, well edited, and even has a great website to go with it. And virtually all the source code on the website works.

The authors say it's a book for learning WebLogic, not J2EE, but I disagree. I think it's a great resource for learning both. There are a lot of good J2EE books out there, but I find most of them to be a little too theoretical. This is the first one that brings J2EE down to earth.

Given that you can download WebLogic Server for free, I can't think of a better way to get up to speed on this technology than to buy this book, download the software, and get to work. The authors do an incredible job of walking you carefully through every aspect of the product, from JDBC to clustering, and everything in between. They make the most complex topics seem simple, without dumbing them down.

I work mostly with WLS, but also with WebSphere and Tomcat. This book has given me a solid grounding in concepts that apply to all three environments. If you need to learn WebLogic Server, this is the only book you need. If you need to learn J2EE but you're using a different server, don't write it off. It's a fantastic WebLogic Book, and a strong J2EE book as well.

If you are new to WebLogic and/or are somewhat mystified by J2EE buy this book. It's a great resource and it is totally worth the money. It helps you get up and running quickly without getting too bogged down in all the BEA documentation. I found the overview of the J2EE technologies very enriching and the demonstration of WebLogic's value proposition and capabilities easy to digest. It also has some very helpful and practical suggestions for working out some thorny issues with WebLogic server such as class loaders, deployment etc. I'm constantly referring to it. The author has really done his homework and has done a valuable service to the WebLogic developer community by writing this book. When I had a question regarding some portions of the text I emailed the author and he responded within hours! He not only helped answer my question but also pointed me in the right direction where I could do additional research. It's nice to see someone stand by their work like that.

As the lead author of the book, I feel compelled to respond to the writer of the "Already Obsolete" posting.

Criticizing this book because it doesn't cover 7.0 is wrong. The book covers 6.1, and it says so right on the cover.

The comments about my presentation at the BEA event are also out of line. I wasn't "hawking the book" - in fact, I GAVE ONE AWAY at the end of the event. And it's not surprising that I "did not seem to think the answers to the audience questions would be found in the current version of the book," because the presentation was entitled, "WebLogic 7.0: What's New." As we've already established, the book covers 6.1, not 7.0.

For someone who has used weblogic in developing applications, this is an awesome book for those new and old to weblogic server. I believe this author actually sat down and tried to put himself in other people's shoes and tried to make this book very easy to follow and practical. If this book did not meat my expectations I would be the first to condem it. He truly goes in depth with allof the major issues covering weblogic server. It's a must read.

Most people want to work with real code examples so at some point, all J2EE developers will want a book that goes into the detail of deploying to an application server, deployment specific work sometimes taking as much of the time as the actual coding (I've had deployment files that are longer than the Java code they support).
This book sets out how to code and deploy from the beginning.
The text is clear and succinct. The examples are short but functional.
Each chapter has examples that don't rely on having done the examples in other chapters, so you can go to the chapter you want and concentrate on what you want to learn.
The style of the book makes it easy to keep on learning, by the time you finish each chapter, you should have a real sense of accomplishment.
A trial version of Weblogic can be downloaded from the internet so using it with this book will take you through just about all the technologies you need and your confidence to write Java Enterprise applications will soar.
Well worth the money for good information on Java Enterprise and great advice for using Weblogic.

I am generally pleased with the book. I have been using WebLogic 6.0 for almost 2 years, so I bought the book mainly to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, and to study for the BEA Solution Developer exam.

I particularly liked the section on JTA with the explanations of transaction isolation and demarcartion. I have read about these topics in other places, but never as understandable as here.

I also liked Chapter 3 Designing WebLogic Applications as you lay out how to go from requirements to a design. Again I have read more than a few books on this but the way it is explained here it makes a lot of sense and doesn't take 600 pages to do so.

In a general sense the examples are some of the best (session and entity beans, servlets and JSP). The are easy to follow, stick to the topic, and demonstrate how (and why) they work in WebLogic. The message-driven bean example in chapter 17 is the exception, with too many errors to list.

One thing I really like about the book is that it explains J2EE topics pretty thoroughly, and then gets down to details of implementation on WebLogic. I take the stance that once I understand thoroughly how a technology works on WebLogic then I can probably get it to work on other app servers if needed.

In contrast, I read the "Java Message Service" book by Richard Monson-Haefel & David Chappell (which is also a great book). The Monson-Haefel/Chappell book provided a deep understanding of JMS (which is good) but when it came time to deploy it on WebLogic I kinda had to stumble through it, simply because that book is not specific to WebLogic.

I look forward to reading the various sections on security, a complex topic in and of itself.

This book would have saved me weeks of sifting through the docs that BEA provides online. Thoughtfully layed out, this book is a great intro and reference for WebLogic.