Customer Reviews

Beginning Java EE 6 Platform with GlassFish 3: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Java Technology)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

although the title of the book starts with "Beginning", it doesn't mean that it will actually start from scratch!! this book is for professionals only and it assumes that you already know Java EE 5 ! although the author did try to write some topics for the beginners, but it seems that he had put them there just for the sake of the book title :)

also, when you get this book, don't expect to find "details"! it is very hard to talk about the whole Java EE 6 in one single book! indeed, the book shows you the "new" features in Java EE 6 but it doesn't go deep into anything!

so, the book is not for beginners cause it assumes (even if they didn't say so) that you know Java EE 5 .. and it is not for professionals as it's not saying much!

AT THE END:
if you know Java EE 5 .. get this book .. it will tell you what's new in Java EE 6 and you are good to go ! if you don't know Java EE 5, keep looking for a good book for beginners

hope this helps

Antonio Goncalves, if you do not know him yet, is the co-founder of the Paris JUG and is a member of the experts committees regarding the following JSRs : JSR-316 (Java EE 6), JSR-317 (JPA 2.0) et JSR-318 (EJB 3.1). This is his second book. He has been recently awarded the title of Java champion.
Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine (GlassFish team) wrote the foreword.

The 1st chapter enumerates a list of new features introduced in Java EE 6. An e-commerce application (CDs and books sales) is developed in the chapters. And the installation of the used softwares is described.
The chosen application server is GlassFish v3 of course, the first one to support Java EE 6 and also the only one at the moment.

Chapters 2 to 5 deal with the Java Persistence API (JPA), in its version 2.0. As a reminder, the JPA version in Java EE 5 is 1.0 .

The 2nd chapter offers a small sample of persistance of an entity bean, with the help of JUnit for the tests, Maven for the compilation and the execution, Derby for the database.

In the 3rd chapter the author explains numerous ORM annotations of the version 1.0 of the JPA but also the new annotations of the JPA 2.0 (@ElementCollection, @MapKeyColumn, ...). The section on the mapping of relations between entities is well detailed and is certainly very useful for anyone who has forgotten these annotations and wishes to quickly learn them again. rapidement.

Same thing for the 4th chapter, it is very exhaustive in its explications of the persistance. The new features of JPA 2.0 are of course introduced (second-level caching, pessimistic locking ...).

The 5th chapter also gives exhaustive explanations on callback methods and entity listeners.

Chapters 6 to 9 focus on session beans and EJB timer services. The author shows the use of an embedded container, a new feature in the 3.1 version.

Chapter 6 is a very short chapter which explains briefly the new features in EJB 3.1. These new features are used in the next chapters.
A first small example shows the user of the embedded container and the JNDI lookup JNDI through a standard name.

Chapter 7 does a description of stateless and stateful session beans, with examples.
Session beans singletons are explained in details, with a lot of code to illustrate the features around them (initialisation, chaining, concurrence). The other features (standardized JNDI, dependency injection, asynchrones calls with session beans, embedded container, improved timer service) are also rich in examples of code.

Nothing particular to mention about chapter 8. The author does a classical description of the lifecycles of session beans and singletons, callback methods and interceptors (chaining, exclusion).

Chapitre 9 : Once again, a classical and exhaustive description of the 2 transaction modes (container or bean) in EJBs is done. And it also provides good explanations about security-related annotations.

Chapitre 10 : presentation of JSF 2.0. An example shows the development of a JSF 2.0 web application using a business tier based on EJB 3.1 and a persistence layer based on JPA 2.0.

In chapter 11, the author writes some reminders about HTML, CSS, JSP, EL and JSTL.
Facelets are favored against JSP as PDL (Presentation Declaration Language) for JSF. The author also tells us about the JSF HTML components and shows the creation and use of components / widgets with JSF 2.0.

Chapter 12 : a lot of explanations support the presentation of the capabilities in JSF 2.0 regarding the treatment of requests (lifecycle), the navigation, conversion and validation of data, as well as AJAX support.

Chapter 13 : The JMS API is explained in details before the use of MDB EJBs with OpenMQ, the default messaging provider for GlassFish, and their compilation and deployment with Maven.

Chapter 14 : Main features of Web Services (WSDL, SOAP ...) are explained. The author shows the use of annotations of the JAX-WS model, according to the JSR-181 specification, for the creation and the call of web services by a consumer.

Chapter 15 : this last chapter does not lack any interest since it introduces the new type of Web Service, RESTful.
It is detailed using the annotations of the JAX-RS API which is part of Java EE 6.

Conclusion : The code is available on the Apress editions website.
I liked the educational approach of the book : in certain chapters, there is a "Putting it all together" section which makes use of the notions explained previously.

I have perhaps almost 200 books on computer programming and IT (I began programming in 1962). Rarely have I seen a book that is as clear and concise as this one. Goncalves gives a deep and thorough introduction to each of the main topics. His writing style is excellent prose and easy to follow. If his future books are as valuable as this one, I'll place him among the ten best programming technology writers we have today. I look forward to his next book.

I expected to get a book extolling the virtues of GlassFish and a list of differences between Java EE 5 and 6. What I received is a most thorough tutorial on many aspects of Java EE, with several chapters devoted to each topic, covering the basics as well as the new EE 6 features. More practical useful knowledge in one place than I ever expected. I generally don't write reviews for tech books, but this was definitely money well spent. Well done!

This is a book that will give you an introduction to JEE. The are two problems with the book however, annoying errors in the examples and an unstructured presentation. This is not a bad book by any means, but its a book written in haste were the author assume that you read the whole book and not just the parts you are interested in.
-To show this is not just a rant, The code for chapter 10 needs a lot of improvement, basic errors such as redirecting a request bean gave me a lot of headache.
-The fact that I have to read 10 chapters just to get a complete overview of how JSF works, which he starts out with in chapter one.

Most people starting out with Java don't go with Maven, but rather Netbeans. Still this book doesn't even mention Netbeans..?

Excellent writing style...plain, understandable, excellent examples which are well thought out. Covers almost everything one could need to know with regards to J2EE... this author has one of the most "down to earth" writing styles I have encountered...and I read many tech books. I would go out of my way to select a future book based on the book being written by this author.

This book along with the free Java EE 6 Tutorial online had me developing with confidence on Glassfish 3 within a month. My copy is dog-eared, highlighted, bookmarked and almost in tatters from how frequently I referenced it at the beginning. Now it serves as a quick-reference for Beans, JPA and the examples.

True, there is more depth to be learned on each topic, but the overviews are surprisingly thorough where necessary and provide enough examples to accomplish most of what you will need to hit the ground running.

A good follow up for this would be the JPA Professional guide or a complete JSF reference to continue your learning trail.

This is an excellent book to get started with Glassfish, or even as a compliment to the Netbeans 6.8 code-generators for the Glassfish platform to better understand what they are really doing.

Not a good book for a true beginner to the Java EE platform. The author also wrote the book in a very backward style. Instead of starting out with JSP/JSF and then moving through servlets, beans and JPA/ORM. He starts the book out with the JPA/ORM and moves to beans and then servlets, on to JSP, and then bounces to messaging and web services. This makes connecting the dots on understanding the framework of Java EE very difficult.

I was surprised to find that the reviews for this book seem to be split between very favorable and quite unfavorable. I can't understand the latter, except that the book addresses an irreducibly difficult topic and some frustration may be inevitable. Actually, I'm surprised how few books there are on java EE, given the difficulty of mastering the subject (in my experience) from online documentation alone. I've read several of the books that do exist, and in my opinion they're all pretty bad -- except for this one. My background when I read it was a pretty solid grasp of java SE but no understanding of java EE despite several attempts to master it as mentioned. After reading this book, I have been able to use the parts of java EE that I've needed, and am confident I could use the rest if the occasion arises.

This book is a model of clarity, and easily one of the top few programming books I've ever read. I'll buy anything else Mr. Goncalves should care to publish.

This book gives you a very good intro on all aspects of latest Java enterprise tools/technology.Points are very clear and samples are easy to follow. I hope this author will write another book titled "Advanced Java EE6 Platform".