Beginning POJOs: Lightweight Java Web Development Using Plain Old Java Objects in Spring, Hibernate, and Tapestry (Novice to Professional) [Paperback]

Brian Sam-Bodden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2006 | Series: Novice to Professional

Beginning POJOs introduces you to open source lightweight web development using Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) and the tools and frameworks that enable this. Tier by tier, this book guides you through the construction of complex but lightweight enterprise Java-based web applications. Such applications are centered around several major open source lightweight frameworks, including Spring, Hibernate, Tapestry, and JBoss (including the new lightweight JBoss Seam).

Additional support comes from the most successful and prevalent open-source tools: Eclipse and Ant, and the increasingly popular TestNG. This book is ideal if you’re new to open source and lightweight Java. You’ll learn how to build a complete enterprise Java-based web application from scratch, and how to integrate the different open source frameworks to achieve this goal. You’ll also learn techniques for rapidly developing such applications.

NOTE: The source code files to accompany this book are now hosted at https://github.com/bsbodden/techconf.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Brian Sam-Bodden has spent over 10 years working with object technologies, with an emphasis on the Java platform. He holds dual bachelor degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University in computer science and physics and is the president and chief software architect for Integrallis Software, where he focuses on object modeling and Java, particularly Java EE. He has worked as an architect, developer, mentor, trainer, and code monkey for several Fortune 500 companies in various industries including taxation, insurance, retail sciences, telecommunications, banking, finance, distribution and scientific data management. As an independent consultant, he has promoted the use of open source in the industry by educating his clients on the cost benefits and productivity gains they can achieve.

He is a frequent speaker at user groups at both national and international conferences. He is a Sun Certified Java Programmer, Developer, and Enterprise Architect. Brian also co-authored the Apress Java title Enterprise Java Development on a Budget: Leveraging Java Open Source Technologies (2004). Aside from spending time with his wife and son, Brian spends most of his time writing code or on the mat practicing Brazilian jiujitsu.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (March 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590595963
• ISBN-13: 978-1590595961
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Plain" dealing, March 24, 2006

By 

Ernest Friedman-Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning POJOs: Lightweight Java Web Development Using Plain Old Java Objects in Spring, Hibernate, and Tapestry (Novice to Professional) (Paperback)

Missourians -- residents of the "Show Me State" -- are sure to appreciate this unusual book on lightweight Java development with "Plain Old Java Objects." In a fast-paced 10 chapters, Brian Sam-Bodden builds a single complete application, all the way through. Believe it or else, he starts with a detailed design, then talks about fundamental tools like Eclipse and Ant, and before you know it he's implemented the persistence and business tiers. Screenshots and detailed instructions will help you get your environment installed and set up in no time.

The first five chapters of the book are astonishingly linear as the application is developed to this point, with each technology choice presented as a fait accompli. In this day of political correctness and cultural relativism, many authors bend over backwards to consider all the alternatives to every decision they make, and I felt that Sam-Bodden's approach was incredibly refreshing. Eclipse, Ant, Hibernate, EJB3 on JBoss. Take it or leave it.

I was therefore almost disappointed when, in Chapters 6 and 7, he considers several different alternative implementations of the business and presentation tiers. Still, showing how to use Tapestry and especially Spring offsets the raised eyebrows some of you might have on hearing that a book on POJOs was advocating using EJBs -- even though the radically reworked EJB3 specification does indeed let you use Plain Old Java Objects to implement the business layer.

From this point, the book gets more conventional, with the traditional tacked-on chapter about testing that nevertheless asks you to do testing as an integral part of development.

Although some of the technology choices and development approaches may stretch your personal definition of the term "lightweight," this is still the best book on end-to-end development of modern enterprise applications that I've seen. If you have a hint of the Missourian in you, and you'd like someone to show you how things are done, this book was written with you in mind.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Welcome back to the 80's, May 31, 2006

By 

G. Pelcha (Fredericia, Denmark) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beginning POJOs: Lightweight Java Web Development Using Plain Old Java Objects in Spring, Hibernate, and Tapestry (Novice to Professional) (Paperback)

This book seems to be a step backwards rather than a step forward. I may be a bit biased, since I feel that Object Oriented programming is much more beneficial than procedural, but this book harps on exposing all your "objects" (and I use this term lightly here) in order to utilize the frameworks. The book gave little hints as to why you would use some of these frameworks, but i'm hoping that a re-read may enlighten me (hibernate and tapestry I can understand, but the others are unclear to me in regards to his problem domain).

Regarding design and research, this book begins strongly by stating it should be done, and then skips it entirely. It then dives straight into utilizing hibernate, which is a good product if used properly, and then forces you to create data containers with access to all your data. From here you can get a feel as to the next few chapters and their structures; pushing data here, pushing data there.

In the end, I wondered if the book was at all useful in my persuit in finding a better way in working with J2EE-ish frameworks and an alternate solution to its heavy-ness, and in doing so offering an OO solution. This book failed miserably in doing so. I get the idea of JBoss being a lightweight solution, but he states that lightweight is about your coding style and the amount of work needing to be done. His project is grossly complex and would thus require a nightmare of work in maintenance as well as re-engineering when the time came (which it almost always will, especially when developing web based services).

It's possible that I'm alone in this view, but it seems that many developers think that the more advanced frameworks they pull together into a single project the better it becomes. In such, the frameworks used gauges the success of you project. It's about how good the product is and how easily it can be maintained, not by the number of frameworks you can integrate.

In the end, the book enlightened me to other frameworks, and possible ways of NOT using them. The author may have many years of experience, but I feel that this book brings a false hope in building better web-based applications, especially in regard to ongoing maintenance.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written but..., May 24, 2007

By 

Brian Edwards "brl4n" (west chester,pa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beginning POJOs: Lightweight Java Web Development Using Plain Old Java Objects in Spring, Hibernate, and Tapestry (Novice to Professional) (Paperback)

I like the style of the book but I found myself having to play around with code to get the examples to work. They seemed to work about 25% of the time without major tweaking. Maybe it is just me but this book needs a newer edition pronto. I'd look elsewhere for more up to date information.