Bitter EJB [Paperback]

Bruce Tate (Author), Mike Clark (Author), Bob Lee (Author), Patrick Linskey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2003

Addressing the storming controversy of EJB head-on, this guide discusses framework problems and common traps that can snare unwary developers. Advice is provided for choosing persistence strategies beyond EJB entity beans and a list of several entity bean antipatterns. Also offered are session bean and messaging antipatterns and a compelling discussion about how and when to use problematic stateful session beans. Solutions to difficult problems such as effective builds and performance tuning are furnished. Designed for EJB developers, architects, programmers, and project managers, this authoritative reference attacks basic Java programming problems to establish antipatterns as a serious field for Java developers in a well-known context.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce Tate is an Internet architect who developed the bitter Java concept after seeing a set of customer problems repeated, collecting their stories, and publishing the solutions. He is the author of "Bitter Java," He lives in Austin, Texas. Mike Clark is president of Clarkware Consulting, Inc. He first encountered EJB pitfalls in 1998 while developing a custom EJB container, prior to the emergence of commercial J2EE servers. He has significantly contributed to the successful delivery of a popular J2EE performance management product and has also created several open source tools including JUnitPerf for automated performance testing. He lives in Parker, Colorado. Bob Lee is an OCI consultant with expertise in AOP, Jini, and web security. He developed an open source AOP framework that utilizes runtime bytecode engineering to intercept method invocations on POJOs and forms the foundation of JBoss AOP. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Patrick Linskey is the vice president of engineering for SolarMetric, a company that offers Java persistence alternatives to the Java community. His experience spans EJB application development and product development, and he is a teacher and speaker on the Java conference circuit. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Clark is a consultant, author, speaker, and programmer. He helps teams build better software faster through his company, Clarkware Consulting, Inc.

Lee is an independent consultant and open source developer.

Linskey is the VP Engineering for Solarmetric, which offers Java persistence alternatives to the Java community.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (June 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930110952
• ISBN-13: 978-1930110953
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,958,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading, December 5, 2003

By 

A. McMurry "justandy" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bitter EJB (Paperback)

If you are a Java/J2EE developer, reading this book will save you hundreds of wasted hours.
There are plenty of books on J2EE design patterns and best practices.
Bruce Tate goes well beyond these discussions and outlines the effectiveness of these strategies, antipatterns, and above all: alternatives.

Simply put, this is the only book that puts J2EE into perspective.
Sales/Marketing have convinced developers that EJB is the "golden hammer" for enterprise solutions.
This book will enlighten you to creating effective J2EE applications without falling victim to market hype.

It is my personal opinion that Bruce Tate is the most effective technical writer since Richard Stevens.
The writing is clear and to the concise, every page directly addressing common roadblocks in EJB development.

For readers with a solid understanding of J2EE principles, this book will help you navigate around common pitfalls and outline effective solutions.
For less experienced readers, it will help you plan effectively.

After reading a dozen J2EE books, Bitter EJB stands tall as "required reading".

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When you want to know why, not just how., June 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Bitter EJB (Paperback)

Bitter EJB couldn't have come at a better time for me. My development team is at a crossroads. Having developed a reasonably complex web-based model-view-controller architecture from scratch in Java, we thought we knew everything. Then it hit us: scalability problems, transactional integrity questions, database portability nightmares... we were in trouble. Ah, but knowing all, we determined that a simple migration of some of our logic to Enterprise JavaBeans would solve everything.

Or would it? We started thinking: Are EJBs really better than JDO? Or home-grown solutions? How about JMS? Does it let us scale too? And what's with these Message Drive Beans? If we go EJB, do we use CMP? Hey, we hand-tuned a lot of JDBC code... aren't we going to see a performance degredation? Why would we choose Entity Beans over Session Beans or the reverse? How do we tackle the complexities of building and testing these components? We read the JavaDocs and specs, but we still had lots of questions, and not a lot of informed answers. Suddenly, we didn't feel so smart. At all.

Thankfully Bitter EJB tackles these issues and more with humor and insight. There are plenty of good books that tell you how to build an EJB or use a message queue from Java. Instead of regurgitating the mechanics, this one tells you the why, why not and when to's of developing with EJBs and related technologies. You won't find a lot of EJB cheerleading in these pages, but rather a whole lot of unbiased, intuitive advice that will help you make the right decisions for your environment, product, team and goals.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They've been there, and done that, July 29, 2003

By 

Erik Hatcher - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bitter EJB (Paperback)

This book is a must-have for the serious J2EE developers. For example, many teams realize in EJB development that entity beans are overkill and complex enough to really drag a project down, yet very few books tell you this. Bitter EJB is the exception - it gives tried and true advice from those that have really been there and worked through the issues. In my extensive J2EE development experience I have learned the hard way many of these antipatterns. Do yourself a favor and don't learn these pitfalls the hard way - let Bruce, Mike, Bob, and Patrick join your team and steer you away from common mistakes, and towards best practices.