Customer Reviews

Building Java Enterprise Applications, Vol. 1: Architecture (O'Reilly Java)

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

 

 

I really wanted to like this book, but I simply could not. I enjoyed Brett's Java & XML quite a bit, and my hopes for Java Enterprise Applications were quite high. The idea behind the series, to show how everything in J2EE fits together, sounded really appealing.

Alas, the book did not live up to my expectations. I am an experienced Java developer currently studying for the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect certification. For me, the contents of the book were on the verge of being trivial. I learned a little about LDAP, but the rest of the book was very much fluff, and not very filling.

Even more annoyingly, the book contains some subtle errors and bad practices, like Double-Checked Locking on page 135 ...pooling of potentially broken connections on page 139, arguments from "security through obscurity" on page 151, and suppressed exceptions on page 155. J2EE contains enough pitfalls for practitioners even without experts teaching bad practices.

This book has its good sides, too. It contains much source code, making it a fast read. The amount of source code really highlights some of the very negative aspects of EJBs (especially Entity beans), but the author did give any suggestions for improvements.

If you have just encountered J2EE and EJBs, this book might be good for you. I would rather recommend reading Monson-Haefel on EJBs and the JMS tutorial trail on java.sun.com.

I've often seen complaints about O'Reilly's editing in reviews like this. Now I know what all those folks are complaining about. The diagrams and examples in this book are just plain *BAD*. In the section on DB design I don't think there wasn't one ER diagram with out MULTIPLE errors. Where's the quality control? I would have given 4 stars if the diagrams and examples were corrct.

The textual content of the book is actually pretty good, easy to read, but a little slow paced for me. I was initially attracted to the book because of it's promise of bringing multiple J2EE concepts toghether in one read. I'm afraid tho that if I'm left to analyzing and correcting errors in areas that I'm familiar with that I'll be very confused and frustrated by errors in areas I'm not so familar with.

I will certainly scrutinize the next two volumes in the series much more closely before I consider buying.

I was extremely disappointed by this book. I thought it was a book about how to architect Java applications. It is not. While I appreciate the book's goal of providing practical examples, it is nothing but an example of building one particular application. It's not much more than a tutorial. I want a book of principles, guidelines, best practices for building Java applications - a series of general principles that I can apply to any situation. O'Reilly books are normally great; I bought this book largely because it was from O'Reilly. Big mistake. If you want a book of general principles for how to design a Java enterprise app, Core J2EE Patterns is excellent and much better than this one.

I have been programming with Java for over 6 years now and have been teaching Java, J2EE for almost just as long. In my role as lead developer, architect, teacher, and mentor, I am always looking for good books that I can recommend that really teaches people how to write good code. In the J2EE arena, I've had two favorites that I always recommend - Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies by Deepak Alur and Designing Enterprise Applications with the J2EE Platform by Inderjeet Singh. I love the way those books are written and I find the same traits in this book. I'm going to have to add this book that list as Brett has written a great book.

In the 1st book of the 3-book series, Brett walks the reader through the architectural issues developers typically face when they start on a new project. The 2nd book in this series will deal with Web Applications and the 3rd book will deal with the concept of Web Services.

The book starts off where the developer(s), working for a fictional company gets a set of requirement for an application. As you read the book, you go through all of the steps of the software development process and discovering how the different J2EE technologies work together to make up the final solution. The book is aimed at experienced developers who don't mind wading through hundreds of lines of code. The goal here is to explore and understand concept using code and is not meant for the uninitiated. The author arms the readers with tips, tricks, techniques that make up a good design based on real-world experience which makes this book a really good resource for any enterprise developer.

This book kept me absorbed from first to the end. I learnt lot of interesting and important stuff otherwise, I would have missed in my design. The book begins with an imaginary organization in need of computerization. Author starts with data modelling, how we could use LDAP to authentication to authorization, ejb components and usage and finally using an example of JMS. Lots of trips and techniques of good design is illustrated. The author gradually improves the design from previous chapters and and also keep changing the code accordingly. I am glad I bought this book and I am eager to see the next two book in the series.

This book teaches principles and patterns of applying J2ee technology by an example. It worth a read. I bought the book, and finished reading it for 4 days. I did learn some designs I don't know before. But I doubt if the book is worth the price:
1. It is too verbose. Very often a simple idea which can be explained in one sentence is explained in one whole page. I hope the author can supply a -v option, so that I can read it more efficiently. This 300 pages book can be reduced to 150 pages.
2. The Figures in the book contains too many errors. Most of the E-R diagrams in the book are wrong. This is appearantly not the fault of the author. I think the editor in O-Reilly should be fired.
My suggestion is that if you can share a book with a friend, then don't buy it. It just worth one read.

After reading the synopsis I was ready to delve into some planning and best practices reading material. While the book focuses on a core example, it doesn't not provide enough information on WHY certain decisions were made and does not provide enough look into alternatives.

The book would be much more valuable if it focused less on one concrete example and took a step upwards into what I mistook the synopsis and title for: "Making Strategic and Technology/Business-Driven Decisions in Your Java Applications".

Aside from misinterpreting the content of the book, the general content lacked. Even though providing a path down a single sample, there was far too little focus on how to go about building Java Enterprise applications and too much focus on explaining the code. While the author tried to keep succinct, he did not touch on the core principals and theories enough.

I recommend the book only for casual, quick reading as it is out-dated (due to the EJB 2 topics covered) and does not dive into the real core of planning application life cycles.

This book teaches principles and patterns of applying J2ee technology by an example. It worth a read. I bought the book, and finished reading it for 4 days. I do learnt some designs I don't know before. But I doubt if the book is worth the price:
1. It is too verbose. Very often a simple idea which can be explained in one sentence is explained in one whole page. I hope the author can supply a -v option, so that I can read it more efficiently. This 300 pages book can be reduced to 150 pages.
2. The Figures in the book contains too many errors. Most of the E-R diagrams in the book are wrong. This is appearantly not the fault of the author. I think the editor in O-Reilly should be fired.
My suggestion is that if you can share a book with a friend, then don't buy it. It just worth one read.

This is yet another one of ORA's buzzword books with next to no original content.

If you want a decent book on J2EE, check out the offerings from Manning Press, Addison-Wesley, or Wrox. At least those companies actually edit their books, and see if the printed examples work.

This book will not teach you all the nitty gritty of J2EE. It will, however, explain when to use what part of the APIs. It goes through a lot of the different parts of J2EE.

For me it was a good overview. I started coding J2EE by going in deep from the start. If this book would've been available when I was learning the technology, my path to understanding it all would've been shorter.

I especially liked the way the author builds the different elements together to construct a system. It shows how they mix.