7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An EJB3 book with fewer than 700 pages? Impossible!, December 3, 2008
This review is from: EJB 3 Developer Guide: A Practical Guide for developers and architects to the Enterprise Java Beans Standard. (Paperback)
Books on EJB technology tend to be fairly weighty. There are tomes of over 500
pages that deal solely with the persistence manager. And here we have a slim
(by EJB standards) volume that claims to offer a complete overview in a mere
240-or-so pages including, incredibly, EJB Web Services. Is that possible?
Well, up to a point it is. The trick is to focus ruthlessly on the information
needed to make things work, while skimming over technicalities. The book claims
to provide a `fast-paced tutorial' and that is, I think, exactly the way to
look at it. If you're interested in investigating the possibility of using EJB
in a particular project, and know little about the technology, then this book
would provide a great introduction. It's easy to read, liberally scattered with
code examples, and nicely presented. An experienced Java developer could read
it cover-to-cover in a few hours and understand most of it in one reading.
That's pretty unusual for a book on this subject.
Chapter 1 deals with the EJB architecture (very briefly indeed) and how to
obtain and set up the GlassFish application server.
Chapter 2 is more meaty, covering session beans and EJB clients. It is notable
that Java annotations are used here and throughout the book -- there is little
reference to the earlier ways of doing things. Knowledge of how annotations
work is assumed -- there is no technical explication. Another simplifying
factor is the use of client containers to invoke EJB code. This means that the
author doesn't need to explain in detail how JNDI works, and the reader doesn't
have to try to follow the explanation. But, again, there is a world of detail
here that developers will have to get to grips with at some point.
Chapters 3-5 deal with entities, OR mapping, and the query language. These
subjects are closely related and the chapters really form a single chunk of
material. There's certainly enough detail here to be able to build a
straightforward application.
Chapter 6 is a bit of an anomaly. It deals with the entity manager, and is
surprisingly technical compared to the preceeding content. That, in itself, is
not unwelcome -- this is a highly technical area. But since a lot of this
material is relevant to stand-alone persistent applications, and not
specifically to EJBs, I was rather surprised to find this level of detail at
this stage.
Chapter 7 deals with transations and, again, provides enough information to get
started.
Chapter 8 deals with JMS and message-driven beans (MDBs). Little or no
knowledge is assumed of JMS and, in fact, only about four pages of this chapter
actually deal with MDBs. That's fair enough, I think -- if you have the basics
of JMS under control, MDBs are straightforward enough. But there is only a half
a page on transaction handling in MDBs, which (in my view) isn't enough, even
at an introductory level.
Chatper 9 deals with timer services and is pretty clear.
Chapter 10 deals with interceptors, which are a new feature in EJB3. Again, the
material is straightforward and well illustrated with examples.
Chapter 11 describes Web Services in the EJB world. I have mixed feelings about
this chapter. There's certainly enough information in the chapter that a person
with no experience of Web services could follow the examples. But Web Services
is a massive area of technology, and I'm not sure it's profitable to try to
deal with it in a single chapter. But I'm not sure what the alternative would
be, other than leaving it out. It's not a bad chapter, but I think it will be
very difficult to follow what's going on for people who don't have a background
in Web services.
Chapter 12 is about security, and is pretty straightforward.
I think that this book should appeal to developers who are new to EJB, and just
want to get straight to coding, without reading too much theory. In the long
term, any developer who works with EJB extensively is going to have to
get to grips with the theory, and the inpenetrable EJB Specification, but
a gentle introduction ought to be welcome.
In addition, I would recommend the book to experienced EJB2 developers, who
specifically want a rapid introduction to the new features of EJB3.
In short, this is a good book and I recommend it; but developers shouldn't
get the idea that this is the only thing they'll ever need to read on the
subject of EJB3.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Fluff... all Buff!!!!!, December 29, 2008
This review is from: EJB 3 Developer Guide: A Practical Guide for developers and architects to the Enterprise Java Beans Standard. (Paperback)
Trimming down the typical EJB 3 guides and documentation out there did not seem to be the goal of the author. However, he did so by trimming all the fluff out of the book and presenting things in an organized, succinct manner that prove he took his time while writing the text.
Possibly what I enjoyed most about this book was the fact that the author took the time to carefully choose each word he used. This resulted in a clear understanding without rambling or going off-point as even the EJB 3 books published from O'Reilly do (of which I am a supporter). The sheer clarity and careful nature of the author really shines through and makes it a fast, easy reader from beginner to advanced offering your much more clarity than any other book it currently competes with.
Well organized as well, this book presents EJB 3 development using concrete examples and in a logical, real-world order. Many of its competitors use a very academic approach, which is good for reference, but lack this author's obvious understanding of solving a real-world solution from the ground-up. The book's author has written and organized the text in such a way that you won't find yourself doing a lot of rework and/or revisiting to pieces of code as much as you find in other books which makes for a much clearer picture of how EJB 3 can be applied to your specific problem domain.
Simple illustrations/diagrams make things easy to follow as well. The author, again, took the time to create simple but meaningful designs for this information rather than relying on flashy graphics or over-done diagrams to attract your attention (as I am sure we have all seen in many company presentations, lectures, etc. etc. etc.). This allows for easy explanation not only to the reader, but also provides the reader with succinct, clear examples of implementation and strategy that can be taken to decision makers that are a step above development and/or architecture.
The book also focuses on very generic solutions. This allots the user with the ability to research the wide variety of options available to them in the EJB 3 and J2EE world. While not directly stated in the book, it does, in fact, list many key points to use while evaluating the pieces to the puzzle that you use for completing your EJB 3 solution as well as touching on points that cover "is EJB 3 really right for my problem?".
Overall: Extremely impressive. Less of a reference and more of a front-to-back walk-through. Despite that, it is valuable for all to read from not even knowing what EJB 3 actually is to working with the solution in your day-to-day professional career.
I look forward to more titles from the author and, immediately after completing this review, will be searching Amazon.com for some to purchase on other topics of interest. Huzzah to the author for a wonderful text.
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