Customer Reviews

Effective VisualAge(r) for Java, Version 3: Includes Coverage of Versions 3.02 and 3.5

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My understanding of VAJ increased after reading just the first chapter. This is not a "how to" type book, although it can certainly take the reader from scratch. But it offers so much more - a firm explaination of why VAJ is a better tool for Java development. I'm the type of developer who needs a clear understanding of a product before I start using it and this book does an excellent job of providing that foundation.

Also, the authors maintain an active mailing list for those who have trouble implementing the examples. They show a cheerful willingness to answer questions.

Highly recommended.

PS: I passed IBM's Visual Age for Java certification exam with an 85 using this book as my only reference and having never had any on the job experience with the product.

I've only just begun using VAJ. The VAJ mindset was quite foreign to me at first and this book has been EXTREMELY useful. Pretty much every issue I've had with the tool was answered by this book. I really haven't seen any other reference material for VAJ that even comes close.

As a novice VisualAge for Java user, I have found this book very useful. It is well structured and covers most of the features of VA Java. The accompanying CD that contains VA Java professional edition gives the book extra value.

On the negative side, I find too many typos. Also I have found some of the examples incomplete. It would also have been an idea to publish a page with corrections.

But overall, this is probably the best book on VisualAge for Java available today.

I like this a book a lot. It is a pretty detailed and effective guide to the Visual Age tool for Java. It goes thru all the setting up the tool, creating code, navigating, debugging, versioning, etc.. But especial attention is given to JavaBeans composition in Visual Age to which about 4 chapters are devoted. The examples to this topic are detailed and this was very helpful to me. I recommend this book for Visual Age Java.

At last there is a book that explains all the features and facilities of VisualAge for Java. Scott Stanchfield, who has been a major contributor to the VisualAge for Java user community for years has now come out with a book that tops it off. It's an obvious choice for new users since it comes with a free copy of the Pro version for far less cost than the software alone. For the seasoned user, the book contains much valuable information that is absent in IBM's documentation. The only unfortunate thing about this book is that there was no edition back when Version 1 was released.

A lot of good info. Covers both the mechanics and conceptual aspects of Visual Age. I got a feeling that I could understand what I was making, make intelligent choices and resolve whatever problems came up. Scott is the guru of VisualAge.

What being said the book has an incredible amount of filler. It really needs a good editing. Particularly bad was the amount of really trivial information. For example on a text box named "Class Name" there is no need to explain that the class name goes here. This tendency to focus on the trivial flawed an otherwise excellent book.

Having heard Scott at the JavaOne last year during a birds-of-feather session on VAJ he hosted with IBM team, I was anxious to see how he looks at the all-new VAJ 3.5 enterprise edition. As you can see from his website, this "javadude" has been generous to show the table of contents and the unpublished chapters on the website. To cover a comprehensive tool like VAJ 3.5 Enterprise edition should take a lot of time to assimilate the information. While specializing on the MVC based visual composition in VAJ, Scott had kind-of ignored the world of enterprise objects. With the new edition, he has finally pitched in. On what is missing- the Rational Rose XMI toolkit based integration, SAP R/3 access builder. But I am sure Scott will write on these topics on his website in the coming years.

BTW, Scott, do you really like the repository thingie, though ;-)

Regards, /Ravi Engineering Manager, Bristlecone Inc.

Effective Visualage for Java covers well all the aspects of this incredibly terrible IDE. If you have to use VisualAge, this is the book to get you started. How a great programming language like Java could get shackled with such a deplorable development tool is beyond me.

After drowning in click by rote IBM tutorials, this book was exactly what I was looking for! A tour of the Visual Age tool followed by excellent discussion and examples of design techniques, make this book a truly effective way to get rolling with Visual Age. This book assumes you already know Java and something about JavaBeans and doesn't waste time holding your hand on the basics. The examples move fast and can be hard to recreate on your own, but the source code is included if needed. As a manager of Java developers, this book was a great way for me to get up to speed on how Visual Age influences the architecture and design style of my team. I am going to recommend it to all of my new developers. I didn't have any problem with typos. I hope the author puts out a edition for Visual Age version 4.0

As a Sun Certified Programmer,I recommend this book for Visual Age Java exam,
even for version4.
Yesterday, I passed the exam with 90%.
I like this a book.
Thanks to Scott Stanchfield and thanks John Wiley & Sons.