Customer Reviews

Enterprise Java™ Programming with IBM® WebSphere® (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Some of the hardest things to find in life are people who hate pizza, short lines and good Java books. This book is nothing short of a waist of time if you are not experienced with Javascript. The examples in this book are consistantly flawed with mistakes that would make any programmer want to slap the editor. There is no resource for accessing the scripts from the web like in the other essential books, leaving you to figure out how the hell to get the script working because the example they gave you is erroring all over the place. The only way I could recommend this book would be if you were looking for ideas on how to program. It gives some interesting concepts of how to accomplish some neet things with Javascript. It might make a good companion for study but I would keep a dish of holy water and some salt nearby, you'll need it. Other than that stay away from this book, I wouldn't wish this catastrophy on my worst enemy...well maybe.

I really regretted buying this book. For the most part it's a descent book but for it's not for a beginner. There were a few tags that the code left out. I'm referring to the scripting for JavaScript Navigation. The FORM tag was missing and it wasn't giving a NAME attribute. A beginner would not have picked this up so easily. I don't recommend this for beginners. If you really want the book, contact me and I'll give you my copy...

I liked the start of the book. You have just been hired to improve the web site for Shelly Biotechnologies..... The book contains a series of assignments or projects you solve. I don't see how a beginner can understand any of yet. I am professional programmer looking for teaching material for a JavaScript class. If I selected this book I would have had to teach a lot of programming concepts because the authors left it all out or didn't cover it in sufficient detail. I also agree with the folks about the numerous errors. I also question the programming expertise of the authors. I saw some unneccesary consructs that grated on my programming nerves (how could they miss it? do they really know how to program?) If they meant to produce a "copy and paste" approach to JavaScript. By this I mean, copy and paste this into your HTML make the required changes for your images or objects and don't worry about understanding anything. They failed. If it was meant to teach PROGRAMMING Javascript, they failed. If it was meant to familiarize a professional programmer with Javascript, they failed here too. So what was the point? I instruct my students to first "identify your audience", these authors should have done the same! I do not recommend this book. Check out the book "Internet & World Wide Web, How to Program" by Deitel. It is my selection as a JavaScript text. This book is not on my supplemental recommendation list.

In the race to make legacy technologies and data accessible on the Web, J2EE has emerged as an industry standard. Vendors like Sun, IBM and BEA differentiate themselves in offering containers of varying functionality in which these can be implemented.

This book explains the approach taken by IBM, which uses WebSphere. A very powerful container, whose scope is so extensive that it is reflected in the heft of the book.

Several chapters give good generic descriptions of J2EE, Model-View-Container, Enterprise Java Beans, JSPs and Servlets. These are generic in that little here is IBM specific. Concise. But if you are new to these subjects, you may want to search for books dedicated to those, rather than turn here as a first resort.

The core chapters show how to use WebSphere to implement and host the above items. This, after all, is the emphasis of the book. Especially comprehensive descriptions are presented of Container Managed Persistence and Bean Managed Persistence and Message Driven Beans. And, most importantly, because this is central to commercial applications, how WebSphere rigourously handles transactions. Two-phase commit, rollback etc. These MUST work, and Chapter 28 explains how.

Throughout all this, the authors provide many screen captures of the WebSphere UI, as useful guides. Even just at this level, you can see the tremendous effort that IBM has put into making it as useful as possible. I do not say "easy", please note. WebSphere is highly intricate, and the book will give you an understanding of why this has to be so.

No way would I turn in code with as many errors as I found in the examples from this book. The approach to learning Javascript is good, it's just not backed up with any decent examples or exercises. Not recommended.

The design advice contained in this book in invaluable for anyone building Enterprise Java applications. It's not just about programming but about architecture and design. The forward by Martin Fowler says it all: "If you're a WebSphere developer, buy this book for its tutorial on WebSphere, but treasure it for its design advice. If you don't develop in WebSphere, or even J2EE, get this book for its design advice anyway." The book is well organized, has great examples, and is easy to use as either a text-book or "how to" and as a reference for more experienced readers. The chapters on "developing and testing" (servlets, JSPs, domain models) are practical, comprehensive and easy to follow. This book isn't just theoretical - it really takes you through having something up and running on your machine. Buy this book and keep it on your desk.

OK, so this isn't a beginner's text. It has literally thousands (yes, thousands) of typos. Why 5 stars? This is simply the best book on explaining and demonstrating J2EE concepts that I've read, and I've read many.

It's virtually impossible to find this much valuable info in one place. And please, don't bash this book until you've read the whole thing (which you may need to do more than once!).

The code on the CD works. As far as showing incomplete printed examples, do you really want every line of code printed in the book? Given the level of developer this book targets, they strike a fine balance of what goes on the existing 900 pages and what can be browsed on the CD. The only topic I had trouble digesting was their discussion on Mapper Objects (Ch. 16), but it's easy enough to understand the code.

I have yet to find a large technical book without lots of errors. I would rate the editing job on this book as 1.5 stars because of the abundance of seemingly careless typos. However, they're minor annoyances that don't detract from this technically correct marvel of a book. As developers, we need useful information. This book more than delivers and is worth every penny.

First, in the spirit of full disclosure and honesty: I know Kyle professionally as we are colleagues at IBM. However this isn't what causes me to pick up this book several times a week; it's the quality of the content of the book that makes it a frequent reference and source of learning.

J2EE was created to provide a standard framework to create complex, distributed, enterprise applications. Therefore I must take exception with the reader below who complains that this book is "not for a beginner". To enjoy this book in its entirety it is necessary that you are at least aware of the problems of distributed computing (concurrency, data synchronization, connecting to disparate data sources, etc.) and want to learn how to optimally use the IBM WebSphere implementation of J2EE to deal with these problems.

This book is the definitive reference to J2EE application development with IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer. Kyle and the other authors do an admirable job of "condensing" a vast body of knowledge and associated best practices into "only" 900 pages. This is the only book I know that covers all of the key topics of J2EE to a satisfactory level of detail within one book.

The thing that makes this book great is its combination of comprehensiveness and guidance towards using the platform correctly. As the saying goes, "a fool with a tool is still a fool", and J2EE's complexity in the hands of an untrained development team can have disastrous consequences. Therefore it is vitally important that you first understand the forces you are fighting against (i.e. the challenges of distributed computing) and then understand which J2EE technologies address these problems. Once you understand which problems you are trying to solve and which technologies help you solve these problems, it is necessary to understand how to optimally use these technologies. This book does an excellent job of explaining the problems, the applicable technologies, and best practices for applying the technologies.

Another excellent thing about this book is that the authors are obviously passionate about the technologies involved but they are not victims of hype. For instance, the first section of the first chapter on web services (ch. 32) is titled "If Web Services Is the Solution, What's the Problem?" It provides an excellent dose of pragmatism by taking a step back and answering the question, "What problems do the Web Services technologies help me solve, and what problems will they not help me solve?" Many other books simply treat Web Services as a panacea for all technological problems.

If you're developing with WebSphere you need to read this book. If you're developing with a J2EE platform other than WebSphere (shame on you), you will likely still find this book useful for the J2EE best practices it conveys that are not specific to WebSphere.

PS - If you are new to distributed computing and want to use J2EE, the best place to start is by creating a simple J2EE web application. Chapters 6 and 7 of this book provide a good introduction to doing this.

I chose to buy this book because I liked the concept of having a book which was supposed to be "essential" for the real Webmaster world. However, I find (I'm still struggling through) myself wasting time on trying to figure out all the coding mistakes. The mistakes start in chapter 1. The zip files which you download off the net (which contain the code for the projects mentioned throughout the book) are also done in a poor manner, the book does not refer you to a certain file. Another example is that you have to figure out where to move the images files in order to have them sourced correctly to the images. I would not recommend this book until a new corrected, updated edition with CD will be available.

This book is based on websphere 3.5, you may think it is okay, but things have changed too much from version 3.5 to version 5.0 , it is useless under version 4 too!. In version 3.5 the administration was done using a windows GUI but in version 4.0 web administration was introduced so all menues are gone, the examples are useless!. OK, the desing patterns presented are good but maybe not worth the money.