Customer Reviews

Enterprise JavaBeans(TM): Developing Component-Based Distributed Applications

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

And I've read three. Unlike the critics who gave this book one or two stars, I had no problems understanding Mr. Valesky's code and applying them to my applications. While I admit I had problems compiling and running EJB code at first, they had more to do with learning the EJB environment for the first time.

I also really liked the book's fast paced nature and its conciseness. For example, the Monson-Haefel book goes through six pages and five diagrams to explain the four transaction isolation levels. A little too much, really. Meanwhile, Valesky sums it up in half a page with a clearer explanation.

The readers who gave this book a one or two remind me of the same ones who excoriated Horstman & Cornell's Core Java book. That is, this book is probably too tough for them or they're too inexperienced with J2EE or Java to appreciate the quality of this book.

While I generally prefer O'Reilly books and am eagerly looking forward to their Enterprise Java in a Nutshell, I decided to NOT buy Monson-Haefel's book because while it was heavy on theory, it was extremely light on the code examples. In fact, while the code was simple (too simple to use), I would hardly call it scalable or best-practices.

And real lightweights should check out Jubin's book, which is light on content and code.

I don't recommend Valesky's book for everyone. But if you want concise information delivered with 'industrial strength' code, buy this book. Hell, the free WebLogic on the CD-ROM is reason enough.

1) The included weblogic software has expired . The downloadable replacement is for NT only. 2) The promised on-line supplement to the book contains a 3-line apology from the author. 3)Several patches are needed. Most of the examples in the book will not compile.

I bought Mr. Valesky book after O'reilly EJB book and I can't compare both because Mr. Valesky book should be considered a beginner's to intermediate level book while O'reilly is definitely a good introduction to EJB. Mr.Valesky book goes way beyond with more serious examples and the book comes with Weblogic ... it's a must !

This book claims to cover the complex process of component based distributed computing with Enterprise JavaBeans.I started off with it,thinking that it would provide me with the substance I need to for beginning with my professional level applications using EJB.However,I was greatly disappointed as the book never provided me with any details of what goes into building enterprise level applications using EJB.All the stuff was too elementary and seemed to be a rehash of the EJB specifications.The examples are rare and it seems the author himself is confused about a few things.I would suggest to anybody serious about development with EJB,read the book by Ed Roman.

I bought this book bcos it was the official text for a course i was supposed to attend. But i am a bit dissapointed. Lack details when compared to O'Reilly's book. Its expensive than O'Reilly's but contains very less content . Doesnt talk about the new DD's ( XML based ) and the samples are trivial . If you are a seroius EJB developer look for O'Reilly's book or even Ed Romans Mastering EJB will be a good bet.

Valesky's book tries to cover the subject of Enterprise Javabeans in 323 pages. He starts with an excellent description and overview of the technologies available to the programmer and compares and contrasts them with EJB. The book's worthiness tends to drop at that point. Chapter 2 is an exhaustive and brain numbing chapter covering all the classes, methods and properties of EJB. By the end of this chapter my brain was reeling with information overload.

Chapter 3, actually was an excellent chapter, giving a short and sweet example of EJB. I felt like what I actually read in Chapter 2 made sense despite the overload. However, the book goes permanently downhill afterwards. A supposed "simple example" in the following chapters cover an e-commerce system which is so big that the code was listed entirely in an appendix. I certainly couldn't qualify that as "simple" and made it extremely difficult to learn the basic concepts. Worse, he provides little explanation for his code examples. More or less it was presented, "Here's a code snippet that does X -- check it out".

I think I could get much more out of the Sun doc pages. I was extremely frustrated with the book and its treatment of EJB. Ed Roman's book was so much better.

This book is not half bad. To a lot of Java-programmers the EJB specs will make a lot more sense after reading this. I wouldn't base all my EJB knowledge on this book alone though.

Those of us who have struggled through Version 1.0 of the EJB specification to learn the subject would have appreciated reading a book like this. The specification is confusing in places, has no real sample code (they promised a developer's guide which didn't appear), and doesn't say much about EJB clients.

Tom Valesky's book is a gentle, thorough, and authoritative book on the subject. He gives interesting and complete real-world examples. Tom really knows what he is talking about -- no fluff here. The book also shines in having lots of check lists, summaries, and advice to help you thread your way through this potentially confusing subject -- the problem is that EJB is an application framework, so it's not always clear by whom and when your methods are being called. The book also includes valuable tips on using Weblogic's EJB server, which has become the de-facto reference implementation for EJB.

I love this book and will be using it regularly in my two-day course in EJB for UC Santa Cruz Extension. The book can be read and assimililated in a few days, so it's just the right length to jump start a beginner or EJB wannabe.

In my opinion, this book will occupy the position in EJB that Jason Hunter's book hold for servlets.

This is a book for someone who has gone through the EJB specs and now wants to get a clear picture of the concepts outlined in the specs. This book will help in taking the reader to his first EJB program and further but there is a lot less material for an Advanced course on EJBs. This book does have the potential to be a Killer book in a later release with extra stuff added such as more information on stateful session beans, performance issues etc....

While much of the content was informative, this book was poorly organized, and left many key points out of the development process that made it very difficult to get the examples to function. There are also some errors in the code examples, like listing 3.7, on line 19, sets the remote interface to a class called "HelloRemote", while there is no other mention of a HelloRemote class in the chapter. This line should refer to the class "Hello".