Extreme Programming with Ant: Building and Deploying Java Applications with JSP, EJB, XSLT, XDoclet, and JUnit [Paperback]

Glenn Niemeyer (Author), Jeremy Poteet (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0672325624 | ISBN-13: 978-0672325625 | Publication Date: May 29, 2003

From the Back Cover:

You¿ve heard about Extreme Programming. You might have read articles or books describing the XP process, but what next? How do you implement XP principles into an actual Java project? This unique book explains everything you need for XP development, starting with Ant, the popular Java build tool. The authors describe every stage of a real-world project life cycle¿testing, refactoring, versioning, deployment, and more¿with practical examples that you can immediately put to use in your own projects.

Every aspect of an XP project includes unique challenges, and Extreme Programming with Ant works through each step of the process.

• Mitigate risks by creating spike tests with Ant buildfiles
• Add version control and testing with JUnit
• Automate nightly builds and reporting
• Deploy applications dynamically using XDoclet
• Add additional team members after a project is underway
• Write custom Ant components to facilitate deployment
• Adapt an XP process for use by other teams or across an enterprise

Throughout the book, the authors include dozens of ideas for extending Ant with useful custom features such as generating UML diagrams and creating reports and metrics on-the-fly. All code and examples have been built, tested, and deployed using Ant 1.5.3.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

You've heard about Extreme Programming. You might have read articles or books describing the XP process, but what next? How do you implement XP principles into an actual Java project? This unique book explains everything you need for XP development, starting with Ant, the popular Java build tool. The authors describe every stage of a real-world project life cycle - testing, refactoring, versioning, deployment, and more - with practical examples that you can immediately put to use in your own projects.

Every aspect of an XP project includes unique challenges, and "Extreme Programming with Ant" works through each step of the process:

*Mitigate risks by creating spike tests with Ant buildfiles
*Add version control and testing with JUnit
*Automate nightly builds and reporting
*Deploy applications dynamically using XDoclet
*Add additional team members after a project is underway
*Write custom Ant components to facilitate deployment
*Adapt an XP process for use by other teams or across an enterprise

Throughout the book, the authors include dozens of ideas for extending Ant with useful custom features such as generating UML diagrams and creating reports and metrics on-the-fly. All code and examples have been built, tested, and deployed using Ant 1.5.3.

About the Author

Jeremy Poteet is the Chief Security Officer for appDefense, a consulting company specializing in application security. He is a CISSP and was the winner in the 2002 eWeek OpenLabs OpenHack IV competition, and has more than 15 years experience in software development. Jeremy has promoted Ant as the build process and XP as a development methodology for both internal projects and with various clients across the country. He has led numerous Java development and XP projects and has incorporated Ant at several customer sites. He has been involved in every aspect of the software development process, with team sizes ranging from 1 to over 100.

Glenn Niemeyer is a consultant with Technology Partners Inc., a Mid-west based Consulting Firm. He has a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri, and 15 years of experience in software development. Glenn joined Technology Partners in 1996, and has been a technical team leader and project leader on a number of software development projects. He is also active in the area of Application Security. Glenn can be reached at [e-mail]

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Sams (May 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672325624
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325625
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Xtremely interesting, October 4, 2003

By 

Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Extreme Programming with Ant: Building and Deploying Java Applications with JSP, EJB, XSLT, XDoclet, and JUnit (Paperback)

Pros: Nice writing style, clear and not boring, touches not only Ant but quite a few other open-source tools and the Xtreme programming ways... Cons: its vast breath is counterbalanced by
little depth. Ant 's coverage is appropriate to get you started working with it quickly, and to have you appreciate what this tool can do for you. Forget about being able to work with JUnit or XDoclet just by reading this book. You will barely discover that they exist.. and expect a lot of painful hours spent on the traditionally poor open-source docs.
Overall a good buy though. If you want a more in-depth treatment of Ant I recommend Java Development With Ant
by Erik Hatcher, Steve Loughran

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book on Ant and on using the XP processes in Java, August 6, 2003

By 

Steve Loughran - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extreme Programming with Ant: Building and Deploying Java Applications with JSP, EJB, XSLT, XDoclet, and JUnit (Paperback)

Before I proceed further with the review, I should note that I am the co-author of Java Development with Ant, the book which has been the best selling book about Ant to date. Thus if I were critical of this book, you'd know where I was coming from.

But I am not going to be critical -I am going to say nice things about it, and give it 5 stars as anything else would be unfair. This is a really good introduction to Extreme Programming in Java using Ant, Junit and XDoclet.

After a quick intro to the concepts of XP, this book follows the story of a team that is using the XP methodology to get stuff out the door. First Ant is introduced, the JUnit -the latter being the key to test-centric development. Then as the chapters progress, the new problems are introduced and the code and the build process refactored and expanded to adapt. I particularly like the chapter where a business merger forces a team reorganisation -organisation change does effect projects, but most software engineering books ignore such events, along with team member dynamics in general. It also repeatedly reinforces the need for automated builds and tests, and has some basic coverage of CruiseControl. CC is the system that keeps our team in check: whenever you break the build, you get email. I get a lot of email.

It doesn't go into significant depth in Ant -you will (of course) need the on line documentation, and I would also point my own book. Mostly this isn't an issue -the only place where I had significant differences of opinion was when the book recommended using the <jspc> task to precompile JSP pages for tomcat. If the authors had tracked the Ant dev mail list, or the open bugreps related to this task, they'd know not to encourage that, because the underlying jasperc doesnt really let you. Also there was some commentary on Ant2.0, which is not going to be the complete rewrite promised on the web site. Again, involvement in the open source project would provide such information.

These are minor issues with the non-core parts of Ant and the book. The central theme of the book: using XP, JUnit, Ant and XDoclet for building, testing and deployment of server side code is well covered, and that is what matters.

If you want to get into Ant, this is one of the two Ant books to consider owning -ideally you should get both :) I think I'd also get one of the XP series books, like XP installed, for a more abstract treatise on XP, Fowler's Refactoring and a copy of IntelliJ IDEA, the best XP-centric IDE for Java.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book but no CD or download of example, August 16, 2004

By 

Dev el Oper (Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extreme Programming with Ant: Building and Deploying Java Applications with JSP, EJB, XSLT, XDoclet, and JUnit (Paperback)

Good book but no CD and can't find example buildfile online at samspublishing.com. Page 4 and Appendix D both say you should be able to download the examples.