Head First EJB (Brain-Friendly Study Guides; Enterprise JavaBeans) [Paperback]

Kathy Sierra (Author), Bert Bates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2003 | Series: Head First

What do Ford Financial, IBM, and Victoria's Secret have in common? Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). As the industry standard for platform-independent reusable business components, EJB has just become Sun Microsystem's latest developer certification. Whether you want to be certifiable or just want to learn the technology inside and out, Head First EJB will get you there in the least painful way. And with the greatest understanding.

You'll learn not just what the technology is, but more importantly, why it is, and what it is and isn't good for. You'll learn tricks and tips for EJB development, along with tricks and tips for passing this latest, very challenging Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD) exam. You'll learn how to think like a server. You'll learn how to think like a bean. And because this is a Head First book, you'll learn how to think about thinking.

Co-author Kathy Sierra was one of Sun's first employees to teach brave, early adopter customers how to use EJB. She has the scars. But besides dragging you deep into EJB technology, Kathy and Bert will see you through your certification exam, if you decide to go for it. And nobody knows the certification like they do - they're co-developers of Sun's actual exam!

As the second book in the Head First series, Head First EJB follows up the number one best-selling Java book in the US, Head First Java. Find out why reviewers are calling it a revolution in learning tough technical topics, and why Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy says, "Java technology is everywhere...if you develop software and haven't learned Java, it's definitely time to dive in "Head First."

And with Head First book, you don't even have to feel guilty about having fun while you're learning; it's all part of the learning theory. If the latest research in cognitive science, education, and neurobiology suggested that boring, dry, and excruciatingly painful was the best way to learn, we'd have done it. Thankfully, it's been shown that your brain has a sense of style, a sense of humour, and a darn good sense of what it likes and dislikes.

In Head First EJB, you'll learn all about:

• Component-based and role-based development
• The architecture of EJB, distributed programming with RMI
• Developing and Deploying an EJB application
• The Client View of a Session and Entity bean
• The Session Bean Lifecycle and Component Contract
• The Entity bean Lifecycle and Component Contract
• Container-managed Persistence (CMP)
• Container-managed Relationships (CMR)
• EJB-QL
• Transactions
• Security
• EJB Exceptions
• The Deployment Descriptor
• The Enterprise Bean Environment in JNDI
• Programming Restrictions and Portability

The book includes over 200 mock exam questions that match the tone, style, difficulty, and topics on the real SCBCD exam. See why Kathy and Bert are responsible for thousands of successful exam-passers--

"The Sun certification exam was certainly no walk in the park, but Kathy's material allowed me to not only pass the exam, but Ace it!" --Mary Whetsel, Sr. Technology Specialist, Application Strategy and Integration, The St. Paul Companies

"Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates are two of the few people in the world who can make complicated things seem damn simple, and as if that isn't enough, they can make boring things seem interesting." --Paul Wheaton, The Trail Boss, javaranch.com

"Who better to write a Java study guide than Kathy Sierra, reigning queen of Java instruction? Kathy Sierra has done it again. Here is a study guide that almost guarantees you a certification!" --James Cubetta, Systems Engineer, SGI

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kathy Sierra has been a master Java trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun's instructors how to teach the latest Java technologies. She is the founder of one of the largest java community websites in the world, javaranch.com. She is also a key member of the development team for the Sun Certified programmer exam and has developed dozens of applications to demonstrate Java technology.

Bert Bates is a 20-year software developer, a Java instructor, and a co-developer of Sun's upcoming EJB exam (Sun Certified Business Component Developer). His background features a long stint in artificial intelligence, with clients like the Weather Channel, A&E Network, Rockwell, and Timken.

Product Details

• Paperback: 700 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596005717
• ISBN-13: 978-0596005719
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars they did it again, November 12, 2003

By 

max power (Franklin, WI United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Head First EJB (Brain-Friendly Study Guides; Enterprise JavaBeans) (Paperback)

I passed my programmer's exam because i studied the other wonderful book produced by these two authors; sun's certified programmer book. It helps me to code better too. The certification definitely helps me to become a very competent java programmer.

Having passed the first exam, I started studying for my SCWCD exam. But then after working with Jakarta Struts for a while, I don't know whether it's worth while to take the SCWCD exam. I surely hate the JSP snippets, it makes JSP pages unmaintainable. So, I seriously do not know how SCWCD will help me to do my job better. Dilemma! Dilemma! We're not in college anymore; hence anything we learn should be worth the money, time, and effort.
That's my humble opinion.

Hence, i turn my attention to this book; I skimmed through it for the first couple of days and realize that this is the certification that I shoud pursue next; SCBCD instead of SCWCD. I look beyond the certification; the ability to program EJB to do a better job. Having intrinsic reasons to do something, for example learning the subject for the sake of the knowledge and implementation, is far better than having a piece of paper that says you are certified.

I started reading the book and i honestly just cannot put it down. So far, the items covered in this book make a lot of sense to me; in terms of how i can use them to write better codes and design better EJB. I am a visual learner. Thus, the graphics in this book really enhance and expedite my learning process. When I read them, I understand the concepts instantly! Plus, they're funny. It makes the learning process very fun! Make sure you have some notebook and draw/sketch the important concepts. They help understand some complex points presented.

All in all, for those of you who want to learn EJB but don't know where to start, this book could be your answer. You may not be going for the certification but the book will guide you through to make sure that you grasp all the needed concepts to become a competent EJB programmer.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great style, August 27, 2005

By 

John A. Justin (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Head First EJB (Brain-Friendly Study Guides; Enterprise JavaBeans) (Paperback)

The authors take a complex subject and make it understandable through an interesting set of didactics - they have different ways (like posing questions and giving answers in a conversational style; using metaphors, etc.) of presenting material to enhance understanding.

The most complex part of the subject is entity beans whose methods are inconsistent with stateless session beans of the same name. I think after reading the book one needs to rethink even using entity beans for anything because of the overhead and complexity. I would really be concerned about performance so testing a vertical slice would be a necessity.

The real question at this time is whether you should learn and get involved with EJB 2 at all - since EJB 3 is destined to completely simplify the whole process - eliminate the home interface, ejb component objects, etc.

Using POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) to accomplish the same task is the strategy of the new light, non-J2EE standards based frameworks such as Spring. It's anticipated that EJB 3 will be very Spring like - whether they hide all the EJB 2 details under the covers or re-architect the whole framework (and hopefully get Spring like performance). There is also the whole notion (and nightmare) of testing your bean using separate containers that one should consider before embarking on the EJB 2 path. All in all, I enjoyed the book's style, and if nothing else, it will help you appreciate the simplicity (hopefully) of EJB 3 when it becomes available.

If you need to support legacy EJB architectures, this is the book to use to learn EJB 2. If you are architecting a new solution, wait for EJB 3, or better yet, look into the light weight non-standards based frameworks like Spring.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars different, excellent, December 22, 2003

By 

Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Head First EJB (Brain-Friendly Study Guides; Enterprise JavaBeans) (Paperback)

At my first look at this book I thought it was a comic book, but then I realized it is actually a comic book, but also a good, sound introduction to EJB technology. Let's be honest.. how many of us are absolutely sick of dry, boring texts that try to sell you ejb technology and themselves as they were rocket science? Most computer related books nowadays are ridiculously formal and dry. Is this the way to attract the interest of students or new developers? I don't think so, and neither do the authors of this book. This text is both a good intro to EJB and an example of how to teach. So it will be useful for both the novice programmer and the expert one who is involved in teaching or mentoring. Be warned that this book is really "different" so if you are kinda stiff and find it disconcerting to have lots of images scattered along the text
and like to concentrate only on the "essential raw matter" this
might not be the book for you. A fine example of the fact that only really serious people are not afraid of being funny...