Customer Reviews

Instant Enterprise JavaBeans

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

 

 

This is a good EJB tutorial introduction. It is well written and accurate. Complete examples are given and all the code is on the CD (though not the "tons" advertized on the cover). If you are new to EJB and like to learn by example, read this book and then pass it on. However, much of the book is specific to Sun's J2SDKEE (V1.2.1) application server and the remainder is not organized in a way that makes it useful as a reference. The index is weak and the section titles refer to the sample apps not the technical content. JMS and MDB are not covered.

"Instant Enterprise JavaBeans" does an excellent job of explaining EJB technology, how to develop programs to use the technology, and how to deploy those programs. Using the reference implementation that comes with the Sun J2EE, the author covers key aspects of developing and deploying EJB applications. The author starts with a good explanation of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition including n-tier architecture and then demonstrates a basic "hello world" EJB class. Using this class, the author shows us how to use the Deploy Tool to deploy and run EJB applications. In each chapter, we are taken step-by-step through the entire process required to produce working EJB applications. The author shows us how to develop stateless and stateful session beans and entity beans using bean-managed and container-managed persistence. Several clear examples of each type of bean are discussed. He then uses the different types of beans to create a more complex example that even includes an interface to a web ready cellular phone. In later chapters, he shows us many of the additional features available in EJB servers including creating container-managed transactions, authenticating users, and customizing applications using deployment descriptors. The author finishes up with a brief discussion of performance issues. Even though the book only discusses the J2EE reference implementation, by covering the basic functions found in an EJB server we learn what to look for in other EJB servers. My one complaint is that the index is almost useless, even lacking entries for such basic topics as "transaction" and "database".

When I first looked at the used price for this book I thought this book had to be pretty bad. Nevertheless I bought it and it turned out to be a pretty good EJB book, at least for beginner and advanced levels. I haven't tried the examples though, which was one of the complaints about this book. I was just looking for additional reference on EJBs at a low price and this book was a great buy!

This book is ok... it will give you an understanding of EJB's... but that's it. If you want to know anything about the XML configuration files, EAR files, or WAR files, you will be forced to look elsewhere. Basically, the code presented is the same thing over and over again, with the Application Deployment Tool settings changed. The book is jammed packed with images of the App Dep Tool settings... space I think would be much better filled with either more thorough examples, or info on the XML files. If you only want a very cursory look at EJBs this book is for you.

Initially, I was sold on the number of examples presented throughout the book. These examples covered a variety of topics including session and entity beans and integrating EJBs with servlets and JSPs.

Unfortunately, the examples were not written to run out of the box on Linux and other UNIX environments. After unzipping the examples zip file provided on the CD-ROM in Linux, I found that all the filenames were truncated. In order for a Java source file to be compiled, the filename must match either the public interface or public class defined in the file. Hence one needs to rename these files if they are to be used out of the box on Linux, which is a minor inconvenience.

When looking at Chapter 5: Then Center of Business, I felt like I needed clarification on how the source code worked. Unfortunately the author's website listed in the endcover states:

This is the future home for information related to Paul Tremblett's two books:

Instant JavaServer Pages Instant Enterprise JavaBeans (Jan 26, 2000)

Content will be coming soon!

It is currently July 2001. If Paul Tremblett can assemble this website complete with contact information, I will be a much happier customer.

I tried running the first example in this book using the CD that came with the book and followed the directions. I could not get it to run on Windows 2000. I could not return the book since I had used the CD. That's a catch-22.

I went to Sun's web site and downloaded the J2EE tutorial, which is free. Of course there are several things to download to get a complete running environment, but if you follow their instructions very carefully, everything works! Perhaps Sun's instructions were more thorough than this book's.

So if you don't already have a Windows 2000 J2EE environment up and running, don't start with this book.