Customer Reviews

J2EE(TM) Tutorial, The (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book covers the J2EE Connector architecture in a fairly good detail. The overall significance of Connector architecture in relation to the J2EE platform and Enterprise Application Integration has been presented well. The chapters are well structured, and separate out concepts needed by application developers and resource adpater vendors. Unlike some high-level EAI books, this book focuses on technical details and presents good examples and explanation of concepts. Chapters by vendors provide additional value. I recommend this book for those interested in knowing more about Java approach to EAI.

This book is part of Sun' `The Java Series' and has the same content as you can find online at Sun' site. Why buy a book you can get for free? Convenience!! You can take it anywhere and read it anytime and printing all 450+ pages off of the internet onto 8 1/2" X 11" paper is not feasible.

The content of the book is thorough and covers the uses and implementations of the various J2EE parts in depth. Where the book really excels above other Enterprise Java books is in describing the deployment process and how the different J2EE concepts all work together to create a single application.

The authors give very detailed, step by step instructions on exactly how to use the deploy tool to create the various deployment files (WARs, JARs, web.xml, etc.). at each stage in the book they show you the exact steps needed to compile and then package the various pieces of the application into a deployable form that can be used as a real, working application.

The book references a complete sample project that is included on the CD. This complete project makes it easier to understand the various concepts and how they all tie together. This is as opposed to other Enterprise books that use a separate example for each topic and never show the technologies used together. The only noticeable drawback of this approach is that the code samples presented are usually snippets from larger classes and can not be used alone for a reader to practice and play with.

At times I found the flow of the book hard to follow and only after reading a page or two into a chapter or section did I understand the direction the author was headed. This is most likely a result of having multiple authors for the book and encountering different styles at different times.

Most readers will get the best value out of the book in learning the details of the deployment process along with other related concepts and steps. The second most valuable lesson is the big picture view you get of an entire web application. You won't find useful code samples to play and experiment with but those can be found in most other books. Which is why using this book in conjunction with another is probably the best way to go. No one uses just one book to study with - so find your favorite other Enterprise Java book with good workable samples and then use this as a compliment to it.

It so happens even I am doing the same course at the same university where " ursixc92 " studies and unfortunately we have this same book as our TEXT BOOK
Its more like a user documentation manual
The author solely focuses on running and deploying sample code in CD but never makes a conscious effort to expain the code and concepts invovled .
Worst book for a newbie to J2ee programming .

This book focuses too much on Sun's application server, and not enough on the concepts behind the standardized J2EE. At the same time it has a very long chapter on XML which could have been left out since there are plenty of good books and Web sites that already cover the topic. The XML chapter does not even mention XML Schema, which are replacing DTDs as the standard way to describe the layout of an XML document. Also, the book lacks a sufficient amount of code examples. There are also numerous errors in the page references in the book's index. Avoid this book if you are really wanting to learn J2EE.

Voluminous Standard Work

"The J2EE tutorial" addresses readers with a certain level of preliminary knowledge of the Java Standard Edition and web application development. It does a remarkable job on covering the broad range of technologies, which lie under the hood of the J2EE 1.4 standard (JAXP, Servlets, JSP, JavaServer Faces, EJB, JAX-RPC/Webservices, JMS). Notwithstanding the quantity of subjects, the detail level is just fine for a good overview, while common issues are still being explained more in-depth.

The chapters are arranged in a logical order, and guide the reader from basic to more advanced topics. Writing style, lots of cross-links as well as a high number of source code examples improve readbility and comprehensibility. Highly recommend as one of the best "one-covers-all" J2EE books.

P.S. I refer to the second edition published in summer 2004.

I don't ordinarily pan books online, but I was so disappointed in this one that I felt an obligation to prospective purchasers. If your aim is simply to gain experience deploying someone's J2EE application by following instructions, then I suppose this would be a good book for you. I was looking for more than that.

Each major section is written by different writer (credited, by the way). Although there is some continuity, the tone and pace differ from section to section. For example, in some sections, code is explained prior to presentation, while in others it is explained after presentation. I find the former approach annoying, since I can read Java code just fine. The explanations would be valuable if they went into subtleties or fine points, but they don't... they just say in words what you can read in code.

Many, many pages are devoted to keystrokes to use with deploytool. The conceptual glue of deployment is left to one's imagination.

And finally, many questions are left unanswered. Here is one example: a section on J2EE Connector Architecture goes into XA transactions because you have to know what one is to make the proper deployment choices. We are told that an XA transaction is one that spans resources. In other words, it is a distributed transaction. I know that distributed transactions get into hot water if one of the resources does not have adequate transaction management. An obvious question is "How does J2EE know if a resource has the right kind of transaction management, and what does it do if not?" The text gives no hint that this is even an issue.

I would not recommend this book. There are better ones out there.

Much of this seems to be lifted from the spec. No examples to speak of. I haven't seen Apte's book. I hope it is better.

Many times in the reading of this book I'd find myself lost in the discussion. Then I'd realize why. While trying to explain one concept, they'd be referring to other concepts which have not yet been discussed. For example, in the JSP section (chapter 12), in trying to explain expression language, functions, etc, they kept referring to taglibs, tld's, etc, as though the reader should have a firm grip on these things. But they're not discussed until chapter 15 - Custom Tags. This was just the last straw which prompted my to write this review. But the book is full of this stuff. Also, there's no explanation anywhere of the syntax of the descriptor files such as web.xml. They simply tell you how to use deploytool to set it all up. Bottom line, if you're going to use this book to learn J2EE, you better have a separate reference library handy to clarify things. Good luck to you.

I guess probabaly because of the aruthors' back ground (from Sun's documentation group), this book reads much like a User's Guide of Sun's J2EE SDK. It provides a couple of examples and tells you step-by-step how to compile, deploy and test these examples onto Sun's J2EE platform. There is no substantial treatment on the high level J2EE architecture, technology, and APIs. It provides little help for you if you want to jump-start J2EE programming.

First of all, let me asure you, that I really like the Connector Architecture - there's nothing wrong with the topic. But this book is not good at explaing it. Seems like the authors/editors did a very bad job on coordinating their work. Often I just don't get it - and no - it's not because I'm a dummy. I have been working with J2EE for several years now, as well as instructing courses for BEA and for the IT University of Copenhagen in the use of J2EE.

When reading this book you never get the feeling, that you've fully understood a topic - probably cause they've only told you half of the story. I read the whole book - because JCA is an important addition to J2EE - and because I kept hoping that the writing style would get better in the next chapter, but no.

My suggestion is: either read the specification OR wait for another book. I wouldn't recommend this book to ANYONE - even if you could get it for free. I sure do wonder why other people like this book...?? Are we really talking about the same bunch of paper?