17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to formalize the Java software design lifecycle, May 10, 2008
This review is from: Java Power Tools (Paperback)
I really liked this book. It is modeled after the very useful "Unix Power Tools" that was first published 15 years ago. Since Java was first introduced it has grown from a simple web page enhancement language to one that does all kinds of useful computing work. The proliferation of tools and acronyms that have grown up around it have been quite frustrating to me. Usually you are faced with a book about a particular tool and having to decide if this entire book is worth opening your wallet. Instead, this book is organized around tasks and then goes into detail on what tools you need to do the job. There is plenty of detailed technical information on how to use the tool and why to do things a particular way. The book is organized as follows:
Build Tools - Used to coordinate, federate, and binds the other SDLC (Software Design Lifecycle) tools together into a single, coherent process. The build tool ensures that your project can be built on any machine, in any environment, if possible. Two tools dominate this area, and both are examined. The first is Ant, the traditional Java build tool, which uses a straightforward procedural approach and benefits from a very large user base and a rich set of extensions. The second is Maven 2, which uses a powerful, declarative approach to project build management and goes much further than being a simple build tool.
Version Control Tools- A version control system provides critical backups of your source code and enables developers to work together on the same project without interfering with one another. Version control systems also allow you to identify versions and coordinate releases and (if necessary) rollbacks. CVS and Subversion are the tools covered.
Unit Testing - Correct unit testing helps ensure that your code works and fosters cleaner, more modular, and better designed code. Automated unit testing takes this a step further. By simply integrating your unit tests into your standard build process, and running them automatically with every build, you can go a long way toward increasing the quality and reliability of your code. Test coverage tools help you check how much of your application is actually being executed during your unit tests. This in turn helps you identify untested code and improve the overall quality of your tests. JUnit 4, TestNG, and Cobertura are the tools covered here.
Integration, Load, and Performance Testing - This section examines other testing techniques such as integration, load and performance, and user interface testing. All of these are important, and all can benefit from being integrated into the build process. This section illustrates how to integrate performance tests into your unit tests, how to load-test your application, and how to automatically test web services as well as your web interfaces and the functioning of your Swing apps.
Quality Metrics Tools - It is important to be able to measure the quality of your code in objective terms. Code quality has a direct bearing on the number of bugs and the ease of maintenance later on. Code quality metrics will make inexperienced developers familiar with coding conventions and best practices. This section looks at a range of automated tools that measure different aspects of code quality, including CheckStyle, PMD, FindBugs, and Jupiter.
Technical Documentation Tools - A significant part of documentation can be generated automatically from source code and comments. This section describes tools that can help you generate good technical documentation.
Issue Management Tools - Issue tracking systems are used by testers to uncover bugs and by developers to document bug fixes. They can also be used to help organize and document releases, to plan iterations, and to assign work tasks to team members. The first tool discussed is Bugzilla, the original open source issue tracking system. The second is Trac, which contains some innovative project management and wiki features.
Continuous Integration Tools - In software development, the longer you wait to integrate your code, the more difficult the task becomes. Continuous Integration is based on the idea that you can greatly facilitate this process by committing small changes regularly, and then running automatic builds whenever code changes are committed. All of the tools and techniques discussed so far can benefit from being run automatically on a regular basis. Although this sort of integration is certainly possible with a shell script and a cron job, nowadays there are a lot of new tools that can save you a great deal of time and effort in this area. This section examines the open source tools of Continuum, CruiseControl, LuntBuild, and Hudson.
This book is not really tailored for managers looking for overviews. It is for programmers looking for solutions. Highly recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete Reference for 30 Open Source Tools, May 25, 2008
This review is from: Java Power Tools (Paperback)
The book is enjoyable, extremely well organized and covers a wide range of open source tools needed for any successful software development life cycle. I would recommend Java Power Tools to anyone writing Java. My only complaint is the size of the book; but I think in order to cover 30 tools , and the breadth of material covered for each of these tools do make up for its weightiness.
This book is written with a Java developer audience in mind. I should however say that Java is not actually the main focus of the book, and I believe this book would be of great interest to anyone concerned in writing better software.Readers should have a basic knowledge of Java and XML. You don't need to have any prior experience with any of the tools covered.
Java Power Tools can be used as an introduction to various technologies and also as a complete and easy-to-use reference work. After having read and reviewed numerous book over the past 5 years, I think it safe to say I have not read another text that so well combines the best attributes of both.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hits the Nail on the Head, January 22, 2009
This review is from: Java Power Tools (Paperback)
Java Power Tools provides a fairly detailed introduction to a number of tools for Java programmers. It fits nicely between the O'Reilly Hacks series and having a dozen books like Ant: The Definitive Guide. Like the Hacks books, Java Power Tools provides an introduction to a bunch of tools. The Hacks books are great for answering the question "I've heard of that tool, but where does it fit?" But whereas the Hacks books provide just an appetizer, this book provides a main course, enough to get seriously started with the tool being discussed. And then, if you want all the gory details, a Definitive Guide could provide the full five-course meal.
The selection of tools presented was really good, at least for me. For example, I know about continuous integrations servers, but I haven't set one up. At one client site, they were using Hudson, which I had some exposure to, but didn't know much about the others like Cruise Control, Continuum, and Lunt Build. Similarly, I've been using JUnit 3.x for years, but I didn't really know what was different in JUnit 4 or how that compares to TestNG. This book provided me with a great overview of these and other tools. Java Power Tools provides a great way to get up to speed with a general area of tooling (e.g., continuous integration servers) or a good cross-section of the majority of the Java tools in use today.
If I had to pick something to complain about, it would be Part II - Version Control Tools. These aren't really Java tools, although every programmer (Java or otherwise) should be using them. Or given the decision to include version control tools, I'd suggest excluding CVS because it's old and including at least one distributed version control tool like Mercurial (used by the Open JDK project and NetBeans) or git (used by the Linux kernel).
So, in conclusion, unless you have no free will about tool selection or you already know all of these tools backwards and forwards, I highly recommend this book to almost any Java programmer.
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