Customer Reviews

Java Messaging (Charles River Media Programming)

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

 

 

Excellent introduction to messaging, including healthy portions on JMS and web services.

The writing style is clear, consistent, and to the point. Probably what I liked most was this no-nonsense writing style. If it's on a page, it's important to understand. The author doesn't waste your time with irrelevant discussions or out of scope topics.

Editing and code presentation are top notch, making it easy to follow, and build upon from one example to the next. The author also shares some gotchas and considerations that I wouldn't have expected to see in an introductory discussion which were particularly valuable.

Another great feature is one of the drawbacks of the book. The framework presented in the book is elegant, but in many of the examples, there is too much cognitive overhead involved in grokking the level of abstraction in the framework, and this takes away from actually learning the concepts. I would have liked to see more non-framework code for the introduction, which is then tied together with the framework.

As we look at how much we use the web, it is sometimes hard to remember just how new this concept of worldwide packet switching really is. Java was started as a new language before a lot of the new concepts like XML and SOAP were conceived. But as a new language it has been able to move into using these new concepts faster than nearly any other language.

What I especially liked about this book was the first chapter. So often computer books start with programming. This one starts with a description of what we're trying to do here. He gives several examples of the types of communications that he is going to cover in the book. I had a particular application in mind when I got the book, but in reading the first chapter I began to see several other ways that messaging would help our system.

After the first chapter, I've go to say that it's a pretty regular computer software book. It tells you how to do the things that you want to do. It is quite clear on all the different software protocols, packages, and philosophies. Basically it is all that a Java programmer needs to implement messaging in Java.

The CD included with the book gives you all the sample code from the book, as well as the complete messaging toolkit and several open source tools.

Eric Bruno's JAVA MESSAGING explores different ways of messaging using Java software, from JavaBean events and JMS to SOAP. Web programmers receive all the basics to using these features, tips on how and why to use each feature and when to choose something else, how to combine features, and more. The basics of Java communication processes are revealed in chapters which form 'classes' to link related information in a logical progression. An excellent, basic foundation for Java users.

I agree with the other reviewers, this is an wholly excellent book. It is the attention to detail and thoroughness that makes this book outstanding. All key concepts are presented in a clear and well written style accompanied with diagrams and full code. There is also full section on setting up the environments for deploying your applications. Java Messaging may not be the most complex technology out there, but it is vital to reliable SOA, and if you want to see how easy it is to pick up a new technology, then buy this book.


If only many other technical books on the market were as well written and presented as this book.

good book. author has explained it very well and do try chapter code it will help understanding concept easily.

As other reviewers pointed out, this is indeed a nice work on Java Messaging. For the most part, the concepts are presented clearly and I had no trouble following them. What's good about this book is that there are enough examples to play with and most of them indeed work as promised in the book. This book uses ActiveMQ 2.1 for JMS Provider while the current version is 5.x. However, the ActiveMQ 2.1 libraries are included in the CD, so using those you will have no problem in running most of the examples. I could not get the examples that use Java Web Service Developer Pack (JWSDP) to work however (chapters 8 and 9). This book uses JWSDP 1.4 version which I could not find on the web (at the time of this writing only JWSDP 2.0 is available for download on Sun's site). The book says that JWSDP 1.4 is included on the CD but it was not. Except for these minor issues, this book is worth reading and owning. Highly recommended.

Although the book uses a specific JMS engine for the examples the details and the concepts were all right on and covered everything I needed for JMS. It literally saved my bacon, especially the peer to peer stuff over topics. Whew!

Super job.

Sam