Customer Reviews

Oracle JDevelopment 10g: Empowering J2EE Development

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

 

 

Sometimes you just get lucky. You write a book about a fairly obscure and expensive Java IDE and then, without any warning, the company that makes the IDE releases it to the general public for free. The book is mostly a summary of the features of JDeveloper and doesn't go in deep into any area. If you are interested in a book to get you started with JDeveloper then this might fill your need. If you are looking for a book to show you the power of JDeveloper and help you get deep into its capabilities then this isn't the book for you.

The book has some major shortcomings; first and foremost that it was written using the preview version of 10g. Because of this there are some screen differences and the flow isn't always exactly as described. It would have been better if the author had waited until the final release version. Also, because JDeveloper was formerly a purchased product, there is quite a bit of information available free from the Oracle web site. You can find tutorials, demos, product tours, etc on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). Finally, the book doesn't cover writing your own custom extensions and instead points the reader to OTN.

So what does the book offer? It is a fairly basic overview of the features available in JDeveloper. The author looks at servlet/jsp development, UML, web services, EJB, database interaction, Swing, and a few other features including the Application Development Framework (ADF). It covers everything at a fairly high level so at the end of the book you might not know how to do a lot in JDeveloper but you will know what JDeveloper is capable of doing. There really isn't a better JDeveloper book on the market however. A book about JDeveloper with the detail available in the many Eclipse books is still waiting to be published.

This book is another example of sloppy workmanship being rushed into print without competent editing or proofing. The presentation is uneven and disorganized and over half of the examples do not work correctly. The author apparently used an early beta version of 10g - so the screen shots and directions do not correspond to the actual product; with patience one can follow the examples. However publishing a technical book that is so replete with errors that some of the examples will not even compile is in my opinion just inexcusable. Apress should be ashamed to have published this.

I am hesitant to write a really bad review, but some books deserve it.

The point of a book like this is to teach you how to use a tool. The problem is that this book doesn't do it. The authors do not fully explain the examples. For example, on page 45 they display a dialog box, but never tell you how to get to it. The examples don't work; on another page we are told that if you double click on a combo box that certain code will be generated. JDev doesn't generate the code. The book is also based on a beta release of JDev!!! I am not sure why anyone would base a book on beta software.

After struggling with the book for hours I gave up. This was really a disappointment for me.

I found the book useful as it provided good J2EE grounding to get me on my way with what is a very complex subject. The changed version from the version used is a minus for the book. However using the source code available on the book's official page made using the book simple and useful.
If you a beginner / intermediate level j2ee and jdeveloper user, I think this book will be very useful. If you are already a J2EE expert, then this might be a little on the simpler side.

this book is a good guide to to j2ee development using jdeveloper. The ADF section is more of a getting started guide however as we were anyway sticking to normal j2ee (servlet, jsp, struts, ejb and stuff) and were not looking at using Oracle's proprietary framework, that didn't matter much. For j2ee dev with jdev, this book is good. I liked the Struts coverage in particular.

This work was based on an earlier, beta I guess, version of 10g. When working through the examples on the REAL 10g I was severely challenged to figure out what the author was talking about versus what Oracle had actually included in the final version. In one area even the downloaded routines didn't work.
The good thing I can say is that this author seems to be the only one to produce a book of this kind! I'm still waiting for my (pre-publication order) copy of the official Oracle Handbook.

JDeveloper 10g comes with its new ADF architecture to help developers streamline the building of J2EE applications as well as the integration of the Struts framework. In my mind this is the heart and sole of 10g. However, this book hardly talks about it at all. What little it did mention about ADF appeared to be nothing more than copied and pasted material from the help system. For other aspects of JDeveloper, I suppose it's a fair introduction. However, the online help system could probably do as much good.

I bought this book because flicking through the pages at the local book store, it looked like it had everything I needed to get a quick jump start into web services & JDeveloper. I wanted a book that would walk me through the steps of creating a webservice, deploying it and then using it. Sadly, it was no help - it lacks important steps, and conveniently skips over important topics such as configuring JDeveloper to connect to your application server so you can actually deploy your webservices....

In summary, a simple book that could have been written by someone who has seen but not actually used JDeveloper!

If you are a starter in JDeveloper 10g this is the book you need. Bur you have to have background in Java.

Reading some five star recommendations on this page I recommended this book to my client. Now I regret and will return ask for refund. This is more like a collection of White Papers on Jdedevloper and J2EE. Hey, if this is writing a book it is a good business. I really doubt the authors ever used Jdeveloper.