Customer Reviews

Practical DWR 2 Projects (Expert's Voice in Java)

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

 

 

DWR has a highly specific function and at 521 pages the reader could expect a thorough book on the subject, but I think you will be disappointed. This is really a 1-star book, however I gave it 2 stars because the author has gone to the trouble of putting this book together for what is a narrow readership segment within the software developer community.

Pages 129 through to the end of the book are a compendium of projects that illustrate the use of DWR. I don't like having to read through illustrated projects to discover general techniques. For example the first coverage of DWR configuration via annotations is buried in one such project near the end. You might strike lucky and find one of these projects gives your in-house project a head start but as a structured introduction to DWR this main bulk of the book fails.

So that leaves 128 pages for detailed DWR coverage? Unfortunately there is further disappointing news, pages 1 to 38 are just an elementary introduction to AJAX augmented with plenty of cartoons. DWR gets it first mention on page 39!

The final and only 80 pages of true DWR tutorial disappointed me further. The first 5 star book review here compliments the jocular style of the prose, unfortunately when you are looking for the few pieces of substance in this book these jokes only serve to annoy.

I humbly disagree with J.Hughes who gave it two stars but stated it should only receive one star. The book had a rudimentary intro to AJAX because the author believes (as do I) that the term "AJAX" has been applied to many things. One must define the domain within which one works. The author did this, framing each technology well. The author gives you a good introduction into the AJAX frameworks that the reader could explore.
The reason for the second half of the book is to introduce the reader to how DWR would fit in various scenarios. The author explored several other AJAX technologies to accomplish this. This will demonstrate to the average reader how to incorporate whatever framework they are using, into the DWR way of doing things.
The book was far from comic relief and I'm not sure why that is a bad thing in our dry subject matter industry (i.e. programming).
I believe this is not for the J. Hughes of this world who hate the presentation of subject matter within actual working programs. Yes you can drop the WAR file into the Tomcat webapps directory and poof you're see the application running.
I liked the format, it help me learn many things. I am a tinkerer, and the best way to use ALL of the code that came from the author is to take bits and pieces from a program and get it working for yourself. Like the Dwiki example, I took the Login form and wanted to just make that work. The author also gives you additional project ideas to take the DWiki (or any of the other projects) further. I think this is a good format for the learner.
Being an avid reader, I believe the J.Hughes type of person wants a dry terse reference. Nothing wrong with that, I have several books like that, and when I'm pressed for time, and "just have to solve the problem" then this book would drive me nuts. However, I wanted to learn the WHY of DWR as well as the HOW. So this book more than satisfied that requirement.
Good luck to you all. The book was well worth the money.
-T-

Very informative book and helped me with many of my general questions/interests about Direct Web Remoting. Great examples as well as great comic relief from Frank. You did well buddy.