14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitive on EJB3, it should become the classic text on O/R Mapping., September 24, 2006
This review is from: Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API (Expert's Voice in Java) (Paperback)
This is a surprisingly comprehensive and useful book. It looks at all the key issues that stem from the problem of making objects persistent in an enterprise application, provides thoughtful analysis, and supplies proven solutions. Along the way, the book addresses seemingly diverse topics such as transactions, unit testing, and deployment with candor and authority, while providing expert coverage of core persistence topics like object-relational mapping and querying.
While this book is the definitive text for EJB3's Persistence API, it goes well beyond this and should become the standard text on object-relational persistence in general. For EJB developers this book will be essential, but even if you are maintaining or developing your own non EJB3-persistence solution, the insights offered by this book are invaluable. All the key issues surrounding enterprise object-relational persistence are described in detail, and the EJB3 solutions are explained clearly. If you want to understand what object-relational mapping is, this is the book.
Persistence is a complex problem that lies on the critical path to project success. This book explains how the new Java Persistence API in EJB3 solves this problem more simply (and more completely) than earlier versions of EJB. With "plain old Java objects" instead of cumbersome "components," design, development, and testing is radically simplified. But because of the nature of the o/r mapping problem, there is the potential for complexity - you are dealing not only with developing Java code, but also database schema, queries, XML mapping files, code-annotations, managing persistence-units, and all the deployment and runtime considerations that go along with application servers. However, even when things get difficult, there is now a success-path you can follow. This book does not gloss-over these details - through careful explanation it shows a path through them. At no point do you feel that this was written by technology evangelists intent on selling you on EJB 3, but instead by expert developers who want to show you how to use it to your advantage.
For those who have followed the development of the EJB spec, there are great (and for me, even entertaining) insights into the evolution of EJB's vision of persistence. Those who remember the clunky Entities of the early specifications will be shocked by the flexibility and power that the new approach provides. This book makes it clear that, for the 3.0 release, the EJB specification writers have taken the time to understand and solve many of the problems of persistence. The authors take the time to explain the approaches to the persistence problem that different versions of the EJB spec (and others, like JDO) have attempted, and shows rather convincingly that the new EJB3 Persistence API is firmly based on tested products and approaches from industry (like TopLink and Hibernate). EJB and o/r mapping are now mature, industry-ready technologies, and this book clearly explains how to understand and use them successfully.
Developers of enterprise applications should read this book to understand persistence issues and how to use EJB3 products (or adapt their own persistence frameworks) to address them. Managers should to read this book so they can make sure that their teams are aware of these issues and that their project plans take them into account. Sales engineers can use this book as a tool to educate their clients about how EJB3 products solve the object-model / relational-model "impedance mismatch."
A great book - many people should read it, and if they do, the quality of our software can only improve.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent JPA Book, January 15, 2007
This review is from: Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API (Expert's Voice in Java) (Paperback)
Late in 2006 I needed to update a class my company teaches on EJB. We wanted to move to EJB3 + JPA. I had read the reviews of this book so I decided to get it. Without a doubt, this is an excellent coverage of JPA. I actually read the book cover to cover and learned quite a bit along the way.
I did augment reading with a lot of coding, but I was able to use this as my primary reference. The only place where I needed to use other resources was in the area of error handling in the JPA provider's implementation. This is clearly beyond the scope of the book and I do not blame the book for that.
If you are going to be using JPA in a JSE environment, be prepared to use this book to understand what you should do and use the source code of your JPA implementation to figure out what you must do.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding JPA reference, December 4, 2006
This review is from: Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API (Expert's Voice in Java) (Paperback)
Having now spent some time with the new JPA I have found this book (Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API) to be an invaluable resource. The ability to use this API across a variety of Java platforms/technologies I find invaluable and the clarity and completeness of this reference is a 'gold mine'. I find it to not be a dry reiteration of the specification but an interesting book to read that thoroughly describes the JPA specification and how to use it. The original intent in acquiring this book was to use it in the development of EJB 3.0 components. However, I have also found it to be quite useful beyond this specification. There are many coded examples in the book as well as online to illustrate the discussed concepts.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to use the JPA spec.
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