Customer Reviews

Professional BlackBerry

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

 

 

"BlackBerry Professional" caters to BlackBerry system administrators, application programmers, and BlackBerry web developers.

If you are a BlackBerry system administrator, regardless of size of your corporation, "BlackBerry Professional" does a good job walking you through deploying BlackBerries to people in a corporate organization. The book points out potential pitfalls so that you don't make the common mistakes that others would make.

As an experienced BlackBerry developer, I suggest this book as a must read for those who just started programming the BlackBerry. As any BlackBerry developer knows, in order to master the BlackBerry programming arena, one must first understand the BlackBerry infrastructure, because no matter what type of applications you maybe writing, sooner or later, the BlackBerry application has to interact with the BlackBerry infrastructure. "BlackBerry Professional" also goes over some of the hidden tools of Java Development Environment (JDE), the BlackBerry IDE from RIM, and help you write better BlackBerry applications. "BlackBerry Professional" gives you a good grasp of the development tool along with the BlackBerry infrastructure.

In addition, if you are interested in the BlackBerry web programming, this book also gives good primer on how to structure your website to "fit" a BlackBerry screen.
Furthermore, "BlackBerry Professional" also touches on developing Flash-like web animation, using Plasmic CDK, for the BlackBerry.

This is definitely one that will stay off your bookshelf and be on your desk for frequent usage.

Other stuff I recommend:
- BlackBerry for Dummies - BlackBerry user book
- BlackBerry Journal - http://www.blackberry.com/developers/journal/index.shtml
- BlackBerry Goodies - http://www.blackberryGoodies.com/

This is NOT "BlackBerry For Dummies". As stated in the introduction, the target audience for this book are software developers and IT staff who are interested or involved in developing for the burgeoning handheld market. The authors claim that to "provide enough information in each chapter to allow all technically savvy readers to follow along and understand the concepts." They succeed admirably. To avoid a false sense of security in some readers, it might have been a good idea to provide a "what you should know before reading this chapter", but the reader has been fairly warned.

The book is divided into two parts, consisting of a total of 14 chapters and 6 appendices. Each chapter covers a separate aspect of the BlackBerry development and support environment. The first 5 chapters briefly but clearly cover the BlackBerry system architecture, installation, deployment and upgrade procedures. While these chapters are necessarily short and are obviously meant as supplements to the product documentation, the reader is left with the feeling that he has had a peek behind the scenes and has been given many valuable tips towards anticipating, resolving or avoiding potentially troublesome areas.

Chapters 6 through 8 comprise the remainder of Part I and cover monitoring, managing and in general enhancing the user experience. Chapter 7 covers much of the less obvious material needed to consistently set up new corporate users. Chapter 8 in particular covers disaster-recovery planning, an often overlooked activity. The advice in this section is simple and direct, but assumes that the reader is already very familiar with their Lotus Domino or Windows BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) environment.

Part II is aimed squarely at developers, and the area where the book really delivers. While much of the material in the rest of the book could presumably be obtained from RIM tech support or as part of proprietary training courses, this section dispels any sense of mystery regarding developing for this platform by providing variations of a sample (and very typical) custom application. These chapters give a good overview of MDS (Mobile Data Services), Web portals, and the BlackBerry Channel. Developers are walked through examples of using the handheld simulators, developing BlackBerry push channel and Java J2ME applications, managing cache content and of using the Plazmic Media Engine (PME) and the PME Content Developer's Kit (CDK).

The Plazmic Media Engine uses vector graphics rather than bitmaps for images and animation to reduce memory requirements and produce better quality graphics than one would otherwise expect on small-screen devices. In addition, the PME can be used to create audio content for a rich Web user experience.

This introduction to the PME covers all of the relevant content design considerations, such as dealing with the varying screen sizes, color depth, fonts, etc. The content created with Plazmic and deployed with the Composer or SVG Transcoding Utility (used to produce compressed distribution binaries) can be used across multiple mobile platforms. The sample code is available for downloading from the publisher.

The first 2 of 6 appendices provide a WML (Wireless Markup Language) and WMLScript reference. The remaining 4 are worth the price of the book to developers, as the development guides and coding tips (reprints from the in-house RIM BlackBerry Developer Journal) provide valuable help in avoiding the pitfalls of developing for the handheld environment. Combined with the sample code noted above, these provide an excellent quick-start guide to developing BlackBerry applications.

Professional BlackBerry by Craig James Johnston & Richard Evers covers sundry facets of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), deployment of BlackBerry devices as well as BlackBerry-application development. As such it is targeted at system administrators and developers. Having been published in 2005, Professional BlackBerry is of course only current up to version 4.0 of the enterprise software.

After describing the BES system architecture, the authors go into planning the first installation and deployment of the desktop software. Monitoring the BlackBerry environment and user management are followed by an interesting overview of desaster-recovery planning.

Part II is for developers and describes the MDS and its simulators. Pushing content to BlackBerrys is then followed by developing Java applications and The Plazmic Media Engine.

All in all, the book is valuable for the systems administrator or the developers planning to deploy a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, although I found the book is a bit "thin"; I'd have expected more in-depth information on the data flow between a BES and the device itself, as well as some insight to the internal structure of a BES server (configuration, databases, etc.). There is very little information about the myriad settings which can be deployed to devices, and the administration topics are a bit lacking as well. Be it coincidental or not, the WML examples in the development chapter look familiar to the ones in the BlackBerry Developer Journal and are by the same author. Are there no other examples to build upon?

Hate to say it because I think it's a well written book and WROX always makes good books, but the information is all over 5 years old now and most is irrelevant.

Let me expound on that a bit. I am a Lotus Admin, I have a few BES Servers. If this were 2005 this book would be spot on. It's now 2010, some 5 years later and the book is outdated. The book author contacted me explaining that my 1 star rating was; "A slap in the face.", to that I say I am sorry, but I purchased the book with the idea that it was punished by WROX, which is a fabulous company, and written by someone I have heard nothing but praise about only to find out it would pretty much useless to me at my current position.

The book is written well and the information is good, if you have a 2005/2004 version of BES you are dealing with.

I hope you enjoy the book. I have returned mine and hope that the Author and WROX are working on an update as I would purchase that and read it post hast!

One of few Blackberry books available, "Professional Blackberry" has much of its content aimed at hosting BES servers and integrating handhelds while the other offerings concentrate on the heldhelds themselves and largely treat the server as a black box.

There is still a little time taken to cover features on the handheld such as developing Java applications and using the Plazmic Media Engine for enhanced content, but these are provided as the last two chapters. While they are fine as an introduction, you will need to look for other sources for developing your own content for the Blackberries.

There is a lot to know, and setting up any server is a complicated business, so I have to admit I was a little surprised by the size of the book. At around 300 pages with a third dedicated to appendices, it lacked the depth I was expecting in many areas. The coverage of the combinations of backend possibilities had plenty of useful information, but they were all mixed together and would be difficult to refer to if you were only interested in a single set up.

Overall this isn't a bad effort and a useful book for the task, but I'm hoping later versions will be fleshed out a little more.

I sawed this book about 3 months ago in Borders, and I was totally shocked. I spent a little time and thumbed through this book and read a few sections and right away I saw that it was of great value. I work with Blackberries on a personal and corporate level and this book seems to be ticket. I actually had a chance to converse with Craig over email .. very helpful and informative guy. Congrat Craig on your book!!!! We're waiting for another master piece.

Finally, a roadmap for BlackBerry application developers. I would have
saved countless hours if I had this book 2 years ago.

I suggest this book for those of you who are about to step into the
area of developing BlackBerry applications. The book is primarily targeting two types of audience, administrators and developers. The first part being administration related, covers planning and installation, including upgrades.
If you are a developer, the first part gives you the big picture. A good understanding of the architecture and the platform goes a long way in taking advantage of the capabilities unique to the BlackBerry. This part also provides you with good understanding on how you could deploy your application to your users. The second part is where most developers would find valuable. It runs the gamut of technologies you can use in the BlackBerry platform, including the use of web portal,
BlackBerry Channel, Java Applications and the Plazmic Media Engine, just to name a few.
These technologies are described here with necessary steps and samples, giving you a jump start into writing your application.

This book is also a good reference for experienced BlackBerry application developers. You can discover other
aspects of application development or other features of the device which may not be that obvious at first glance. The appendix also has good coding tips. I found some of the tips a timesaver.

For a BlackBerry user book, check out BlackBerry for Dummies.

Book's condition was exactly as described. Book was also promptly shipped.