Professional Java Data: RDBMS, JDBC, SQLJ, OODBMS, JNDI, LDAP, Servlets, JSP, WAP, XML, EJBs, CMP2.0, JDO, Transactions, Performance, Scalability, Object and Data Modeling [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ Thomas Bishop (Author), Glenn E. Mitchell (Author), John Bell (Author), Bjarki Holm (Author), Danny Ayers (Author), Carl Calvert Bettis (Author), Sean Rhody (Author), Tony Loton (Author), Michael Bogovich (Author), Mark Wilcox (Author), Lin Kelly Poon (Author), Nitin Nanda (Author), Rick Grehan (Author), Matthew Ferris (Author), Kelly Lin Poon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dedicated to the principle that more is more, Professional Java Data provides a far-ranging tutorial of today's Java database technologies that's ideally suited for any IT professional trying to make sense of what Sun's platform offers when it comes to databases.

With over 1,300 pages, this title might well be overwhelming, but it's not. The team of authors does a good job at keeping the material under control. For the first 100 pages or so, there's little mention of Java. Instead the authors provide an overview of the nuts and bolts of software and database design, including the basics of Unified Modeling Language (UML) and designing databases.

The organizing principle of this book is to bundle tutorial material on a wide variety of Java APIs that have to do with databases on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Core APIs covered here include JDBC (including connection pooling), plus an excellent guide to basic Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) development. In between the cracks, the authors manage to cover today's multitiered Web architectures while introducing servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) for displaying database information in dynamically generated Web pages.

Other sections look at additional Java APIs, both established and emerging, which will help demystify these technologies for the busy programmer or IT manager. Included here are SQLJ (for embedding SQL calls inside Java code), ODMG 3.0 (for object-oriented databases in Java), and Java Data Objects (JDO), a new Sun standard for "persistent" Java classes. Along the way, the authors also manage to touch upon J2EE standards that provide the backbone for Web applications. (Material in this category includes JNDI, LDAP, and directory services, JTS and transactions, plus XML and messaging support.) There's even a peek at WAP and WML for programming wireless applications.

This title concludes with a variety of case studies that bring together various APIs covered in the rest of the book. The most ambitious of these is arguably an XML-driven Web portal that displays articles. By casting a wide net, the team authors of Professional Java Data manage to create a tutorial that doesn't have to be read cover to cover, but rather can be used to beef up your knowledge of what's arrived and what's on the horizon when it comes to Java used with databases. With a mix of approachable material on an extremely wide range of important technologies, this is a book that gives the big picture when it comes to Java databases, as well as delivering many of the details you'll need for actual development. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview of the software development process (including waterfall, spiral, and object-oriented methods)
• Software configuration management (version control)
• Software defect and modification tracking
• Software quality (including peer reviews)
• Object-oriented analysis and design basics
• Overview of UML
• Data modeling basics (including logical and physical models, plus data dictionaries)
• Database design basics (including normalization, static vs. dynamic SQL, transactions, stored procedures, and triggers)
• JDBC tutorial (including connections, data types, result sets, and transactions, prepared statements, batch updates and JDBC escape syntax)
• The JDBC 2.0 Optional Package (including DataSources, JNDI, and connection pooling)
• Basic SQLJ tutorial
• Database performance issues
• Object-oriented databases in Java (the Object Database Management Group, ODMG, 3.0 specification and the Object Query Language, OQL, introduced)
• Directory services and JNDI (including LDAP basics)
• Overview of Web architectures
• Java servlet tutorial (including cookies, session tracking, and database access)
• Servlets and JDBC
• JSP tutorial (including basic syntax, JavaBeans, and database access)
• Basic XML tutorial (including the Simple API for XML, SAX)
• Introduction to WAP and WML
• Enterprise JavaBeans tutorial (including session and entity beans, transactions and the EJB 2.0 standard)
• The Java Transaction API (JTA) and the Java Transaction Service (JTS)
• EJB clients
• Scalability issues with EJBs
• Sample online PIM
• J2EE messaging
• Java Data Objects (JDO)
• Case studies for an XML-based Web portal
• An application for the statistical analysis of Web traffic and a Web data toolkit
• Basic SQL tutorial
• Java serialization APIs
• Overview of Java distributed applications
• Configuring Tomcat, JRun, and Orion

Product Description

Java provides versatile technologies for data access and manipulation. This book investigates these technologies in detail and shows how they can be used to develop robust enterprise applications.

The book is divided into five sections, the first of which looks at data and object modeling. The second section investigates accessing data in relational and object oriented databases, and directory services. The focus of the following section is data presentation for web clients. The fourth section covers Enterprise JavaBeans and distributed applications. The last section of the book consists of four real-world case studies that build on the previous chapters of the book. Transactions, performance, and scalability of data applications are also discussed throughout the book.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1300 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information Inc.; 1st edition (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004109
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004109
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,419,321 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent survey of JDBC, but with extra fat to be trimmed, July 8, 2001

By	Eric L. Ma (Berkeley Heights, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

For the past 2 years Wrox has been publishing books dedicated to Windows-based data access (ADO etc.), but the same cannot be said about their Java/database collection. Although you find chapters on JDBC scattered all-over almost all server-side Java related books by Wrox, there was no single volume from them that teaches JDBC first, and then show how it is used by the newer dependent technologies, until this book arrived. After looking through this book, I must say the authors and editors have done a rather commendable job.

Why do I make the above conclusion? Let me give you my general impression of the book first. A theme repeated in several of my recent reviews on books from Wrox is about the problem in coherence associated with multi-author books. Well, having more than a dozen of authors for a single book seems to be a fact of life (for books from Wrox at least) now, as the publication cycle gets shorter. I was rather surprised to find out that the organization and coherence is very good in this book, i.e., there is very little overlap among chapters. Also, this books uses JDBC cleverly to tie other pieces of J2EE together, making smooth transitions from one chapter to another. If you want to know, this factor alone prompted me to add an extra star to the overall rating of the book.

Let's now run down the chapters of this book quickly. The first 115 pages deals object-oriented and database modeling, and can be skipped by any "Professional" developer. Then after your obligatory intro to JDBC API, the next chapter covers the JDBC 2.0 optional package. This is the best treatment of this topic I have seen. Then another chapter is all about SQLJ, another first. The effort of having a chapter on database performance should be lauded, where connection pooling, prepared statements and stored procedures usage are demoed. The reminder of the book is about applying JDBC in various J2EE components, such as JSP, servlets, EJB, JMS, and XML. For this part of the book, even though I accept the fact the proper stage has to be set for each one of them, I still don't believe the book found the right balance between focusing on JDBC and showing what these other technologies are about. A large number of pages are used to teach basic JNDI, servlets, JSP's, and EJB's stuff (remember there is already a book on J2EE from Wrox!). Therefore, it is up to the reader to discover the real nuggets of gold hidden in this pile, which are far and in between in places. I found that some critical issues are not highlighted or details are lacking, such as how to use connection pooling/data sources in servlets, JSP's, and EJB's, the threading issues related to sharing database connections, and good database practices in BMP EJB's. However, the one thing I cannot complain about is that the book did not forget to teach the transaction aspect of EJB with a good depth (there is a short ans sweet chapter on using JTA/JTS inside EJB). There is also a chapter on the brand-new JDO framework, even though the spec is still in a state of flux. Finally, there are 4 case study chapters in the book - although the design and implementation are limited in scope and as a whole those samples do not teach all you need to do know about enterprise scale J2EE system development, they do provide a flavor of how JDBC is used in real world, together with setting up Tomcat, JRun, Orion, and WebLogic to access MS SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Now my overall take of this book. For VB/SQL and pure back-end PL/SQL developers who are eager to jump on the Java express train and need a suitable platform (especially for the ones who learn best from playing with actual code), I recommend this book as one of several you should own. Compared to other JDBC books from say O'Reilly and Sun's JDBC Tutorial, this book is the most up-to-date, contains the most source code, and has the broadest coverage of related topics. But keep in mind some of the advanced topics such as EJB and JMS can be intimidating for new-comers. On the other side of the coin, people who are advanced in various server-side Java technologies are unlikely to benefit a great deal from this book and should look elsewhere for info (for example Wrox's J2EE and upcoming EJB titles).

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wrox May Need To Review Its Book-Publishing Process!, August 2, 2001

By	Vulinh Nguyen "vulinhnguyen" (Tampa, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I mostly agreed with Eric Ma. There are some areas that Wrox needs to review the whole process of publishing Java-related books. Here are some drawbacks that I can draw from reading recent Java-related books:

(1) Repeated Contents: Materials about Servlet, JSP, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, etc are repeated over and over many books. This could waste time, money, and papers for both Wrox and readers.

(2)Books or Articles?: I asked myself: is Wrox publishing books or articles? Each book is written by many authors and the book's flow is inconsistent. The assessment that it is not a book but a collection of articles may partially true. It is true that a book if written by a team of authors could speed up the process of releasing it, but if Wrox editors and coordinators have to do their better jobs.

I suggest that Wrox should review its strategy of publishing books to avoid the repeating of materials over and over and thus bring down the cost associated with publishing the books. The final result is: readers and publisher will both save time and money. Otherwise, readers will loose their belief with Wrox.