Professional Java, JDK 5 Edition (Paperback)

by W. Clay Richardson (Author), Donald Avondolio (Author), Joe Vitale (Author), Scot Schrager (Author), Mark W. Mitchell (Author), Jeff Scanlon (Author) "Java's initial design opted to leave out many features that programmers knew from C++ and other languages..." (more)
Key Phrases: Method Description, Developing Effective User Interfaces, Developing Web Applications Using the Model (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
What is this book about?

Professional Java builds upon Ivor Horton's Beginning Java to provide the reader with an understanding of how professionals use Java to develop software solutions.  Pro Java  starts with an overview of best methods and tools for developing Java applications.   It then examines the the more sophisticated and nuanced parts of the Java JDK.  The final and most extensive part of the book shows how to implement these ideas to build real-world applications, using both Java APIs as well as related Java open source tools.  In short, this book provides a comprehensive treatment of the professional Java development process, without losing focus in exhaustive coverage of isolated features and APIs. 

From the Back Cover
Java continues to be the dominant language for building server applications, and the latest update to the Java platform—JDK 5—boasts many new features, including a metadata facility, generics, autoboxing, and improved user interface performance. Building upon Ivor Horton's Beginning Java, this book provides insight into these sophisticated features of JDK 5 and shows you how to master the more advanced aspects of this evolving and complex language.

Beginning with an overview of the best tools and techniques for developing Java applications, the expert author team then discusses how to use Java to develop software solutions for common challenges. Several real-world examples provide you with a well-rounded survey of the professional Java development landscape, which will help you master both the core Java language as well as the intricacies of JDK 5.

What you will learn from this book

• When to use Java open source tools such as Ant and JUnit
• Techniques to implement, save, and restore functionality to your applications
• How to interact with other language libraries using Java Native Interface
• Ways to communicate between Java components
• Methods to secure and deploy your Java applications
• How to produce a configurable process architecture
• How to exploit common patterns in Java

Who this book is for

This book is for Java developers who are looking for an all-purpose resource, are ready for more advanced Java solutions and language features, and need a bit of assistance when tackling new Java problems that may be outside their technological experience.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 726 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 5 edition (February 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764574868
• ISBN-13: 978-0764574863
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #569,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth buying, but it could be better, October 28, 2005

By	Erik Midtskogen "Java Nut" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like this book because it brings together in one place a lot of information that is helpful in real-world development tasks. My complaint is that it seems carelessly edited, leaving you with a collection of chapters obviously written by different authors who didn't communicate much with each other in the formation of the book.

It's nice to be able to get the new Java 5 features under your belt in just a couple of hours of reading and playing around. In fact, the first chapter is excellent, code samples and all. The next chapter is nice for a quick review of methodologies, or if you are completely new to the frameworks that are often used in conjunction with Agile Programming in Java, such as JUnit and Hibernate and so on. Chapter 3 is a capable introduction to some of the more popular Design Patterns, but it is here that you first notice that the author ignores all the advice in Chapters 1 and 2 about how much easier your development will be if you use the new language features of Java 5 and the tools and methodologies of Agile development.

Things go downhill by Chapter 4, which covers Swing desktop GUI design and coding. The sample apps aren't all that well designed and don't don't demonstrate everything presented in Chapter 3 (such as the MVC application architecture) in a clear, convincing way. And it is here that you encounter the most shocking deficiencies of this book: sloppy, difficult-to-read sample code that compiles and runs--more or less--but which contains numerous lines (and even entire blocks) of extraneous code, poorly-chosen and sometimes even capitalized local and member variable names, and code stucture that defies best coding practices in many places. It is the type of code that you get when you hurry to meet a deadline for a prototype, and which you have not yet gotten around to going back and cleaning up.

Things pick back up a bit in subsequent chapters, with a nice intro to J2EE and J2EE-oriented API's, messaging, security, and a fine chapter on the much-neglected subject of application deployment.

Overall, I'm glad I bought this book. I've learned a lot from it, despite it's few annoyances. In fact, I made an exercise out of cleaning up the kludgy code samples in chapter 4. No, I'm not being sarcastic--I really did find it far more helpful and educational to patch that code up than to just read it through and then kid myself that I had internalized it. Who knows--maybe all sample code should be written with some defects.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best I've seen, March 11, 2005

By	Rev. D. Oberle (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

As a teacher of JAVA programming, I have seen countless books that I review for resources or potential classroom sets. This is by far the most complete, well written and informed book that I have seen thus far. It has been the "goto" book in our lab, and it is my top choice for textbook adoption in an advanced programming class.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This and Murach's Just Java are the best, April 25, 2005

By	Mr. Panah Mosaferirad "joshua_pan" (Philadelphia, Pa United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

We all have heard the saying that nothing is perfect. Well, it certainly is the case with this book. This book will not make you an expert in every single J2EE technology. Will give you a good introduction though! I thought the first couple of chapters on the new additions to Java Tiger were pretty solid. However, the chapters on Networking and Security were too shallow. No big deal though. Just buy Java Network Programming from Oreilly. Murach's Just Java 6th edition is a nice book to have in addition to this book. It touches the stuff that this one doesn't, and it misses the stuff that this book presents solidly. So, there you have it. Buy both, and you will get the best of both worlds. But whatever you do, do not even consider Herbert Schildt's 1.5 if you are a beginner.