Customer Reviews

Professional Oracle WebLogic Server (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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

 

 

I am a seasoned Weblogic administrator and trainer. Used the product since version 5.x. This book is a pretty good developer book, but not really a Oracle Weblogic book. The title eludes to being mostly about Weblogic and some about other stuff, but that is not the case at all. I was pretty bummed about the quantity of development topics that are not tied to Weblogic at all.

There are 15 chapters in the text, 9 are almost pure J2EE development, standard Web apps/JMS/EJB/Web Service stuff. The remaining chapters go into Weblogic. I am still baffled as to why we don't discuss a domain until Chapter 12 p547.. I think that is really pretty important to a simple Web App developer looking to get started..

It is the ONLY book out there that is somewhat up to date, hence the 2 stars, but I still prefer the online docs at Oracle than this..

I have been working with WebLogic Server over 10 years now, have been implemented and involved in many implementations for large projects, mentored teams for development and administration, still found this book extremely valuable, because of its insightful suggestions/solutions based on real experience as well as authors deep internal knowledge of the product. This book covers the topics beyond what product documents will provide, beyond how-to knowledge but will define solutions using what really is working and what is in many enterprises. I highly recommend this book whether you are an experienced WebLogic professional or someone who understands the product and have some knowledge on it. Owning this book will pay off big time when you need a solution that you cannot create just based on product docs, when you need a solution that is not just working but scalable and performing, a setup and configuration that is unique... This is a book based on real life experience hence it is not afraid to suggests things that may be a bit different then product docs and basic common knowledge on WebLogio (WLS).

Just like the authors state, this book was targeted towards people experienced in and with Java EE development, but should have been caveated to say "and who happen to be using Oracle WebLogic Server." The longest chapter in the book is on WLS administration (124 pages). How hard would it have been to include a bigrez.ear file in the code download for the book? I'm sure there are administrators (and heck, even experienced developers who want to see if they got things right in the build) who would like to have a *complete* working example. The lack of a completed EAR file is surprising given how much detail and explanation the authors went into on development topics. As of this writing, you can find a link to this file on a Wrox forum. Another reader uploaded his file to dropbox; thread title is "Problem with building sample application of the book (bigrez)." (Ignore the setWhatever files that were included since you have your own from BigRec domain creation).

As others have said in other reviews, Professional Oracle WebLogic Server has many non-WebLogic specific items in it. It covers many java items.

I am not clear who the intended audience is for this book. While well written and informative, I cannot think of anyone I know who would want to read this book because it covers too many subjects that are not necessarily going to be of interest to one person. I gave up after 150 pages.

After 150 pages I switched to Oracle WebLogic Server 11G Handbook by Sam Alapati. I am only 60 pages into the new book, but for learning web logic admin I think this other book is more focused.

If you want to learn Java EE, I used the free Oracle Tutorial on-line as well as buying a printed copy of the first volume (Java EE 6 Tutorial - Basic Concepts). Very good for a general Java EE overview.

Normally I do not mention other books in a review, but since this book covers Web Logic and Java I thought I would list other books on the subject.

Again, well written (at least the first 150 pages) but I am not really clear who was the intended audience. Perhaps with a new cover that explains what is in the book and who should read it, this book would be a 4 or 5 star book.

This book has one way to do things, the way they did it.
It expects you to program on the server and doesn't detail out some of the specifics well enough to know what you need to do implement other ways.
It has long winded explanations for trivial stuff (fillers) but skims over some critical details.
The chapters about web services assume that you read through 8 chapters on a mostly unrelated topic, instead of summarizing the details or referencing it earlier on, so you have to search through the book to find other bits of information.
As a result I spent 2 days trying to find out information, and failed to discover what I needed to make it work.

Any IT professional interested in improving their skills and knowledge of WebLogic Server will find this book an invaluable asset. The book covers many aspects of WebLogic Server, but more importantly it discusses the "under the covers" functionality. This information is extremely important when it comes to troubleshooting server and application issues.

Consulting professionals are often asked for the best practices for the implementation of messaging, web services, EJBs, deployment, etc. This book provides many of those answers.

I highly recommend this book to those who have a basic knowledge of WebLogic Server, but want to increase their expertise in a rapid fashion.

I might change this opinion when I finish this book, but I am 150 pages through the book, and there is NOTHING except @WLServlet annotation and SessionID in regards of WebLogic. Now sure why they chose that title.