Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself J2ee in 21 Days with CDROM (Sams Teach Yourself...in 21 Days)

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

 

 

This book does not offer much more than the Sun J2EE Tutorial online does and that is free. I have worked through the first two weeks, and I have decided to shelve it. The book starts strong with the JNDI. There are plenty of code listings for you to type in and try with good explanations on naming, binding, and lookup. After this the book is nothing more than a rehash of the Sun Online tutorial with a different larger example application. The application is complete. You don't do anything but read about the design and pertinent Java technologies that are being used for that particular part of the application. Then you are given instructions on how to deploy the current working piece of the application on the J2EE RI, and run sample clients against it - chapter after chapter of the same thing. Though this type of learning by reading some one else code with explanations seems to be enjoyed by some. I side with Ivor Horton. Programming is not a spectator sport. You learn by doing. Having the reader build the application and participate in the process would have made for a better learning experience of a complex topic.

This book is putting me to sleep! I bought it a few days ago and have spent that ENTIRE time reading. I'm more of a visual learner, usually the TYI21D books are very hands-on. So far, this one is harshly hands-off! How can I be expected to remember all this information? I need examples, not just charts. It doesn't look like its going to get any better later in the text, I've scanned-through the book several times wondering when this terribly detailed nonsense will end and from what I've seen, it continues through the entire book. -yawn-

If you are new to J2EE, and if you are not always online, you should use this book to get the big picture of J2EE. Go through it, skip details you may not need, focus on understanding concepts, use the online-documentation later on during your coding. I was testing the examples with the J2EE RI, with BEA, and with JBOSS. Every platform has had its own problems, but at the end, the examples were running each time. During my career I was reading lots of docs, but this one is well-written, clear and concise, it covers the most important aspects, I think, and let you the freedom to skip, what you think you may not need the first time.

I am a (software development) middle manager with a background as a C programmer. Every 2-3 years I'll buy 1 book + products to try to stay relatively current with industry evolution. I bought VB 4.0 & MS Access and was able to use the VB 4.0 documentation alone to build a fairly elaborate application. I bought Borland JDeveloper & Oracle and with the help of Teach Yourself Java in 21 days was able to migrate my application to (i.e. rewrite my application for) Java/Oracle. Now I acquired J2EE from Sun and mySQL with a view to migrating the same application, bought this book, and find that this book is of absolutely no help whatsoever. This book is reliant on downloadable samples (which are now out-of-date and unusuable) and fails to explain what I want: nuts-and-bolts construction of a "Hello World" type program where I hand-craft a JSP, a servlet, a session bean and an entity bean using the mySQL database (which I had up and running within 1 hour of download) to extract the "Hello" and the "World" from 2 separate columns in a database table, and hand-craft the deployment descriptors needed to package & deploy the application.

This book is shelved. When I figure out what I want to learn from other sources, I'm inclined to try to write an alternative text to recoup my wasted $50+.

Comparing with Sun's J2EE Tutorial this is an excellent book. It is easy to read and explains the concepts clearly. I read Sun's J2EE Tutorial and hated it so much. In a month you will learn all important concepts in J2EE. After reading the book, you may want to read books which devote the entire book on a single J2EE subject. This book gives you an entry point. Plus I just don't have time to read many books. I need a crush course on J2EE.

The book and the code you download from Sam's website is based on a Pointbase embedded database, but Java J2EE now comes with a Derby database, so you aren't able to create and install your database. I suppose this book would work as a reference manual for some things, but you definitely won't be able to teach yourself much.

The book's case studies, code and build files assume that J2EE 1.4 comes
with the PointBase database server. J2EE 1.4 currently only comes bundled with the Derby database server. As a result, the book is useless. Emails to the publisher failed to resolve the problem.

This is a good book for beginners. If you want to have the big picture of J2EE, you can read this book.
After reading this book, you will build your framework of J2EE. You can also know how to extend your interests.

The different authors write different chapters defining some things differently.

The material is outdated, you'll constantly have to update their junk to make it work.

Way too verbose and bouncing back and forth within an individual chapter (just try those two early BMP/CMP chapters).

It's just not worth $1.

Use the sun tutorials for a much better and much much clearer start.

This book covers a wide range of key points in the Java2EE technology, very complete reference for begginers and advanced programmers.