Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

~ Deepak Alur (Author), Dan Malks (Author), John Crupi (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Completely updated and revised, this is the second edition of the best-seller Core J2EE Patterns. J2EE has become the platform of choice for Web-centric distributed enterprise application development. Expert consultants from the Sun Java Center have identified powerful J2EE design patterns that lead to applications with superior performance, scalability, and robustness. This book brings those design patterns together, sharing Sun's best practices for development with Java Server Pages (JSP), Servlets, EJB, and other J2EE technologies. It presents a complete catalog of J2EE patterns encapsulating proven and recommended designs for common J2EE-related problems, organized into presentation tier, business tier and integration tier solutions. This second edition introduces new patterns, new refactorings, new patterns for using XML as well as new patterns for J2EE Web services. The authors also identify bad practices to be avoided. Finally, it presents an end-to-end multi-tier case study covering every stage of enterprise development.

From the Back Cover

"The Java landscape is littered with libraries, tools, and specifications. What's been lacking is the expertise to fuse them into solutions to real-world problems. These patterns are the intellectual mortar for J2EE software construction."
--John Vlissides, co-author of Design Patterns, the "Gang of Four" book

"The authors of Core J2EE Patterns have harvested a really useful set of patterns. They show how to apply these patterns and how to refactor your system to take advantage of them. It's just like having a team of experts sitting at your side."
--Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Rational Software Corporation

"The authors do a great job describing useful patterns for application architectures. The section on refactoring is worth the price of the entire book!"
--Craig McClanahan, Struts Lead Architect and Specification Lead for JavaServer Faces

"Core J2EE Patterns is the gospel that should accompany every J2EE application server...Built upon the in-the-trenches expertise of its veteran architect authors, this volume unites the platform's many technologies and APIs in a way that application architects can use, and provides insightful answers to the whys, whens, and hows of the J2EE platform."
--Sean Neville, JRun Enterprise Architect, Macromedia

Developers often confuse learning the technology with learning to design with the technology. In this book, senior architects from the Sun Java Center share their cumulative design experience on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology.

The primary focus of the book is on patterns, best practices, design strategies, and proven solutions using the key J2EE technologies including JavaServer Pages(TM) (JSP(TM)), Servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans(TM) (EJB(TM)), and Java(TM) Message Service (JMS) APIs. The J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns and numerous strategies is presented to document and promote best practices for these technologies.

Core J2EE Patterns, Second Edition offers the following:

• J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns--fully revised and newly documented patterns providing proven solutions for enterprise applications
• Design strategies for the presentation tier, business tier, and integration tier
• Coverage of servlets, JSP, EJB, JMS, and Web Services
• J2EE technology bad practices
• Refactorings to improve existing designs using patterns
• Fully illustrated with UML diagrams
• Extensive sample code for patterns, strategies, and refactorings

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 2 edition (May 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131422464
• ISBN-13: 978-0131422469
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #140,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for J2EE architects/developers, August 11, 2003

By	Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There are two obvious changes between this second edition and the first edition of this book. First, some new patterns have been added mostly dealing with web services. Second, the book has been released as a hard cover book, presumably because the publisher expects this to last on your shelf as long as the original "Design Pattern" book. The new patterns dealing with web services are a welcome addition to the book although anyone who is interested in this subject will probably want more detail such as found in Paul Monday's book.

Part 1 is an introduction to design patterns and the J2EE platform followed by a catalog of design considerations, bad practices and refactorings. Developers working with poorly designed J2EE applications will find this section especially helpful.

Part 2 is the collection of the design patterns and strategies. Each pattern is described in the expected level of detail. The format will remind you of the GoF book. Since this has become the standard format for presenting design patterns this should not be a surprise. The patterns are well thought, explained clearly, and demonstrated with some good code samples. If you have the first edition you will be very impressed with the improvements made in this new edition. It appears that virtually every pattern has been reworked to make the pattern easier to understand and use.

This is the book that every J2EE architect and programmer should have on their desk. Using the strategies in this book will make your applications more robust, make you more productive, and make your code easier to understand and maintain. Anyone designing, architecting, or coding with J2EE will find this book to be extremely useful.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Update to an Excellent Book, August 27, 2003

By	Scott Leberknight (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Core Patterns begins by introducing patterns in general, then presents common J2EE AntiPatterns and proceeds to discuss the refactored solutions to these bad practices along with pointers to the relevant area of the J2EE Pattern Catalog. This allows a straight-through reading for those unfamiliar with patterns or use as a reference guide for experienced pattern users. Two years ago when the first edition of this book came out, I purchased it and read it. Immediately I recognized areas where I could improve my J2EE designs as well as a new vocabulary for describing common solutions to recurring problems.

In all J2EE applications I have developed since then I have used the patterns and refactorings presented here to great benefit. In addition, the common vocabulary allows my project teams to discuss potential designs much more quickly and unambiguously, since we understand exactly what someone has in mind when they say something like "We should use Business Delegates in our Struts Actions to access our business services, and we should use Transfer Objects to pass data between the tiers, and use Data Access Objects to access our data stores."

The Second Edition brings updates to the original patterns plus several new patterns and the concept of micro-architectures. In addition to the updated and new patterns, this edition also discusses many patterns in the context of widely-used frameworks such as Struts and JSTL. For example, the book notes that the Struts ActionServlet is a Front Controller which hands the request to the Struts RequestProcessor, which implements the new ApplicationController pattern.

Understanding and applying the patterns and refactorings is certain to make your application designs more robust, clean, and maintainable. In addition you will be able to talk about J2EE refactoring and design at a much more abstract and concise level while simultaneously being able to cover a lot more ground much more quickly since everyone will know exactly what is meant by the patterns you are discussing. Along with the GoF's Design Patterns and Fowler's Refactoring books, Core J2EE Patterns is a must-have guide that every J2EE developer and architect should own.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The J2EE development bible - A MUST BUY, June 24, 2003

By	Vinit Carpenter "j2eegeek.com/blog" (Brookfield, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The 2nd edition of the J2EE development bible, Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies is out and the authors do not disappoint. I had given the first edition of this book 5 stars as the authors of the book had taken lessons learned from their experiences in developing and deploying J2EE applications and distilled all that knowledge into fifteen different design patterns.

Even if you own the first edition, I would recommend you get the 2nd edition as original 15 patterns have been completely revised and updated, including new implementation strategies and updates relating to the changes in the J2EE specification. J2EE application development is a fairly complex process and just knowing the API does not enable you to write good software. Most people spent several years writing software and learn good design techniques with experience based on what's worked in the past and what hasn't worked.

Another reason to buy this book is the whole Refactoring section. The authors take Martin Fowler's refactoring idea to the next level and bring it in the J2EE arena. I feel the price of the book is worth it, just for that section.

In addition to the 15 patterns, the authors introduce 6 design patterns to the J2EE pattern catalog...The new patterns include Context Object and Application Controller for the Presentation tier, Application Service and Business Object for the Business Tier and Domain Store and Web Service Broker for the Integration Tier.

I highly recommend this book to anyone doing any J2EE development. This book is very easy and light read and it really belongs in your library. I bet anyone that reads even parts of this book will end up writing better, more manageable code that's cleaner, modular, reusable, and loosely coupled. As Martin Fowler says in the foreword, 'Don't build an enterprise bean without it (this book)'. Can Martin Fowler be wrong? :-)

If you are looking for a 'cookbook' type book that overwhelms you with 200 pages of Java code, this is not it. Instead if you want to learn how to architect simple, flexible and easy to maintain systems, you need to buy and read this book.