While most books focus on Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and related standards without looking at particular Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) tools, this title zeros in on IBM's popular VisualAge and WebSphere products for building and deploying Java software. The book does a good job of explaining the higher-level principles when it comes to Java standards like Servlets, JSP, and EJB. The more abstract material on the best ways to combine these front-end and back-end technologies is anchored by chapters that show how to use the real IBM tools.

Sections on modeling EJBs, for example, show you how to build real EJBs in VisualAge (including some fine material on associations that will let you model even complex database schemas with Java components). Another plus is material on the specifics of deploying Beans on the WebSphere platform, including tips on editing XML descriptor data. With today's J2EE standards, the genius is in the details. This book strikes a good balance between theory and practical advice. It gives you some of Sun's current best practices, like the Model-View-Controller (MVC). With fast-moving and useful tutorials on Servlet JSP and EJB standards, the authors also discuss layering of components on the server to achieve the separation of presentation and business logic, a must for today's Java Web applications. Patterns and other strategies for making sure you separate the tiers are also introduced.

By anchoring a state-of-the-art tour of Java with samples using real IBM tools, this title provides what Java developers need to use JSPs and EJBs effectively in real projects to solve real business problems. It's quite simply one of the best available tutorials for learning how to build successful Web applications in Java. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Survey of e-commerce for business
• Review of computer architecture (from client/server to Web-based multitiered systems)
• Introduction to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)
• The Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern (including layered applications)
• HTTP and Servlet basics
• Introduction to IBM VisualAge for EJB development
• The IBM WebSphere Test Environment (WTE)
• IBM WebSphere Application Server for EJBs (installing and configuration hints and using XMLConfig)
• Managing session state
• IBM WebSphere Studio tutorial (including JSP development with Page Designer)
• Servlet design guidelines (including patterns, exception handling, Servlet chaining, and filtering)
• JSP tutorial (including expressions and directives)
• Direct and indirect models for JSPs
• Using Beans with JSPs
• Testing and deploying JSPs
• Custom tag libraries
• Case study for an employee timesheet Web application (including use cases and class diagrams)
• EJB tutorial (including session and entity Beans)
• How to use VisualAge to build EJBs (including object-relational mapping tools)
• Testing and debugging EJBs
• EJB clients
• Container-managed and Bean-managed persistence
• EJB transactions
• Advanced CMP mapping techniques (including associations)
• Techniques for layered applications in EJBs (using facade and factory classes)
• Deploying EJBs in WebSphere

It's virtually impossible to find this much valuable info in one place. And please, don't bash this book until you've read the whole thing (which you may need to do more than once!).

The code on the CD works. As far as showing incomplete printed examples, do you really want every line of code printed in the book? Given the level of developer this book targets, they strike a fine balance of what goes on the existing 900 pages and what can be browsed on the CD. The only topic I had trouble digesting was their discussion on Mapper Objects (Ch. 16), but it's easy enough to understand the code.

I have yet to find a large technical book without lots of errors. I would rate the editing job on this book as 1.5 stars because of the abundance of seemingly careless typos. However, they're minor annoyances that don't detract from this technically correct marvel of a book. As developers, we need useful information. This book more than delivers and is worth every penny.


Incomplete hands-on exercises, poorly written   July 4, 2004
 14 out of 19 found this review helpful

Firstly I'm surprised at the rave-reviews that this book has got on amazon. The great reviews drove me to actually use this book to learn websphere. Sadly, I'm very disappointed with the book. (I have previously developed J2EE apps on JBoss, and WebLogic so I was not reading it as a novice reader). Also a disclaimer: I have read the book through online subscription at SafariBooksOnline, some of my criticism may not be applicable to the printed version.

The begin my critique, the book attempts too much while accomplishing very litte. This is a book about J2EE programming with WebSphere, it should have been kept that way. Instead the authors try to provide introduction (at times having errors) for the J2EE technologies and make a complete mess of it. It takes great effort on the part of the reader to gather the core information that relates to programming/configuring WSAD. The book could have been much better if it included more hands-on exercises and cut out the crappy introduction to "enterprise concepts".

Secondly, about the examples. The examples are not complete (they often refer to the CD-ROM and I was reading the book on SafariBooksOnline, so this may not be the case when you buy the printed book). Moreover the explanation is in very high-sounding terms at times which makes it difficult to focus on the point that is being made.

This is definitely not a book for novice; and for the experienced it is a waste of time to sift through loads of nonsense before making any sense of whats written.

I have given it 2 stars because some of the hands-on stuff sections actually worked when I tried them, and the GUI snapshots were helpful.