Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans and the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition By Ed Roman Purchase book

Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans does a good job of covering the basic concepts of the EJB 1.0 and EJB 1.1 platforms. Where it really excels, however, is the details of EJB from a developer's point of view. EJB development encompasses many topics such as XML, UML, JNDI, RMI, and Servlets. "Mastering EJB" provides explanations for all of these concepts and relates them to EJB development in a very clear and detailed fashion. Development examples are used throughout this book and proved to be both functional and beneficial. These concise programs tackled developing the implementations of all the major EJB components. Furthermore, this book provided both positive and negative aspects of EJB, and advantages versus disadvantages of various development techniques. All the example code is stored on a CD-ROM with an evaluation copy of BEA's WebLogic Application Server. Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans does a fine job of equipping the developer with all of the tools necessary to become a knowledgeable EJB developer.

 

Enterprise JavaBeans: Developing Component-based Distributed Applications By Tom Valesky Purchase book

Rating: (out of a possible 5 beans)
Reviewed by: Dave Johnson

Enterprise JavaBeans holds the distinction of being one of the very first Enterprise JavaBeans books to reach the market. Tom Valesky was interfacing with the team at Sun before most of us had heard of EJB. The book benefits from this assistance by Java's home company, and even boasts a forward from Mala Chandra, the Director of Enterprise Java at Sun. Ironically, the large influence from the group at Sun contributes to one of the books only two downfalls. The downfall is that many descriptions and diagrams are verbatim extracts from the Sun team and EJB Specification (1.0). Although one hundred percent consistency with the EJB Specification is vital for any EJB text, it can serve to confuse beginning EJB developers. Especially when the portions of the Specification geared toward vendor application server implementations are muddled with the information that end-developers need concern themselves with. I would much rather see a book with clear boundaries and discrete descriptions of the areas of EJB that a developer should know. The only other problem with the Valesky text are some occasional inaccuracies with the example code and a lack of thorough environment discussion (environment issues can wreak havoc on an EJB team). With the two negatives out of the way, I would comment on Tom's thorough understanding of the EJB API. His discussions on the inner workings of EJB are without equal. Also, his code examples build in a thoughtful progression toward advanced usage of EJB, and are expertly designed. With a little understanding of which parts of the text to read lightly, the book makes an essential addition to the Enterprise Java Developer's library. I give 4.5 Beans.