[.ca] Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (ISBN 059600978X)

From Amazon.com:
As many Java developers and IS managers already know, Sun's powerful Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) technology offers an attractive option for developing server-side components. A suitable read for both managers and Java programmers, Enterprise JavaBeans provides a surprisingly clear and engaging introduction to designing and programming with EJBs. The tour of the EJB component model presented here centers on several beans created and tested for a travel reservation system in a fictitious cruise ship company. The samples are just right in scale, large enough to test out key concepts in design and deployment, but small enough to be comprehensible, even to those who are not Java experts. The author pays close attention to the real-world issues of deployment with EJBs (as well as the differences among the vendor application servers that run them). While there are enough details in Java syntax for designing both entity and session beans for the developer, sections on design here will please those who manage projects without delving much into code. Later, the author shows various ways to design entity and session beans. (For instance, entity beans can allow their bean containers to handle the details of connecting to a database, or they can do it themselves. This book demonstrates both approaches.) When it comes to session beans (which "wire" together entity beans to do real work), the author's introduction to managing state and transactions is also a standout. Tips for performance and reusability close out the book. In all, Enterprise JavaBeans provides an engaging tour of one of the most promising component technologies. It's technically astute, but thoroughly approachable too, and can serve the needs of any manager or Java developer considering EJBs for future projects. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) basics, distributed architectures, Component Transaction Monitors (CTMs), bean-containers, home and remote bean interfaces, resource management, configuring EJB servers, entity beans, JNDI, container-managed and bean-managed persistence, session beans, stateless and stateful beans, transactions, design and performance hints.

waste of pages:
I just started to read this book from the very beginning as an intro book for EJB. The first chapter is like an overview of the component model architecture. The author repeats the same ideas couple of times, except using differnt wordings. When my spare time is very limited, I would rather pay twice or three-times of the price if the author would cut off half of the length but still convey the same amount of info(which is not too difficult to do if readers' time was really put into consideration). Unfortunately this lengthiness(or selling by pages) seems to be a pretty popular pattern with most IT books nowadays anyway.

great!!!:
This book was my first exposure to EJB/J2EE and I have found it to be very helpfull. I have read it from cover to cover and I am about to use the knowledge I obtained to rewrite our existing thick client to a JBoss client/server. I strongly recommend this book.

The bible of EJB???:
In the Bible it says that it took Moses forty years to guide his followers from Egypt to Israel. Considering that the distance is a mere hundreds of kilometers, it makes you wonder why it took so long. But had the author been the guide, they would still be lost in the wilderness. Simple concepts are wrapped in layers of repetitive explanations until they are barely recognizable. The fact that entity beans are stored in database and session ones are not is repeated at nauseam. Chapters are dedicated where a few sentences would be more beneficial. The author believes that if it is worth saying once it is worth saying twice (and thrice, etc.). One of the reviewers said that it is kind of "get in anywhere" book Yes, the concepts are redefined so many times that it takes less time to read on to find the next rephrasing of the definition that to bother with the index. On the plus side we learn that Anne Manes coined the phrase "Component Transaction Monitor", and where she works now.

Not for beginners...:
This is a very well designed and written book covering EJB technology in a complete and in-depth manner. There's a quick intro to the subject, and then the rest of the book builds on that knowledge in tutorial fashion. You will build a cruise reservation system using beans, and in the process you'll learn a lot. It does assume that you have a solid foundation in Java skills before you dive in, so don't get this book unless you're already well on your way to learning Java. It's not for beginners. Another very nice feature is the companion workbook that you can buy for this book. It translates many of the exercises into more specific instructions for running them on the Websphere platform. This is an extremely valuable addition to the learning process. All too often, a writer has to assume a certain platform or system to be able to cover the material. If you also use that same system, you're OK. If you're not using what the author had, then there can be a translation process that can be frustrating at times. Having a workbook focused on your specific platform will speed up the learning and avoid the hassles involved in debugging your errors. If you're a Domino developer just getting into Java and J2EE technology, hold off on this book. While you may well get to this point in your career sometime in the future, it will be of little use to you right now. There isn't much that is applicable to the pure Domino world, and you'll need to be very well grounded in the Websphere world before this will start to gel for you. Conclusion I would recommend this book to a good Java developer needing to learn EJB technology for their jobs. It's very complete and comprehensive. If you're just trying to get started in Java, this book is still aways off for you. I was pretty well lost through most of it, so I need to come back to it in a year or so once I have some more experience.

Horribly Writen, useless information:
I buy discount software books whenever I can, and I picked this up for 8 or 9 bucks somewhere. Man, what a waste. I learned more about EJB from SUN's website and from reading on the internet. The examples were useless, and the chapters were disjointed.