Customer Reviews

Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is really very good in explaining EJB concepts. It is an excellent book for beginners. I got Enterprise Java Beans book from O'Reilly and felt it to be too advanced for beginners. But this book does a great job by explaining EJB concepts in a simple manner but still touching all concepts and gives us a big unterstanding about EJB.

Although the Weblogic version has changed after the book got published, it is not really hard to make the code run in the newer version of Weblogic. Infact I did not find any difference in deploying EJB in Weblogic 6.1 or 8.1. I used the weblogic server 6.1 workbook and went through it and did the same steps in Weblogic server 8.1 and was successful in running the code.

WARNING: Do not forget to check the book's errata while reading the book. There are some printing mistakes in the book.

So do not hesitate to buy this book just because the Weblogic server version has changed. This book is really good and I am enjoying it.

Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans is an overall good book, but I found the topics covered too broad, and not always directly related to EJBs

There is a confusion on page 89, Chapter 4, Table 4.1
The 2 columns for Stateless and Stateful SessionBeans should be flipped.

I was looking for an EJB 2.0 book. I was planning to buy either this one or Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition. So, I went to bookstore and read this one. (Explanation is ok, but it didn't cover the very simple and basic things, e.g. for CMP 2.0 about primary key stuff...this book has just assumed you've known what is cmp primary key before you read this book... If I don't remember it wrong, it didn't even mention about the primary key has to be either Object or String... So, I guess if you are not familiar with EJB 1.1, (like myself) you are gonna get confused... or may be just me.
But I did find the appendix was useful. So, I rate it "OK" with three stars... I guess I'm just a tough rate-er, I've never rated a book with 5 stars. I'm going to buy the O'Reilly one, cuz I didn't find it in bookstore. I hope it will be a good book...)

I was looking for an EJB 2.0 book. I was planning to buy either this one or Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition. So, I went to bookstore and read this one. (Explanation is ok, but it didn't cover the very simple and basic things, e.g. for CMP 2.0 about primary key stuff...this book has just assumed you've known what is cmp primary key before you read this book... If I don't remember it wrong, it didn't even mention about the primary key has to be either Object or String... So, I guess if you are familiar with EJB 1.1, (like myself) you are gonna get confused... or may be just me.
But I did find the appendix was useful. So, I rate it "OK" with three stars... I guess I'm just a tough rate-er, I've never rated a book with 5 stars. I'm going to buy the O'Reilly one, cuz I didn't find it in bookstore. I hope it will be a good book...)

One thing is that you won't become a master of EJB after you read this book. But you won't become a master of anything just after reading a book. :-)

The book provides in-depth introduction on EJB and related topics, such as different types of enterprise beans (Session/Entity/MessageDrivenBean), how EJBObject (EJB container) interacts with the actual bean object (strategies of intercepting the request and delegation), CMP and BMP, etc. The author did excellent job on these topics.

The author also tries to cover some advanced topics and best practices, sadly, this is where the book lost its shine. Except chapter 10 about transaction is good, the rest of the chapters are either too basic (e.g. lazy loading, aggregation vs. composition, wrap entity beans with session beans etc.) or too shallow (e.g. clustering) to provide any practical values. Some chapters, in my opinion, even are unnecessary (e.g. chapter 15 "Starting Your EJB Project on the Right Foot" and chapter 16 "Choosing an EJB Server") They are more or less related to the develop process instead of EJB.

One particular pitfall is that bean inheritance topic is not touched at all. Though EJB specs does not specify on this area, any serious EJB projects would inevitably touch/involve it. At least, the author should shed some lights on the best practices related to this topic.

Overall, as an introductory level book, it serves its purpose.

this is good book if u want to learn ejb concepts easily. author is not confusing and he is very clear.
but this book is not related to any webserver like web logic or websphere. wont help in developing web application straight away. but concepts are thoroughly explained

Briefly. You read this book thoroughly, complement it with a mock exam and you are ready to clear the SCBCD (Sun Certified Business Components Developer) exam.

Not to mention that after reading it you have a good foundation for continuing with "EJB design patterns" or "Bitter EJB". Only after reading something more advanced than "Mastering EJBs" you are ready to start EJB programming since it tells "how" but not much about "where and what for".

Want to learn EJB and use it. Get this book.

I have read many reviews before I bought this book. I knew the examples were not updated for current Weblogic, but I believed that I could figure out how to run them myself. Well, I successfully did so, until chapter 10. There is absolutely no examples for the latter HALF of the book!!! I wrote an email to bug report address for this book: bookbugs@middleware-company.com and got rejected. I wrote to author edro@middleware-company.com, no response. I feel like being cheated. You can go to www.theserverside.com to free download the PDF book, and download source code, and compare them. I will try to return the book to Amazon, but as I have scratched on it, I don't know if I could get my money back.
Download it to read the first half, but don't buy it!

I have come across very few technology books which could be categorized as both broad and deep, and this book is undoubtedly one.

The conversational style and well-organized presentation of this book makes it easy to read. This book contains a lot of best-practice guides and tech scenario analysis in addition to code examples and EJB details, it also lists a number of very helpful links on the net, it also lists down product websites for a host of specialized services, especially integration, this book really is a very valuable reference.

The only reason for not giving this book a 5-star is that not enough attention had been given to updating the code examples which came initially to work with WebLogic 6.1, along with the first edition of this book. I have used the first edition of this book to really get my hands dirty with EJBs, EJB 1.1 spec at that time, a lot of things have changed since, though this book covers all the new twists added in EJB 2.0 spec a lot of this edition is plain reproduction of first edition, and the code examples, don't get surprised if they need some tweaks before they start working.