Rating: 
Summary: Example-filled & highly practical
Review: Now in its second edition updated to take into account changes in the EJB 2.1 specification, Applying Enterprise JavaBeans: Component-Based Development For The J2EE Platform is the collaborative effort of computer experts Vlada Matena, Sanjeev Krishnan, Linda DeMichiel and Beth Stearns, and the latest in "The Java Series" of instructional computer programming books endorsed an authored by the creators of Java technology at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Covering support for Java Web services, security management, message-driven beans and integrating with Java Message Service, transaction management, EJB query language, and much more, Applying Enterprise JavaBeans is a hands-on, example-filled, highly practical and enthusiastically recommended instructional and reference resource.
Rating: 
Summary: Gerbil on a treadmill
Review: Several years ago, we tried using EJB 1.0 and were utterly underwhelmed. Despite using what was for its time a high powered computer, our clock cycles and memory seemed to get eaten up somewhere in the container. Searching the web revealed that many others had similar complaints.Sun heavily improved the EJB standard in version 2. The Container Managed Persistence was totally rewritten, and Message Driven Beans were introduced because many users wanted loosely coupled asynchronous applications. Things are much better now, and Sun released this book as part of its official documentation set for EJB 2. As usual, it is clearly written and authoritative. So the good news is, if you are running EJB 1, you really should jump, and EJB 2 is the logical and easiest destination to get to. If so, you might as well get this book to smooth the transition. But there is an alternative which this book completely neglects to mention. In the last 3 years, a rival to EJB has arisen. The open source jBoss. In 2000, I heard its founder, Marc Fleury, claim advantages over EJB 1. Since then, in various newsgroups, it does seem that jBoss is at the very least on a par with EJB 2. And given that the jBoss source is available and free, you should seriously consider migrating to it. You see, Sun had very little real choice but to produce EJB 2, and to write a book like this, in part simply to stay competitive with jBoss and other application servers like IBM's Websphere and BEA's Weblogic. Run and run just to stay in place.
Rating:
Summary: It prooves that the "Books are ur Best Friends"
Review: Thanks Vlada Matena, Beth Stearns for writing such a good book on such a topic. I am here in India working on Advanced Java. just 3 weeks ago My PL told me that A PROJECT in JSP + EJB is coming and we don't have any one with us with EJB Experience. So U have 3 weeks, start ur R&D and be prepared. I went to varous institutes like IBM and all, but no where I got any course covering indepth EJB. Finally I got this book and second one of wrox press. oh! really Now I can say "I CAN DO ANYTHING with EJBs" What helped me alot was examples in this book (Actually I don't read too much in any book, I just try to find out how can I implement this, and thats what I got everywhere in this book) Also it clears that where to use session bean and where to use entity bean. where to use stateless and where to use statefull. Really it helped me lot and now I came to point IF U MANAGE TO GET GOOD BOOK, U NEED NOTHING ELSE A SYSTEM to master the subject. Again Thanks to Vlada Matena, Beth Stearns Regards SanatKumar Dhir SMIPL, INDIA dhir_sanatkumar@yahoo.com
Rating:
Summary: Top Notch, Clear Thinking
Review: The author expends his time and energy explaining the basics of J2EE platform and the intuition that went into developing the specification. Once you get the basics, you can equip yourself with the advanced stuff either from specialized books or from the manuals. The are some spots where the evangelizing gets a bit much. But hey it's crisp, clear and concise (done in 352 pages). If you want to develop a system you need to get a more "tutorial" type of book such as that of the wrox team, or from ths sun website. Buying a tools book may prove useless as the application/web containers versions change often and you may want to invest in that only closer the job one!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The first EJB book I've seen with the actual SQL for the tables it uses. The book does not state it's compliance, but I am very familiar with the 1.1 spec and it covers the 1.1 spec with nothing new from my perspective, so I assume it's 1.1 compliant. The book is short and sweet with plenty of examples. The title's keyword of "applying" is exactly correct. It shows application and not theory. If you want theory go for Enterprise Javabean's by O'Reilly. When you are done with that and ready for practical applications, come to this book. I highly recomend it for applying EJB.
Rating:
Summary: Useful but not the best EJB book
Review: This book is similar in content to the Monson-Haefel EJB 1.1 book. For EJB beginners, it is somewhat more readable than the latter book, and complete blocks of code are given (for an entire EJB bean class for example) in the book pages. However, as a book that only covers EJB 1.1 spec and is not application server specific, it is rather late to the market and as a result its value is somewhat reduced. The pluses of the book: the strongest selling point of the book is that it does an excellent job in explaining the EJB API (this may be attributed to the fact that the leading author of the book is a member of the Sun's J2EE architecture team). Things I find very useful include discussions on varies methods defined in the EJBObject and EJBHome and the Bean interfaces, the different life cycle behaviors among various type of EJB's, the container-bean contract, and container services such as transaction management and security control, all in a very clear manner. Although there is no integrated application in the book, unlike the Wrox Press's WebLogic book, the EJB design in this book is more sophisticated. The best practices of using value objects, dependent classes, helper classes, and database connection are all well-demonstrated throughout the code and clearly explained. The minuses of the book: in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, this book does not have a companion website to allow one to download the source code. It doesn't provide instructions to set up an EJB server to run the samples, and coverage on how to invoke EJB's from JSP and Java clients is limited. My suggestion: if you are new to EJB and don't care too much about the upcoming EJB 2.0 CMP service and message-driven beans at this point, this is a good alternative to the Monson-Haefel book. On the other hand, if you already own other EJB books or have hands-on experience, I think you should wait for the 2nd Ed. of the book by Ed Roman et al. to come out in the summer. As a side note, from what I understand the new Roman book promises to cover all the new EJB 2.0 stuff and uses WebLogic 6.0 for its samples.
Rating:
Summary: New edition is excellent
Review: This new edition of " Applying Enterprise JavaBeans" is a well written look at the Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 specification. The explanations of the various topics are in-depth and yet easy to follow. The authors provide diagrams and supporting code samples demonstrating how to write the code for each topic covered. They also provide explanations of when a particular technology is appropriate for your applications. The book even has a glossary so that if you forgot what an acronym stands for, you can look it up. The book covers all the usual topics one would expect in a book on EJBs. It starts with a general overview and then takes a look at each of the various bean types. Session beans (stateful and stateless), message driven beans, and entity beans are each covered. An application example is discussed which includes packaging of the application for production. The following chapter covers integrating web services into your EJB applications. Subsequent chapters cover transactions and security. The authors have done a great job of explaining not just how to code EJBs but also how they work within an application server, which you need to know to use EJBs successfully. The book is similar to the O'Reilly book in size and scope although this book has the advantage of being more current. Overall, the book is well written, easy to follow, and extremely useful. If you are new to EJBs or if you are looking for a book to bring you up to date on the new specification then this book will make a good choice.
Rating:
Summary: New edition is excellent
Review: This new edition of " Applying Enterprise JavaBeans" is a well written look at the Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 specification. The explanations of the various topics are in-depth and yet easy to follow. The authors provide diagrams and supporting code samples demonstrating how to write the code for each topic covered. They also provide explanations of when a particular technology is appropriate for your applications. The book even has a glossary so that if you forgot what an acronym stands for, you can look it up. The book covers all the usual topics one would expect in a book on EJBs. It starts with a general overview and then takes a look at each of the various bean types. Session beans (stateful and stateless), message driven beans, and entity beans are each covered. An application example is discussed which includes packaging of the application for production. The following chapter covers integrating web services into your EJB applications. Subsequent chapters cover transactions and security. The authors have done a great job of explaining not just how to code EJBs but also how they work within an application server, which you need to know to use EJBs successfully. The book is similar to the O'Reilly book in size and scope although this book has the advantage of being more current. Overall, the book is well written, easy to follow, and extremely useful. If you are new to EJBs or if you are looking for a book to bring you up to date on the new specification then this book will make a good choice.
Rating:
Summary: New edition is excellent
Review: This new edition of " Applying Enterprise JavaBeans" is a well written look at the Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 specification. The explanations of the various topics are in-depth and yet easy to follow. The authors provide diagrams and supporting code samples demonstrating how to write the code for each topic covered. They also provide explanations of when a particular technology is appropriate for your applications. The book even has a glossary so that if you forgot what an acronym stands for, you can look it up. The book covers all the usual topics one would expect in a book on EJBs. It starts with a general overview and then takes a look at each of the various bean types. Session beans (stateful and stateless), message driven beans, and entity beans are each covered. An application example is discussed which includes packaging of the application for production. The following chapter covers integrating web services into your EJB applications. Subsequent chapters cover transactions and security. The authors have done a great job of explaining not just how to code EJBs but also how they work within an application server, which you need to know to use EJBs successfully. The book is similar to the O'Reilly book in size and scope although this book has the advantage of being more current. Overall, the book is well written, easy to follow, and extremely useful. If you are new to EJBs or if you are looking for a book to bring you up to date on the new specification then this book will make a good choice.
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