WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.0

Rating:
Summary: Good book. I constantly use it during J2EE development
Review: I was looking for a book about WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5. I read this negative review of the reader and it was a concern. However, this is the only book completely dedicated to WSAD 5 and it's context looks good, so I decided to take a risk and buy. I am glad I did it.

Yes, the book examples use DB2 7.1 and WSAD 5.0 and the corresponding software currently available for download - DB2 8.1 and WSAD 5.1. However, I found absolutely no problems installing them both following the book and installation instructions and then developing all book examples.

For BD2 8.2, I did not find any differences except this small one - you no longer need to pre-set DB2 for Java 2 (it is already set for this by default). There are some screens differences between WSAD 5.0 and WSAD 5.1, but they are minor and easy to handle (IBM simply rearranged some screens - moving some fields between screens). When I was developing the book examples, these changes were easy to handle.

By reading the book and developing its examples, I learn a lot about WSAD 5. The book's style is "step-by-step" with a lot of explanations - which is very helpful and easy to follow. In addition, the book covers some advanced topics that I was unable to find elsewhere.

The author of this negative book review considers this book and all other books (he purchased) completely useless. I think it's his problem rather then the books.

I decided to write this book review, because he simply misleads the readers.

Rating:
Summary: Great learning examples insdie
Review: It took me two weeks time to finish reading the first seven chapters of the book. And the book samples are pretty impressive: They are very simple and easy to understand and implement. They are also accurate so that I can understand the WSAD gradually. Although there are some typos and errors inside the book, the book is still very good for any Java developers who want to learn WSAD.

Rating:
Summary: Very helpful book for beginners and experienced people
Review: Very helpful book for beginners and experienced people

I studied this book through every page, executing every example and found it informative and accurate. The way this book is constructed, it is a good manual, because it starts with relatively simple material, and gradually increases a complexity. Appendixes are also very valuable, because they demonstrate how to deploy just developed and unit tested J2EE applications into WebSphere server. The book is also a good reference material.

Especially I value the Part Three about J2EE messaging. People, who are experienced with J2EE will find this material helpful to learn about J2EE JMS and concrete MQ implementation, and opposite, people, like myself, having many years of experience working with MQ, to grasp J2EE JMS implementation with MQ.

About myself: I work with IBM and BEA Middleware products for about 6 years. I have written a note to our IBM sales representative about this book, recommending IBM to ask Igor Livshin to write a Red Book on WebSphere MQ and JMS

Ilya Rabinovich, [e-mail]