Rating: 
Summary: Good as a tutorial, good as a reference..
Review: Complete, detailed, easy to read and understand, this book should be shipped with every copy of Websphere Server. The best money I've spent on a technical book in years. If you are developing applications with Websphere, you should own a copy of this book. It clearly explains how to exploit J2EE technologies in your application architecture, as well as how to take advantage of the features of Websphere Server. Invaluable as a learning guide or as a reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Reference
Review: I am glad others found the book useful. I found it nearly worhtless although I was pleased with the WSAD 4 coverage. However, explanations are minimal and trying to deploy your first app to WebSphere 4 using this book was a waste. After reading and re-reading everything it said, we still had no success so we just dug in, trial and error, several days and finally got it. Discussions on virtual hosts offered us nothing but a few descriptions that only make sense after you understand what a virtual host is. With paragraph after paragraph labeled understanding, I would have thought some would have been imparted - we needed quick understanding in a real project and the way things are today, we needed it fast. The book gets rarely referenced by myself. There is just not enough in depth explanation to save one from the school of "hard knocks". A student, with time may get some value as an introduction but overall I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Reference
Review: I am glad others found the book useful. I found it nearly worhtless although I was pleased with the WSAD 4 coverage. However, explanations are minimal and trying to deploy your first app to WebSphere 4 using this book was a waste. After reading and re-reading everything it said, we still had no success so we just dug in, trial and error, several days and finally got it. Discussions on virtual hosts offered us nothing but a few descriptions that only make sense after you understand what a virtual host is. With paragraph after paragraph labeled understanding, I would have thought some would have been imparted - we needed quick understanding in a real project and the way things are today, we needed it fast. The book gets rarely referenced by myself. There is just not enough in depth explanation to save one from the school of "hard knocks". A student, with time may get some value as an introduction but overall I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Useless for the newbies
Review: I bought this book because it was marketed as a guide for the beginners and intermediates. Lie.I needed to learn websphere for my job, so after the first few chapters I had to stop because the thing started to fly way over my head. All I needed was something to explain me the basics and the most common architecture and mechanics. This book doesn't do that. Maybe if you are a veteran with Websphere, this might be good, but if you are looking for something to get you started, stay away from this book.
Rating:
Summary: Useless for the newbies
Review: I bought this book because it was marketed as a guide for the beginners and intermediates. Lie. I needed to learn websphere for my job, so after the first few chapters I had to stop because the thing started to fly way over my head. All I needed was something to explain me the basics and the most common architecture and mechanics. This book doesn't do that. Maybe if you are a veteran with Websphere, this might be good, but if you are looking for something to get you started, stay away from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough material is presented well...
Review: I enjoyed learning from this book. It explained things to me in a concise and easy to follow manner. I was able to gain an understanding of how WebSphere works - the big picture, and my application server was up and running relatively quickly. The sharing of tips and tricks is something you just can't gain from a manual!
Rating:
Summary: Its what you need to know.....
Review: I liked this book because it was what you needed to know - nothing more. It had practical examples and "how-to's" to get you from the development/coding to deployment. The most useful part (to me anyways) was the gotcha's that I normally spend hours trying to figure out - particularly with IBM products ;) Good book if you want to know the entire lifecycle if WebSphere.
Rating:
Summary: Good as a tutorial, good as a reference..
Review: I recently started a job that is using WAS for their application server. I needed a reference book to help jump start me, and I felt this book did a great job. It covers the install and admin pieces quite well, and I am beginning to go through the development sections. I like the fact that they have a lot of code examples and an overall running project example. I get alot of use from looking at actual working code. The book does use the WSAD(WebSphere Studio Application Developer) tool to illustrate the examples, but I just used my favorite editor and Javac with out any problems. Overall this book explained well the things I needed to know and I would recommend it to others.
Rating:
Summary: Had what I needed
Review: I recently started a job that is using WAS for their application server. I needed a reference book to help jump start me, and I felt this book did a great job. It covers the install and admin pieces quite well, and I am beginning to go through the development sections. I like the fact that they have a lot of code examples and an overall running project example. I get alot of use from looking at actual working code. The book does use the WSAD(WebSphere Studio Application Developer) tool to illustrate the examples, but I just used my favorite editor and Javac with out any problems. Overall this book explained well the things I needed to know and I would recommend it to others.
Rating:
Summary: Overall a good reference
Review: Our company has just purchased WAS to replace our existing application server. We have grown to the point where we want to get an application server that will scale well(and be supported well). I found that this book covers the install and administration tasks quite well. That's really what I needed from this book. I have also gone through some of the development sections and like the code examples that are supplied. This book does have a lot of information about using the IBM Toolset in conjuction with WAS(which we have not purchased), but I was able to follow the examples just the same. It does seem like the WebSphere Studio(WSAD) tool would work well with WAS(I guess they should), but I was able to use my UltraEdit and javac just fine. I would recommend this book to people who need to learn WAS 4 administration or learn how to develop and implement software on it for the real world. I have found it to fulfill all my WAS needs.
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