Rating: 
Summary: Hard to Evaluate
Review: I learn best by doing. When I buy technical books, I prefer those that include a lot of working examples. I have recently had an immense quantity of J2EE architecture poured into my somewhat leaky old brain, and I was looking for something that could get everything to gel together when I happened on this book. Since Weblogic Server 6.1 is the server in use on my current assignment, I bought this book with the intention of cobbling together a test environment and working through its many examples.At first the going was pretty good. Zuffoletto has an easily readable style and, with his guidance, I got the server up and running without too many traumas. I was OK until I started to work through the RMI examples in the book. They didn't work. After some fumbling, I went to the website and downloaded the updates examples. They were quite a bit different, but still didn't work. Fortunately, I have knowledgeable friends, and we eventually filled in the gaps and got everything up and running. My first issue with the book is that this pattern repeated itself frequently. The text itself is great, but from a practical viewpoint, the supporting examples have many gaps in them. Sometimes the errors are glaring - failure to qualify the class name when running it in the JVM. Sometimes they are quite subtle. I frequently got the feeling that the book was really written for Weblogic 6.0 and then given a slight makeover to adapt it to 6.1. In addition, the book often fails to provide the kind of detailed practical explanations of how to compile and where to place code that are vital to beginners. I also think Zuffoletto should have spent more time working through the intricacies of managing the Weblogic Server. As it is, the book is more focused on being a general introduction to using the technologies that WLS 6.1 supports. This isn't necessarily bad, but I found myself struggling to figure out whether I had set up the parameters correctly a few too many times. In addition, I had some problems because I use MS SQL Server for persistence rather than Oracle, and so was left out in the cold a bit. On the good side, this is a very well written book that covered an immense amount of material without getting bogged down anywhere. It starts from scratch and takes you from setting up the environment and the development team, to the various API's (JNDI, RMI, JDBC, JMS, JTA, and JavaMail), and then through the major development patters (JSP, EJB, etc.). The final third of the book focuses on Weblogic administration and support and then some time is spent on what I think of as more emergent technologies (such as SOAP). If coverage isn't always as deep as it could be, one has to keep in mind that this is a 900-page book as it is. I guess my real problem is that the book doesn't quite live up to its hype. Which is, perhaps more the fault of the publisher than Zuffoletto and his team. It is Hungry Minds, after all, that put the '100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, and What You Need' on the books cover. Well, it's a bit more like 70%, but that isn't all bad. Had the examples been a bit more workable (perhaps by expanding on the books website) I would have been very happy with it. As it is, I don't regret reading it at all,
Rating: 
Summary: Wow
Review: I'm currently preparing the SUN Java2 architect certification. In this context, I read almost everything that gets published around J2EE. There are a lot of good books around but this one is special. It covers a lot of ground (JDBC, JNDI, RMI, JTA, JMS, JavaMail, servlets, EJBs, security), and at least it does this in the context of one of the most popular J2EE application servers, whilst most of the other books remain quite theoretical.
As a developer, you don't want to invest a lot of money in an application server for trying out things at home, right? I tried to make code run either in SUN's reference implementation, or by mixing open source containers like JBoss ant Tomcat (or Resin). Those are also very good products, and at the end of the day, you'll get the code running, but it's by no means a trivial task. Here, just download a 30 day free trial version of WebLogic 6.1 from BEA's site, install it, and you get the examples running immediately.
Also, considering the popularity of the platform, it's a small investment that could pay back very quickly in your next job. In just one word: Wow!
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed
Review: If you are new to WebLogic and/or are somewhat mystified by J2EE buy this book. It's a great resource and it is totally worth the money. It helps you get up and running quickly without getting too bogged down in all the BEA documentation. I found the overview of the J2EE technologies very enriching and the demonstration of WebLogic's value proposition and capabilities easy to digest. It also has some very helpful and practical suggestions for working out some thorny issues with WebLogic server such as class loaders, deployment etc. I'm constantly referring to it. The author has really done his homework and has done a valuable service to the WebLogic developer community by writing this book. When I had a question regarding some portions of the text I emailed the author and he responded within hours! He not only helped answer my question but also pointed me in the right direction where I could do additional research. It's nice to see someone stand by their work like that.
Rating:
Summary: Consider this book recommended!
Review: If you are new to WebLogic, I suggest that you get this book. If you have been working with WebLogic since before the EJB .8 spec., I suggest that you get this book. I really enjoyed reading the Weblogic Bible. I've been using WebLogic off and on since before EJB existed, and I still learned a bunch of new tricks. This is an excellent reference that can be read from cover to cover. I liked the small examples and the emphasis on deploying the examples. I especially like all the examples of setting up the configuration with an explanations of what the different parameters are and when to use them. I like going from concept to implementation, and that is what this book does. Unlike some other WebLogic centric books, the coverage of EJB CMP/CMR was pretty good. A couple of things I did *not* like as follows: 1) A few times the examples were WebLogic centric when they could have been written them in a cross platform manner ( wrt J2EE ). (Note: A prerequisite of this book is a working knowledge of J2EE.) 2) The EJB examples hard coded the JNDI parameters instead of using the jndi.properites file in the classpath, which is the preferred approach for cross platform J2EE development. I realize that at times you have to write things WebLogic centric to utilize their extensions to J2EE, but I found the book also did this at times when it was not really necessary to do so. A J2EE veteran will catch the difference, and a J2EE novice will not. Bottom line... have a working knowledge of J2EE before reading this book and there will not be any problem. The coverage of performance monitoring was really well done. And, the ideas for optimization and thought process behind it was also really well done. Consider this book recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Print version of online documentation
Review: If you prefer print version of the online documentation here it is. Unfortunately, not much content in addition to that online component. Provides a solid introduction to weblogic and j2ee, although does not go into depth in any particular topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Good weblogic 6.1 book available on the market.
Review: If you try to find the in-depth technical JAVA 2 Enterprise Edition with BEA Weblogic 6.1, this book is very awesome. This book tell you how to setup all JDBC, EJB, JTS, RMI, JSP, Servlet, and "how-to-do" application deployment. You cannot find from other books in-depth details like this book. Only things, I cannot find the CD includes all source codes in this book. Also I expect to see more details on cluster configuration and impacts on others (jndi, ejb, jsp, servlet), if I have cluster web farms. The best of the best, if you can introduce weblogic 7.0.
Rating:
Summary: Great book A must have for all Weblogic 6 users...
Review: Just wanted to let you know from a hardcore..internal weblogic user.. and book hound.... This book is awesome... This is the documentation we never had.......... I kind of wished you leverage ant more though...... Are
you doing the same for 7.0?
Rating: 
Summary: mostly useless
Review: like so many computer books, this is about 4 pounds of stuffing: w2k screen shots, very simple j2ee code examples, &c. if you want to learn EJB, get a real EJB book like Monson-Haefel (0-596-00226-2). for weblogic, stick to online docs.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for J2EE as well as Weblogic
Review: Most people want to work with real code examples so at some point, all J2EE developers will want a book that goes into the detail of deploying to an application server, deployment specific work sometimes taking as much of the time as the actual coding (I've had deployment files that are longer than the Java code they support).
This book sets out how to code and deploy from the beginning.
The text is clear and succinct. The examples are short but functional.
Each chapter has examples that don't rely on having done the examples in other chapters, so you can go to the chapter you want and concentrate on what you want to learn.
The style of the book makes it easy to keep on learning, by the time you finish each chapter, you should have a real sense of accomplishment.
A trial version of Weblogic can be downloaded from the internet so using it with this book will take you through just about all the technologies you need and your confidence to write Java Enterprise applications will soar.
Well worth the money for good information on Java Enterprise and great advice for using Weblogic.
Rating:
Summary: Execllent BEA WebLogic Architecture and Admin Resource
Review: The BEA WebLogic Server Bible has execllent architecture and administrator guide for bea WebLogic Application Server, espacially, the best part I like is the icons of notes, tips, cautions and cross references, those give you the best practices to make the WebLogic plateform more efficient, robust and productive.
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