Sams Teach Yourself EJB in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: An excellent example-book
Review: At last a competently-executed EJB book example book!
I can't speak for the english (b3ecause I have not read it thoroughly) or the quality of the project design (which is not optimal), but this book belongs on the shelf of everyone trying to learn how to use BEA Weblogic 7.0, and (probably) everyone trying to get going with JBoss 3.0.

This is the best BEA Weblogic deployment book since Zuffaleto's Weblogic Bible and the Weblogic workbook to Richard Monson-Haefel's 'Enterprise Javabeans', and the best I have seen for BEA Weblogic 7.0 bar none.

Why buy it? For a detailed, working example of how to install, configure, and administer enough of BEA Weblogic 7.0 to get proberly launched on further explorations. The scripts work and cleanly deploy into Weblogic without hassle or fuss. The authors provide client scripts which also work. Once the app server and database are properly configured and the connection pools and datasources set up, running the example programs have been the matter of minutes. Other books I could mention force the customer to debug the code and go out and research the missing parts which the authors didn't include.

Bravo! Fine engineering AND a competent job of technical publishing!

For the gent above who panned the book for the quality of it's description, I would like to comment that it'a not all that bad IMHO. I rather like the second chapter about CMP Entity beans for example, and the appendices on XML and UML are useful as well, to the point if I could take only one book on EJB to a client site, this would be it.

For literate descriptions of EjB I recommend the Monson-Haefel book, Ed Roman's 'Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans', and Marinescue's 'EJB Design Patterns'. One book cannot do everything!

Rating:
Summary: Teach yourself to debug Ghaly and Kothapalli's EJBs
Review: I completely agree with TonyGreen7. This book was a total disappointment. How are you supposed to learn such a complicated technology when have the time you are fighting your way through typos, ommissions and grammatical errors. UGH!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: I completely agree with TonyGreen7. This book was a total disappointment. How are you supposed to learn such a complicated technology when have the time you are fighting your way through typos, ommissions and grammatical errors. UGH!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Teach yourself to debug Ghaly and Kothapalli's EJBs
Review: I dont think there was a single program that didnt have bug in it. Bugs in the programs. Bugs in the deployment descriptors. Typos and wrong statements in the text. You need to check each and every program, line-by-line, against the updated code which must be downloaded from SAM's website. Your weblogic 30-day trial licence will expire before you finish slogging through this book.

Rating:
Summary: Nearly Unreadable Study Guide.
Review: I have to say that, having purchased this book, I am not a happy shopper.

SAMS two study guide series, the "24 hours" and "21 days" books, are usually fantastic value for money. On a quick scan of my bookshelf I see I have "Apache 2 in 24 hours" and "JDBC in 21 days" and they have both been invaluable to me.

What went wrong with "EJB in 21 days"?

On the plus side this book is comprehensive, the writers know their material and the order in which they tackle it is clear and logical.

On the minus side Ragae Ghaly and Krishna Kothapalli appear to share to deep aversion to clear, well-formed sentences. Here is an example, I challenge the reader to find the full sense of this sentence in less than three readings:

"The session context provides access to runtime session context such as identifying the caller, access or change current transaction state, and so on." (Day 3 p.58)

Even after three readings when the sense that the writers were trying to convey may actually congeal somewhere inside your brain it is difficult to convince yourself that this sentence is grammatically correct; surely that should be "...access[ing] or chang[ing] [the] current ...".

Sadly this is not an isolated example. At times the writers appear so confused by their own ramblings that they go over the same point several times in a row desparately trying to clarify what they have already muddied.

My advice to you: don't buy it.

My advice to SAMS: put your comissioning editor on punishment rations until he or she recovers his or her editorial zeal.

Rating:
Summary: The review questions provide the reader with a study guide
Review: Sams Teach Yourself EJB In 21 Days introduces the development and deployment aspects of EJB, the fastest growing standards in developing Java applications in an enterprise environment. EJBs are, functionally, distributed network aware components for developing secure, scalable, transactional and multi-user components in a J2EE environment. Sams Teach Yourself EJB In 21 Days covers the new features of EJB 2.0, such as local interface, CMP, and CMR. It provides hands-on examples based on practical solutions found in the industry, as well as a wealth of tips and best practices which give the beginner an edge to avoid repeated common mistakes. The review questions provide the reader with a study guide. Source code for a complete credit approval process in a transactional e-Commerce environment is provided. 600 pages, Beginner-to-Intermediate

Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners
Review: The book helped me to get fast into EJB, a lot of examples and easy language, it also covers some other J2EE concepts like JMS and JDBC.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent hands-on EJB guide
Review: This book is well organized and paced as a EJB study guide. It also covers ejb 2.0 with extensive elaboration on local interfaces, MDB and JMS. It is rich in examples and has best practices for each ejb/architectural/development topics covered in the book. Summary, Q&A and exercises sections at the end of each chapter are carefully phrased or designed to help the reader to review what's in the chaptuer. Besides its comprehensive coverage of EJB, it also covers all other aspects of J2EE (such as Servlet (Web Tier), JDBC, JavaMail, JMS, and so on). In comparison, it complements Ed Roman and Monson-Haefel's EJB books with more details on how to configure, deploy and run EJB application on Weblogic and JBoss, which (JBoss) is gaining popularity as a production ready application server among enterprises. Negatives for the book are it did not cover JCA and JAXP. Overall, it is a excellent beginner to intermediate EBJ/J2EE study guide.

Rating:
Summary: Provides good foundation for developing e-commerce apps
Review: This was the first book on EJB that worked for me. Although it
took 1 1/2 months to warm up to all the concepts, it was well
worth the effort. I was able to run all the examples on
Weblogic 7.0 installed on Windows 2000 and Weblogic 8.1
installed on Windows XP. The best practices section offers very
good pointers for real world programming, it also proves
the authors know their subject and are experienced in the field.
The book also demonstrates how easy it is to start using
BEA WebLogic Application Server that you can improve upon.