Rating: 
Summary: Much more than I expected.
Review: I bought this book specifically because it used building an LDAP solution to illustrate how to build Java applications. It fulfilled my expectations in that regard because the material went deep into details. If your sole goal was to learn LDAP and how to employ it as an enterprise solution this book would be worth its weight in gold. However, it also exceeded my expectations in every other respect. First, the author's approach reflects the best practices in software engineering - not merely development. Interwoven throughout are reuse, architecture first approach, business considerations, and a wealth of material on data modeling. Second, every facet of enterprise application development is addressed, including performance issues, deployment and support considerations and each layer in a typical architecture. This book will give you all of the technical details necessary to build enterprise-wide Java applications, as well as provide you with excellent advice on software engineering and enterprise architectures. SInce this book follows a storyline, I'm eagerly awaiting the other volumes that are supposed to follow this one.
Rating:
Summary: Another Great book from Brett McLaughlin
Review: I have been programming with Java for over 6 years now and have been teaching Java, J2EE for almost just as long. In my role as lead developer, architect, teacher, and mentor, I am always looking for good books that I can recommend that really teaches people how to write good code. In the J2EE arena, I've had two favorites that I always recommend - Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies by Deepak Alur and Designing Enterprise Applications with the J2EE Platform by Inderjeet Singh. I love the way those books are written and I find the same traits in this book. I'm going to have to add this book that list as Brett has written a great book. In the 1st book of the 3-book series, Brett walks the reader through the architectural issues developers typically face when they start on a new project. The 2nd book in this series will deal with Web Applications and the 3rd book will deal with the concept of Web Services. The book starts off where the developer(s), working for a fictional company gets a set of requirement for an application. As you read the book, you go through all of the steps of the software development process and discovering how the different J2EE technologies work together to make up the final solution. The book is aimed at experienced developers who don't mind wading through hundreds of lines of code. The goal here is to explore and understand concept using code and is not meant for the uninitiated. The author arms the readers with tips, tricks, techniques that make up a good design based on real-world experience which makes this book a really good resource for any enterprise developer.
Rating: 
Summary: Too basic
Review: I really wanted to like this book, but I simply could not. I enjoyed Brett's Java & XML quite a bit, and my hopes for Java Enterprise Applications were quite high. The idea behind the series, to show how everything in J2EE fits together, sounded really appealing. Alas, the book did not live up to my expectations. I am an experienced Java developer currently studying for the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect certification. For me, the contents of the book were on the verge of being trivial. I learned a little about LDAP, but the rest of the book was very much fluff, and not very filling. Even more annoyingly, the book contains some subtle errors and bad practices, like Double-Checked Locking on page 135 ...pooling of potentially broken connections on page 139, arguments from "security through obscurity" on page 151, and suppressed exceptions on page 155. J2EE contains enough pitfalls for practitioners even without experts teaching bad practices. This book has its good sides, too. It contains much source code, making it a fast read. The amount of source code really highlights some of the very negative aspects of EJBs (especially Entity beans), but the author did give any suggestions for improvements. If you have just encountered J2EE and EJBs, this book might be good for you. I would rather recommend reading Monson-Haefel on EJBs and the JMS tutorial trail on java.sun.com.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for getting started w/ J2EE, BUT TOO MANY ERRORS
Review: I've often seen complaints about O'Reilly's editing in reviews like this. Now I know what all those folks are complaining about. The diagrams and examples in this book are just plain *BAD*. In the section on DB design I don't think there wasn't one ER diagram with out MULTIPLE errors. Where's the quality control? I would have given 4 stars if the diagrams and examples were corrct. The textual content of the book is actually pretty good, easy to read, but a little slow paced for me. I was initially attracted to the book because of it's promise of bringing multiple J2EE concepts toghether in one read. I'm afraid tho that if I'm left to analyzing and correcting errors in areas that I'm familiar with that I'll be very confused and frustrated by errors in areas I'm not so familar with. I will certainly scrutinize the next two volumes in the series much more closely before I consider buying.
Rating:
Summary: A long awaited book on enterprise system design
Review: This book kept me absorbed from first to the end. I learnt lot of interesting and important stuff otherwise, I would have missed in my design. The book begins with an imaginary organization in need of computerization. Author starts with data modelling, how we could use LDAP to authentication to authorization, ejb components and usage and finally using an example of JMS. Lots of trips and techniques of good design is illustrated. The author gradually improves the design from previous chapters and and also keep changing the code accordingly. I am glad I bought this book and I am eager to see the next two book in the series.
Rating:
Summary: Useful book, but too verbose and too many errors.
Review: This book teaches principles and patterns of applying J2ee technology by an example. It worth a read. I bought the book, and finished reading it for 4 days. I did learn some designs I don't know before. But I doubt if the book is worth the price:
1. It is too verbose. Very often a simple idea which can be explained in one sentence is explained in one whole page. I hope the author can supply a -v option, so that I can read it more efficiently. This 300 pages book can be reduced to 150 pages.
2. The Figures in the book contains too many errors. Most of the E-R diagrams in the book are wrong. This is appearantly not the fault of the author. I think the editor in O-Reilly should be fired.
My suggestion is that if you can share a book with a friend, then don't buy it. It just worth one read.
Rating:
Summary: Useful book, but too verbose and too many errors.
Review: This book teaches principles and patterns of applying J2ee technology by an example. It worth a read. I bought the book, and finished reading it for 4 days. I do learnt some designs I don't know before. But I doubt if the book is worth the price:
1. It is too verbose. Very often a simple idea which can be explained in one sentence is explained in one whole page. I hope the author can supply a -v option, so that I can read it more efficiently. This 300 pages book can be reduced to 150 pages.
2. The Figures in the book contains too many errors. Most of the E-R diagrams in the book are wrong. This is appearantly not the fault of the author. I think the editor in O-Reilly should be fired.
My suggestion is that if you can share a book with a friend, then don't buy it. It just worth one read.
Rating: 
Summary: Great overview
Review: This book will not teach you all the nitty gritty of J2EE. It will, however, explain when to use what part of the APIs. It goes through a lot of the different parts of J2EE. For me it was a good overview. I started coding J2EE by going in deep from the start. If this book would've been available when I was learning the technology, my path to understanding it all would've been shorter. I especially liked the way the author builds the different elements together to construct a system. It shows how they mix.
Rating: 
Summary: another lousy manpage reprint from ORA
Review: This is yet another one of ORA's buzzword books with next to no original content. If you want a decent book on J2EE, check out the offerings from Manning Press, Addison-Wesley, or Wrox. At least those companies actually edit their books, and see if the printed examples work.
Rating:
Summary: Now you can make the leap.
Review: This was a timely find - just the book I required for an accelerated introduction to j2ee and related enterprise-oriented technologies. With five years of JAVA programming under my belt, responsible for the java-based technologies supporting our in-house web server farm and now on the doorstep of a j2ee consulting endeavor, I'm finding this book to be invaluable. Definitely a comprehendable guide, clearly illustrating the implementation of a j2ee project from concept thru implementation. Probably the best in my collection thus far (which includes the latest on JSP and EJB from Wrox, the Core and Advanced from PH and the Sun j2ee platform books from Addison Wesley). Will be on the lookout for the second volume in the series!
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