Enterprise JavaBeans was recently voted "Best Java Book" by the editors and readers of Java Developer's Journal. Readers of JavaPro named it the "Best Java Book for Experts." And Amazon.com included it in the Top Computer Books for 2000. Now the best only gets better! In the new 3rd edition, Enterprise JavaBeans has been completely revised and updated with a thorough introduction to the new 2.0 version of the EJB specification. Significantly different from the earlier version, the 2.0 specification introduces three dramatic improvements: A completely new version of container-managed persistence; local interfaces; and a totally new kind of bean called the "message driven bean." The new version of container-managed persistence (CMP) beans in 2.0 is more portable and robust than in the older 1.1 version. Most significant is the introduction of the relationship fields, which allow entity beans to declare relationships with each other as natural references. In order to make this huge leap in component relationships possible, EJB 2.0 had to redesign how entity beans are defined and interact. Our new 3rd edition examines this critical CMP model in detail. Local interfaces are thoroughly discussed as well. Local interfaces allow beans that are co-located to interact without the overhead of remote method calls. This improves the performance of beans considerably and complements the CMP relationship fields. Message driven beans are a new kind of enterprise bean based on asynchronous messaging and the Java Message service (JMS). Instead of responding to Java RMI calls, message driven beans process JMS messages sent by messaging clients. An entire chapter is devoted to message-driven beans and how to use them effectively. In addition, the 3rd edition contains an architecture overview, information on resource management and primary services, design strategies, and XML deployment descriptors.

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Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 17 2003
Submitted by Stjepan Brbot   [Respond | View]

This is an excelent book about the Enterprise JavaBeans generally. But I suggest oversteping or only skimming first three chapters because they talk too much about RMI, CORBA and other technologies laying in the background of the whole EJB framework. (Of course, everybody has to know what's going on in the background, but there are other books majored in field of RMI and CORBA). I wanted to read all pages from the first one to the last one but almost broke my teeth until reached the fourth or fifth chapter. Starting from e.g. sixth chapter book shows how to use EJB or write enterprise application using EJBs (not how to write EJB containers!), and that's most of us wanted from this book. Finally, this book can be strongly recommended to all developers willing to start with EJB and enterprise application development.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 01 2003
Submitted by WM   [Respond | View]

Its many months since I first read this book, and its as good now as it was then.

However, it would be nice if you made your downloadable PDF workbooks printable, as they are really useless for viewing on screen.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  August 04 2003
Submitted by Nathan Wang   [Respond | View]

All in all, this book is very well written, especially if compared to other books in similar titles. Concepts are explained concisely and no extra irrelevant materials covered. That said, it still can improved in two areas:

1. This book is very useful if you read it together with the companion wookbooks. The book I read was for weblogic, which, unfortunately, was kind of out dated. It took a while to get the first example up and running. After that, the rest is quite smooth.

2. The later part of the book, starting from chapter 12, seems to be done more in a rush. Even the writing style was kind of different from earlier chapters. Also there were quite some repetitions that probably could be omitted and replaced with more elaboration and examples of the topics.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 04 2002
Submitted by Steinar Overbeck Cook   [Respond | View]

Simply *the* book to read if you are going to use J2EE. Only problem is how to actually implement the stuff :-) Having used the book for 12 months in various projects, I have managed with the documentation supplied by the container vendors, like for instance JBoss and WebSphere, but I have really, really missed the work book.

I would have rated this book as "Definitive" if it had not been for the missing work book :-)

I think Mr. Monson-Haefel has made a tremendous job of this book!!


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  October 11 2002
Submitted by Rajesh S. Rao   [Respond | View]

Yes...Is is a very good book. I recommend it for every J2EE developer.

However, a special chapter on EJB design patterns in future editions would be even more appreciable.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  August 07 2002
Submitted by Shaukat Hussain   [Respond | View]

Lots of repeations, mincing words again and again.

That makes a boring subject even more boring.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  July 31 2002
Submitted by Stoffel   [Respond | View]

The book without the proper Workbook is, though not useless, not too helpfull .-(

A promise is there to be kept. April is long gone .-((


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  July 10 2002
Submitted by Hemant Arora   [Respond | View]

This books really caters to all the queries in the mind.

A must buy book available on ejb titles.

Can be further made mcuh better if some more examples

are given by author on important topics like transactions.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  May 20 2002
Submitted by Reid Kleinman   [Respond | View]

I agree... this is a good book! However, the author has been promising the J2EE workbook and examples for quite sometime. First it was promised in March 2002, then April 2002, now July of 2002. When it does arrive it will definitely complement this already informative book.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  April 23 2002
Submitted by andrea polini   [Respond | View]

Yes, it is a good book, clear and rather coincise. But, is it possible to know when the J2EE work book will be published? April is going to finish!!


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  April 12 2002
Submitted by Virat Chopra   [Respond | View]

The Book is good, cleared a lot of concepts for me, but i wanted the J2EE work book too, i have been waiting for it for a long time, its April but still the J2EE workbook is not available, feeling dissapointed now.




Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  March 20 2002
Submitted by Duane Gran   [Respond | View]

Overall I am very pleased with this book and am reading it a second time. EJB is a challenging topic and the author treats it seriously. The book has given me pause for thought many times as I was exposed to new ways of thinking about software development. I highly recommend it to Java programmers.

I emailed the author about the workbook status and I'm informed that a JBoss 3.0 workbook will be released near the end of summer.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  February 17 2002
Submitted by Michel Eskandar   [Respond | View]

It is a shame that such a good book would not provide a sun j2sdk workbook, as is supposed and promised by the author. Wait until the workbook is available if using j2sdk.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  January 29 2002
Submitted by E S   [Respond | View]

Very good book. Two disappointments:

• the "free" workbooks as promised in the text are, as others have noted, not exactly free.
  
  
• it's a shame that there isn't a jboss workbook.
  
  

Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  January 10 2002
Submitted by Karsten Jancke   [Respond | View]

It's a quite good introduction to EJB. The only problem I had was that the examples given in the EJBWorkbook don't always match the code-snippets in the real book, e.g. the JNDI naming in the book (ShipHome, ShipBean, Ship) differs from the downloadable code examples (ShipHomeRemote, ShipRemote). That makes things complicated when you try to write some of the code by yourself and take other parts from the dowloaded code. Plus, there are some bugs in the examples...


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  January 03 2002
Submitted by Javier Soques   [Respond | View]

So far so good. I'm using JBoss with Postgresql as my ejb server/db server combo and I was able to deploy the cabin.jar example of chapter 4, although I got stuck with the 1st client example application (got to do with a security manager). I hope to solve this (must be a JBoss issue). It would be great to have a workbook version for JBoss.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 21 2001
Submitted by Max Winther   [Respond | View]

It is good introduction to ejb, however a free cookbook for the Sun Reference implementation would be natural. Many deployment problems arise as early as in chapter 4, and it is not fair, that you have to buy another book before you can run the examples, which sustain the theory in the book. The mixture of ejb 1.1 and 2.0 is also potentially dangerous, the reader has at all to time to be aware of that is 1.1 or 2.0. Cookbook codes seems to have been written for 2.0 soley.

Another thing is the obvious errors in the book, just to mention an example: The books writes about a CabinPK class, and even shows the package placement in fig. 4-2, but there is the code for class? Not found in the free cookbooks or in the book.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 18 2001
Submitted by rjf   [Respond | View]

This is a very good book. However, the authors comment on pg. 86, "To help you....I have created FREE workbooks for specific EJB servers....", and in the preface regarding the free workbooks is a little bit misleading. The downloadable workbook only contains exercises for chapter 4, if you want more you have to pay.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 06 2001
Submitted by Andrew   [Respond | View]

The book is excellent, I "upgraded" from the first edition of the book. I was quite disappointed, though, at the way the book promised free copies of the Workbooks. The free workbooks are only excerpts; you have to pay to get the complete books. This was misleading; one of the reasons I bought the new edition was because of the promise of these free workbooks.




Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 06 2001
Submitted by carlo giustinoni   [Respond | View]

Good, so far, up to chapter 4; but I can't find 2 source files, Cabin.java and CabinPK.java. Am i missing something ?


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  December 05 2001
Submitted by Sreenivasa Murthy   [Respond | View]

It's just a Very good Book, with good Technical Insite of J2EE Architecture...

especially EJB....the presentation of the book is quite well.

If there was any option of getting Chapters online then it will be

really added advantage.




Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  November 27 2001
Submitted by Steve Finck   [Respond | View]

I was VERY disappointed in the fact that the book claims that the complete workbook with examples is available for free. However, the downloadable version of the workbook is not complete and you must purchase the workbook for $29.95 in order to get all of the examples. EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTING!

Otherwise, a very good book.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  November 14 2001
Submitted by Torsten Müller   [Respond | View]

Yes, this is a good book.

Still it is a bit clumsy on the printed source codes. Although I don't know the previous editions, I suspect that not too much revision and error checking has been applied on the examples. Some figures definitely show completely different things than described in the text, the Bean names seem to have undergone a revision (to accomodate EJB 2.0), but not quite everywhere. On the one hand that's a bit annoying (if the examples don't work at the first try and you have to check every line whether you typed it correctly), on the other hand it is satisfying to finally get it to work on your own.

The downloadable workbooks give some more hints (like which files really to put in the jar file to make it work), but still they also have some problems copied from the book (like methods that are never calle but should be).

Nobody is perfect, and since this is not a book for absolute Java beginners, but for somebody with a bit of experience, the source code errors are detectable and (funny enough) help you to get a deeper understanding of EJBs. Buy the book, but watch the errata page.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  October 26 2001
Submitted by Steve Salkin   [Respond | View]

As always, Richard Monson-Haefel's book is an example of clarity and comprehension. Since I discovered his work, I have added each new title or edition to my library. A good technical author may lay the facts before you, but a great one offers the distilled essence of their own experience and insight. Richard Monson-Haefel's work is and has been an example of greatness in technical writing, and his latest work is as good an example of this as any.

This is the book that I recommend to anyone wanting to get serious about EJBs, as architects, as developers, or as coders (even to managers with a technical background.) If you are considering another, larger book, perhaps one with many co-authors, consider that this book offers a unified perspective from someone who has been deeply involved in the course of evolution of EJB from nearly the beginning. Although his work is shorter than some other books, it is no less complete, and offers a concentrated brevity in contrast to disjointed wordiness.

In short: buy this book.


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  October 04 2001
Submitted by Greg Arbon   [Respond | View]

An excellent book. Well written, well organized, and even has workbooks for reference at:

https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/entjbeans3/workbooks/index.html


Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition Review,  September 29 2001
Submitted by Srinivas Ayyagari   [Respond | View]

It is a excellent book and a must for every J2EE developer.I was reading all the previous editions of EJB book by Richard Mansel.I apprecite his style of writing and gives a lot of insight in coding J2EE applications.

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