Beginning J2ee 1.4: From Novice to Professional

by Kevin Mukhar, James L. Weaver, Jim Crume

Book Overview

This book is aimed at programmers who have learned the basics of Java from, for example, "Beginning Java 1.4: From Novice to Professional", and are now ready to learn how to use Java in the real world, with J2EE. But, J2EE is a big spec, and the target audience is not interested in Enterprise JavaBeans and other advanced specs within J2EE. In fact, 75% of J2EE applications are built using only JavaServer Pages and Servlets (two of the simpler technologies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590593413
• ISBN13: 9781590593417
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great first j2ee book

Being a beginner I was frustrated by other books before I happened upon Beginning J2EE 1.4. I'm only 1/4 way through the book but all the examples work and I feel I've already got my money's worth. I think after studying this book I will be able to go back to other beginning books and fix the reasons why their examples did not work for me.

Great intro to J2EE

The book is a very well-balanced introduction to many J2EE topics such as JSP, Servlets, JDBC, and EJB. Examples are "as simple as possible, but no simpler", and are quite useful for understanding the various topics. Obviously this book is now out in the newer edition that covers the much-changed and simplified (yey!) Java EE 5, but for anyone who would need to work with legacy J2EE 1.4 applications this book certainly provides good value.

Very well-rounded.

Normally I'm not the type of person that puts the effort into reviewing a product online. In fact, I believe this is my first review ever. However, the quality of this book motivated me to publicly declare my opinion and appreciation. I've been a Software Developer for eight years, and Java only within the past year. Recently my company asked me to create an application, however this time I was to experiment with J2EE as the platform. I struggled through it, mostly via trial-and-error, javadocs, online tutorials, etc. Then I dediced to get this book to fill in the gaps. It accomplished this task extremely well. I already knew around 60% of what the book contained, but the remaining 40% was extremely usefull. The explanations were clear and easy to understand. It followed a logical progression of topics. What I appreciated the most about the book is the ability of the author(s) to satisfy the questions that would come up as I read the text. It's as if they put great effort into preparing for what the reader may be wondering as they read a description or example, and then answered these questions in the next paragraph. Even including the small details that would otherwise prevent me from effectively using the overall topic in the real world. Where other books would suffice to say "This is what you do to make this happen," and maybe "This is why," this book goes the extra mile and says, "This is what happens in the background when you do this." This is extremely usefull information when it comes time to creating a real application. It gives you the insight needed to make well-informed decisions on which methods, protocols, libraries, etc. to use. Not to mention debugging. I also appreciated how they included step-by-step examples which were very well-done. They demonstrated the topic-at-hand, without getting too wordy and involved. The exercises were also thought-provoking. Of course, I realize that good reviews should also include what negative things the reviewer found with the product. Although the positive far outways the negative, I did find some slight grievances. There could have been more exercises. Sometimes they repeated instructions which a competent reader should be able to do on his own after the first time. That's about it. As far as complaints, they are hardly worth mentioning. If you are a fairly new J2EE developer, do yourself a favor and get this book!

Novice EJB Reviewer

I've been programming on the web before there was Java but never really got into or saw the value in EJB's. That has changed in the latest specifications as they start mature. I found this book very helpful in getting started with EJB's but taking examples far enough to make them useful for real world problems. The text took examples to another level with good design patterns for use with EJB's. Another great bonus was the inclusion of complete code, and not just snippets. The only thing I would want to be improved or different would be examples with JBoss and eclipse. I understand its hard to write for all target platforms, but its on the wish list.

Great Reference

As a professional software developer, I've used some of the J2EE technologies on projects. I picked this book up to fill in knowledge gaps on some the features of J2EE that I hadn't used before. As I expected this book does a good job of covering the basics, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this book also covers some advanced topics. I expect that even experienced developers will find themselves referring back to this book not only for a refresher on the basics, but as a reference for advanced topics as well.There is a little bit of tongue in cheek humor sprinkled through the book, such as one section heading called "Using JNDI to Phone Home". If you don't get the joke, read the first chapter on EJB's and you will. If you get the joke and are groaning, then you haven't hung around with enough software developers. That kind of thing constitutes high brow humor at my company. I can't wait to get back to work and use it.The first chapter is an overview of web based applications, and where J2EE technology fits into the picture. It paints the big picture view that should be enlightening to most everyone, other than the seasoned web developer.The second chapter is either the most, or least important of the book. It is instructions for how to setup the Sun J2EE environment on your machine, and the PointBase database. If you already have access to a J2EE 1.4 environment, then you may not need this chapter. The examples in the book are using the Sun tools, so you may want to follow the setup to make it easier to step through the examples in the book.Chapters 3 & 4 are about JSP's and go from the basics to some pretty advanced topics, such as tag libraries, and expression language. I found quite a few bits of valuable information in these chapters.Chapter 5 is about servlets. Servlets have been around for a quite a while now. If you aren't familiar with them, this is a good introduction to the technology.Chapters 6 and 7 are about database access. Writing web applications really start getting fun when you start thinking about hitting the database. These are a couple of meaty chapters that start with the basics, straight JDBC/SQL, and then cover some advanced topics like stored procedures, database locking and isolation levels. I was pleased to pick up a lot of new and valuable information in these chapters. Chapters 8 through 11 cover EJB's. Again you are taken from the basics, through advanced topics. EJB's are a tough subject, in my opinion. But, this book does spend a lot of time explaining how to configure and deploy them, which isn't obvious. If you aren't familiar with EJB's, being able to follow along with the examples in the book, having followed the chapter 2 setup, will be a big help. If you can make it through creating and deploying your EJB's, then the book covers some advanced topics like container managed relationships (CMR), EJB-QL, and EJB design patterns.Chapters 12 and 13 cover web services. B