An Introduction to Web Application Development with IBM Websphere Studio: Websphere Certification Study Guide [With CDROM]

by Gary Craig and Peter Jakab

Book Overview

IBM has developed a world class certification program for professionals to establish standards that identify required levels of competency. This is the first study guide designed specifically for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931182116
• ISBN13: 9781931182119
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: IBM Press
• Length: 417 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good Book to help Prepare for Certification

The book was extremently useful in parparing for the DB2 certification. I can personally recommend it. Wayne Sonnen

Read the readme.txt!!!

You won't be able to do the exercises unless you read, very carefully, the instructions in the book's readme.txt. Thanks to another reviewer, I learned this and was able to get beyond page 65. The instructions in the book for loading the start-up files needed for the labs are wrong, and won't work!

Great Intro to WSAD and J2EE Development In General

I found this book to be an excellent introduction to both using WSAD and to J2EE Application Development in general. I quickly learned (being a newbie to both) and highly recommend it as a first step- especially if you are new to both. Getting workspaces set up was difficult until I more carefully read the documentation and realized that "Project Interchange" was needed to do so. After that it was no problem.

Helpful material...

ReviewAs IBM gets deeper into the world of J2EE and open source technologies, it's important to know the toolset that's used to code these applications. For IBM, that tool is WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). It's an integrated development environment (IDE) based on the Eclipse IDE framework, and is customized to allow for easy integration of your code into the Websphere environment. This book will help you understand the tool along with the basic technologies you can develop inside the IDE. The book starts out with an introduction to the toolset and a brief tutorial on how to code a basic Java application in WSAD. There is a CD in the book that contains WebSphere Studio Site Developer, which is a smaller subset of WSAD. The examples are clear and step you through the different menu options. Next, the authors show you the outstanding debugging tool, and how to use it efficiently to root out development errors in your code. From there, each major technology (HTML, servlets, JavaServer Pages, JDBC, MVC architecture, and deployment) is covered from the perspective of how WSAD allows you to develop that type of application. As this is the first WSAD book I've had a chance to review, I don't have much to compare it against. I learned more about the tool than I knew before, and that's good. But there seemed to be a problem with focus as to whether it wanted to be a certification guide, a WSAD tutorial, or a tutorial on J2EE technologies. In other study guides, there is a heavy emphasis on the test. Here, the test almost is relegated to an afterthought. If I didn't know it was a study guide, I wouldn't view it as such. Also, when covering the different J2EE technologies, I'm not sure whether the book is trying to teach me the technology or the way to code it using WSAD. As a result, I felt that neither approach got quite the coverage it should have. The information presented is good, to be sure. It's just not as focused as I expected. I also recommend that you carefully read the explanations on setting up the workspaces for the exercises in the book. The code is there, but a special compression tool is used to allow all the necessary information to be placed on the CD. You really do need to have the CD code in order to effectively work with the exercises, and if you just guess at how to access the code, you'll end up very confused...ConclusionA good addition to your library if you're starting out with WSAD and J2EE, and you'd like to get the certification as part of your learning process. Just don't let this be the only book or source you use if certification is your primary goal.

The best starter book on WebSphere Studio

I use WebSphere Studio at work, but because of the state of the economy there is no training money available. I don't have a lot of experience using IDEs and I was having a hard time learning Studio. Studio is a sophisticated tool that does a lot for you; There is a lot to know.I own - or have looked at - all of the WebSphere Studio books. This book is the one that made by far the most sense to me. It is the only book that I have seen that takes you step-by-step and clearly explains WebSphere Studio from the top.