Reviews for Beginning Java EE 5: From Novice to Professional

1. Good for starting in J2EE

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   This book is ideal for someone with no java experience to get into Enterprise Java (J2EE).
   
   it takes you through Servlets, JSP, Working with databases including JDBC, EJBs and Web services. Also briefly covers how to install Tomcat.
   
   I would recommend this book as a beginners book that you can read from cover to cover

2. Excellent intro to JEE, but poorly proofread

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2008

   You can learn a lot by reading this book. But be expected to spend some time in the forums finding out why some of the code doesn't work.
   1) If you find yourself with same issues check out my postings on Sun/JBoss for JGF/JGF1..
   2) One of my biggest bug bears was lack of generics in code.
   3) Section on BMP used DTD's for JEE 5 that don't work with JBoss, you have to go back a release.
   4) I hated the way they told you repeatedly how to set up the same class path information over & over. Why this wasn't in an Appendix I'll never know. They even missed some of the JBoss jars that you actually need!
   5) The section on pages 60-63 are useless because Sun doesn't have the Web Application Wizard they describe in latest download..
   Same goes for pages 240-242. (& P 317)
   6) The Web Services chapter (14) doesn' work JAX-WS no longer supports @PortComponent in JBoss... So its' the only chapter I couldn't get working.
   7) Also JNDI lookup within JBoss has to be done with bean class name + "/remote", then cast to interface. The code they give works on Glassfish implementation. Here is a link that points to a whole discussion on how Glassfish implementation of JNDI lookup is flawed.
   adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/ejb_3_portability_issue_why
   8) Also in MDB chapter there is an error on P553. Annotation should read @MessageDriven(activationConfig) not activeConfig!
   9) Don't bother trying to download Pointbase P320. I went through whole rigmorole of subscribing only to find they have been gobbled up by IBM & you can't donwload any more!
   10) Tomcat Webserver admin tool. P 322-325 Not available any more..
   11) Listing 7.4 P 338 should read PersistSock.jsp
   12) A lot of the URL links that are given are now obsolete too. Another case for placing these in appendices and maintaining these correctly..
   13) The book started out quite nicely by showing a project directory structure before each example. As the book progressed, you often found this mid way through a discussion, or sometimes there wasn't one at all. I know you can find this in download, but sometimes chapter would discuss several 'points' and it was hard to tell at a glance what listings related to the specific 'points' once the continuity was broken, a pain for anyone using book as a reference later.
   14) In Chapter 9 in the section on session beans, it's obvious they faked the output from running the program (P416), because the received string should have ended with "from session bean"..
   BTW: This is when you'll needing those extra jars:
   jboss-commons-client.jar jbosssx-client.jar
   The list goes on, but I would definately persevere and read the book, because you will end up having a much better appreciation of JEE.
   
   One final tip: If you find some of code you type in from book still doesn't work, be sure to check download too. I uncovered the JBoss DTD stuff by scouring through my code, the book and download... (The fact DTD was not where it said was first tell tale sign).
   
   Since writing this original review, I've donated an updated copy of source back to Apress. They say they are going to post update on their website, so hopefully you won't have to deal with some of the obstacles I had to overcome. (Chapter 14 still won't work on my copy)