Reviews for J2EE Design Patterns

1. Great introduction to J2EE for me

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12nd, 2006

   I bought this book about 2 months ago and it served me as a great introduction into J2EE platform. This book definitely is not a detailed reference guide to all the features in J2EE nor it is a pattern catalogue (though there is a list of J2EE patterns in an appendix) - it just gives you an overview of problems you have to solve in enterprise applications and the 'proper' ways to solve them in J2EE. Don't expect huge amounts of source code or step-by-step tutorial how to build enterprise application.
   
   And the last chapter - J2EE antipatterns - is an excellent tutorial 'how not to do it' ie. solutions that look great at the beginning but became a nightmare during the application's lifetime.
   
   Anyway, great book for all of you who know at lest little about Java (intermediate level is absolutely fine) and enterprise applications (generally just what are we trying to solve in those) - this book will give you an overview of tools available in J2EE.

2. Readable, but technically detailed and practical

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12rd, 2004

   Like all O'Reilly books this is very readable and enjoyable and, at thesame time technically accurate and informative.
   It provides a goodintroduction to, and overview of, design patterns for the developer whohasn't got much experience in this area, but expands upon the explanationsof each pattern with some Java code.
   As an added bonus the first two chapters give some good backgroundmaterial to help put the material in context. Chapter 1 gives a briefsimple explanation of J2EE architecture, for anyone who needs a reminderof the fundamental principles and Chapter 2 gives a crash course in UML.There is enough UML information for a beginner to understand the basicconcepts (and the diagrams later in the book) and this chapter providesjust the right level of detail, both to get started and move on to some ofthe more in-depth stuff.
   In the rest of the book there's a good balancebetween code, text and diagrams with enough code to give you a start andmake the ideas seem real, enough text to give a proper explanation andenough UML to make the concepts clear and also improve your understandingof UML (if you think you need it).
   There are a wide range of patternscovered and in some ways it resembles the O'Reilly 'cookbooks' with samplecode provided for different tasks and explanations of how to accomplishthem.