Reviews for Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework

1. Worst book I have read

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2008

   This book is very difficult to read. The concepts are not clearly explained. The book is poorly organized.
   For a newbie to Spring this book is an absolute no no. I started learning Spring with this book. Even after lot of hard work I hardly understood anything. I gave up on this book and tried with Pro Spring and picked up Spring.
   There are much better books in the market like - Pro Spring and Spring in Action. Expert Spring MVC is again a great book.

2. Good in places. Still has some unique selling points.

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

   I concur with some of the other comments about this book being hard to read. At least in places. I think the chapter on AOP was awful. Too much incoherent waffle. Not enough examples. Gary Mak's Spring Recipes by comparison gives you a more up to date coverage of this and most things compared to this book.
   However, there are some unique selling point that make this book worth purchasing even in light of newer books.
   I found the pros & cons comparison discussions of various web frameworks in Chapter 14 enlightening.
   I also liked the various diagrams scattered throughout the book, despite the fact the labelling is incorrect off the diamonds of flow-chart diagrams in several places. They help cement an understanding of the architecture of Spring far better than just dry text.
   The other main value proposition for me was the Box Office example. It's a pretty good example to learn from, even if a bit dated compared to Gary Mak's work. You can never have too many example to learn from in my eyes :)
   This book is very thorough in it's coverage of Spring (1.3). It does cover things not found in some of the other texts. So if you are looking for complete mastery of all things Spring, then I'd recommend adding it to your collection.
   BTW: There are still lots of errors apart from diagrams in book. The one that irritated me the most was on P501 when they talk about EL expressions and problems with escaping. They proceed to create a carbon copy of a bit of code, proclaiming one version to be correct and the other invalid. Posted on forums and to Rod himself. Haven't received a response. I spotted far more than the errata section of the Wrox website. Why don't they accommodate the errata in reprints. Makes me think what's the point in highlighting this stuff. Grrr!
   

3. Essential but difficult reading

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

   This is an essential book and Spring is an amazing framework - Rod is truly 'Rod the God'. However, this is a difficult book which does not explain things simply - it hits you with the facts and doesn't always explain just how useful the feature is. Spring is also very expansive and Rod has a tendency to blow the mind of us mere mortals.
   
   The book is a useful reference but as a tutorial is hard going. The other frustrating thing about this book is the poor index.
   
   "Spring in Action" is a lot more user-friendly and readable while still covering the detail. "Spring - a Developer's Notebook" is a very good book for getting up and running quickly and cutting through the complexity. Really you need all three of these books to learn Spring. It is really worth it though - it saves you a lot of time, coding and bugs in the long run.

4. Surely ,one of the best

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, January 12nd, 2007

   I have a copy of the book. Irrespective of your level of experience with Spring Framework and Java, you may find the book useful as it covers the topic in depth and provides a lot of clarity and rationale for choosing the framework against EJBs. I found it extremely useful for making architectural decisions around data persistence etc. And of course, who else would better describe the framework other that Rod Johnson himself?

5. Confusing and difficult to read.

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2006

   This book is not an easy read...Spring has a steep learning curve but this book doesn't help. Mistakes in the examples, constant overuse of "we will get to this later" and "remember what we did in chapter x" will have you flicking through the book like a maniac. Its not always clear into which contexts (xmls) examples should be placed. Plus you have to read tonnes of "this is why this feature is the best in the world" sales pitch before actually being able to use it. Spring itself is an excellent framework, however this book needs to be worked on a bit. You can mostly get all this information from the Spring Docs on-line or in PDF... save the money or find an alternative.