Hibernate in Action (In Action series)

Effective Java Programming Language Guide

Distributed

Server-Based Java Programming

Format: Paperback
Author: Ted Neward
ReleaseDate: July, 2000
Publisher: Manning Publications
Rating:

Must read for serious enterprise developer
It goes through the process of creating and Enterprise Application Server. One of the best books I have read. This is not a J2EE application developer book; it is a book that can help you to write your own application server.

It's okay, I guess
I worked through the whole book and was not very impressed. I'm fairly new to java (less than 1 year) and I thought, given what the other reviewers had to say, that this book would have been a more impressive work, especially to a newbie like me.

The writer constantly refers the reader to other authors' discussions of the topics, which is really distracting. Just boil it down and keep using the foot notes (which he does as well).

A lot of the patterns were geared toward re-use. I guess that's fine if your designing a product for re-sale, but I was looking for more in the way of "did you know you could do this or that". I guess it is really my own fault. I did read the other reviews and bought it anyway thinking this book would contain some useful insight. Most of the stuff he mentioned I had already implemented as the design patterns were fairly logical and common sensical.

It was decently written, I was just hoping for more in the way of a not so overly simplified approach to understanding how java can be easily used to create servers. I already understood that. If there is one thing this book has taught me - or more accurately - confirmed for me is that sometimes programmers over-complicate things to make them re-usable. I have definitely found it is much more efficient to create many components from scratch rather than trying to figure out what some other programmer was thinking in their implementation. In other words, re-use, I think, gets blown out of proportion in the business application development environment. In the time it takes to figure out what that developer's strategy was, I could have already created a perfectly functional, scalable component. Leave the over complication to the development teams creating commercial products like high end web servers, data access components, etc. . . I've got work to do.

Interesting but of little real world use
The author starts off with a well written discussion of class loaders and then goes on to show how to design your own application server using your own class loader. Would you believe that there is a Java Server book that has almost nothing to do with Servlets, JSPs, and Enterprise JavaBeans? If you are an advanced Java programmer and have felt a need to write your own application server then this may be the book for you. For most developers this may be interesting but of little real value. The thread chapters will provide little new information for anyone who has studied for the SCJP. The next few chapters discuss RMI, sockets, persistence, serialization and other issues that are required for the application server that the author is developing throughout the book. Servlets are briefly discussed but mostly on how they can be used to replace sockets and RMI within the application server framework. This is followed by a discussion of modeling business objects that seems somewhat out of place. The middleware section is very interesting and covers a wide array of topics from JMS to CORBA. The JNI section will probably not be used by many Java developers. Although the book is interesting I am left with the feeling that the author has missed the point. Why would a team of developers spend tens of thousands of dollars developing a service framework when inexpensive and robust application servers are readily available on the market?.