Hibernate in Action (In Action series)

Pro Spring

Spring in Action (In Action series)

Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB

Head First Design Patterns

Programming

Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework

Format: Paperback
Author: Rod Johnson
ReleaseDate: 04 July, 2005
Publisher: Wrox
Rating:

The best choice
It covers all major aspects supported by the framework, and goes beyond than a "24 hours learning" book. This book is the right choice for beginers and advanced users of Spring. Emphasizes the basic theory and shows how to correctly use the framework in J2EE applications.

Fantastic
I highly recommend this for anyone using Spring for serious work. This book is fantastic both for learning Spring and for day-to-day use.

straight talking from the source
It has even managed convinced me that there are some good, ahem, aspects to AOP. If you want to get going with Spring as I did you can just download and start coding, read a simpler book or, like me, get stuck in to the mother load - this book.

The only thing that I find dismal about Java / web programming, even with Spring, is that the UI is still the biggest pain of all to develop. This space just has too many technologies and there is a huge amount of churn. Since the book Spring has started to become integrated with AJAX which makes the whole mix even more complex. Keeps us consultants in work but I can think of better ways to add value than constantly re-writing the UI!

Enough blather from me. This is an excellent book and will grace the shelf of any professional Java architect or developer.