Advanced Java 2 Development for Enterprise Applications (2nd Edition)

Author: Clifford Berg, Cliff Berg List Price: $49.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0130848751 Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (14 December, 1999) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 56,256 Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

In the Preface, Berg writes "This book provides a big-picture, in a highly practical manner..." As a senior consultant who is primarily interested in enterprise application design and development with Java, the book delivers 100% of what has been promised. It does cover many important areas- Threads in Server Applications, Java Security, Distributed Computing Protocols (RMI, IIOP), Server Framewokrs and Architectures. I would even argue that the author had understated his accomplishment in writing this book. Which is why I decided to write this review.

The book material focuses on design issues, their solutions, and the motivation behind them, but it is very down to earth and there are many helpful code snippets to keep you grounded. Each chapter presents the important concepts and introduce the subject at the overview level first and provide more detailed treatment of topics that are of advanced nature. Additionally, the book provides a very practical introduction to some non-technical aspects of the software development process, in particular- Project Management and Configuration Managament.

Personally, I have found the book to be very useful. I post this paragraph as a revision of my initial review, because I myself was surprised as to how often I use it as a starting point of reference. Now, if you are looking for a "cookbook" of code recipes, please go on to consider other titles. But if you would like a very sound introduction to client/server or multi-tiered development with J2EE, please seriosly consider this one.

...

I just had to respond in general to comments which importune readers to read my book for its "interesting ideas", and that the book is "a good overview, INFORMATIVE, and raises a few interesting questions" and so on but then not to buy it! As well as comments describing the book as boring.

Whether a book is boring will always be a personal matter. A fellow classmate in college once told me that The Epic Of Gilgamesh was boring. I remember feeling at the time that he did not appreciate its uniqueness, and I felt regret for him. Indeed, Nietzsche said Plato was boring! But it is true, that this is a personal matter.

More concretely, the book's preface states its goals very clearly:

"...This book is not intended to be an in-depth treatment of all enterprise subjects. ... However, an advanced programmer needs to have a working knowledge of most aspects of a system in order to understand the entire system. For example, a developer working on a set of Enterprise JavaBeans does not need to understand all security issues in depth but does need to have a working knowledge of the security techniques used by the servers involved and the application. This book tries to provide a big picture...." This is a book on architecture, and that is not a topic of interest to everyone.

I am happy to report that I receive considerable fan mail regarding the book, and that has made the enormous effort worthwhile. Here is an email I received two weeks ago (Feb. 27, 2001):

"Thanks for writing this book! Sorry to disturb you, but I had to do it (just to be sure you keep on writing new editions). Your book's the only one I found with this goal. And the most useful computer book I ever had since I started using the first edition 3 years ago. I keep going back to it, each time on another subject. Most books talk too much, don't summarize and/or don't add much to the Java specification and tutorials, yours does. -[reader's name] (Partly thanks to you)Senior Java Developer"

So be your own judge!

Sincerely,

Cliff Berg

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