Java Open Source Programming: with XDoclet, JUnit, WebWork, Hibernate

Author: Joseph Walnes, Ara Abrahamian, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Patrick A. Lightbody List Price: $45.00 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0471463620 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (17 November, 2003) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 20,975 Average Customer Rating: 4.33 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

Oh, and it uses some nice open source libraries along the way. One of the best ways to learn something new is to pair with an expert. The next best thing is to read a book like this!

Example: the grammer in the first sentence of the first chapter is off. Surely a few people read the sentence? Second example, the code on page 24 (the jUnit chapter no less!!) obviously would not compile. There are many other examples of outright errors, and it's too bad some newcomers to Java and/or these tools will be left scratching their heads. Blame this on the editors all you like, but at the end of the day I found it incredibly annoying.

Add to this a Hibernate chapter that is littered with either awkward or poor grammer (was the primary author not an English speaker?), and a sort of smug undertone throughout the book (at one point in the jUnit chapter, they say of the api "Be thankful there's not a lot to learn." Guess what guys? There are plenty of people who are just as smart as you are).

More often than once, this book reminded me of the opensymphony project, some components of which are used in the book: some good ideas, some great, but a lack of attention to detail and unnecessary condescension.

The other problem with the book is the content, although it's a much less significant problem than the poor writing. While the content is pretty good, there's nothing here that's not in the docs for each project already, and Kent Beck's Test Driven Development is a much more lucid explanation of that topic.

As far as petsoar, the app they develop at the end of the book, goes...*yawn*.

I expected more...

- A look at many great open source technologies that developers should have in their toolboxes such as:

. JUnit
. Mock Objects
. Hibernate
. WebWork
. SiteMesh
. Lucene
. XDoclet

- A chance to watch some good programmers walk through a project with these tools, and see how they all come together.

So you end up getting different things out of the book. It is nice to look at the technology in isolation when you really want to learn that one technology. It is also very helpful to see how these technologies integrate, and how you go about actually building something real (which is after all what we all want to do).

Since so many technologies are covered in the book, the authors have to really think about what they want to get across. If they documented every XML tag, for every possible configuration, you would end up with a tomb of information, and it would be pretty dry reading too. :) I think the authors do a good job of giving you the information that you really want. However, if you are an expert in one of the technologies then you may have wished for more... but for that you will have to wait for a book just on that technology.

I am a big fan (and user) of most of the technologies that are used in this book. Some of them have good documentation via their website, and some of them have NOT so good documentation. It is definitely worth having some high quality docs in one book that I can reference, instead of having to curse at the website.

I have to admit to one moment where I let out a groan. That was when I saw that the sample project would be another PetStore. I think a lot of people are probably tired of the PetStore, but here at TheServerSide that is probably doubly so! :) To be fair to the authors, they do have a section called "Looking at Yet Another PetStore" where they explain their reasons for it, and there are some valid reasons; but I still had to cry a little.

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