Rating: 
Summary: A revolution in the methodology of book writing
Review: The great book for beginners and for those who need a clear understanding of the EJB technology but with fun
Rating:
Summary: Invaluable learning tool for the SCBCD exam
Review: The style in which this book is written makes the process of learning the dry EJB spec a lot less tedious. Also, I thought the authors did an excellent job anticipating all kinds of questions that come up WHILE you read the book and providing answers to such questions in their "There's no dumb questions" section. This eliminates the need to search for answers in other sources. The book is written in an easy-to-follow style - looks like the authors know their audience well. The learning techniques utilized by the authors DO help with understanding and memorizing the material. Most likely, it does not replace a good reference book (that's what the spec is for), but it does help get a good initial look at over 80% of what one needs to know, understand it and remember it.
Rating:
Summary: Must read for any serious J2EE developer or architect
Review: There are many other EJB books on the market, but Kathy and Bert make the learning experience FUN. If you follow Kathy and Bert study recommendations, you will past the EJB certification test. I know because I was a beta tester for the real sun exam. This book will definitely improve your EJB understanding level. I was one of several technical reviewers who reviewed the book prior to release. I have the following SUN certifications: SCJP, SCJD, SCWCD, SCEA. I will have my EJB certification by the end on November.
Rating: 
Summary: Just good enough for the exam
Review: This book written in the Headfirst style is good enough to get you through the SCBCD exam sucessfully. Unfortunately the book contradicts it's self in quite a few places and barely ever goes into the details of why things are organized the way they are. It has many errors too, so be sure to check the errata on the oreilly website. It is by no means enough for an EJB developer and it has even not enough information on the EJB spec.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for beginners
Review: This books has quite a number of pages, which is too much for the 'matter' it covers, the reason being most of the pages contain just graphics to illustrate some of the concepts. This really helped absorbing the concepts quickly instead of reading lines and lines of text. However, this book does not cover everything on EJB. Are you a beginner? Do you want to learn just what is required to pass SCBCD? Do you need strong EJB foundation? Then this is the book.
If you are a serious EJB programmer and need to tackle more real-life problems and understand everything EJBs can do, this book is probably not for you. Richard Monson-Haefel and Ed Roman's books cover more ground on the subject.
All in all, this book has served its purpose well. Why 4 stars? Because not only this book is heavy but also the book's errata.
Highly recommended for SCBCD aspirants.
Rating:
Summary: Too big .
Review: This is a book for somebody who wants to learn abc of ejb.I think it is too big for a certification guide 700 pages.People with some previous experience will get very frustrated.very very slow.
no patterns.
very little code.
better read the spec.
Mastering ejb 2nd edition is much better.
Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction to EJB
Review: This is a pretty good book for someone who is just starting ejb programming .But it is no replacement for 'Enterprise java Bean'3rd edition.
Rating:
Summary: Book review, and recommendations for Mastering EJB
Review: This is a review of Head First EJB in comparision to the other two books on EJB: Monson-Haefel's EJB-3rd ed and Mastering EJB by Ed Roman et al. I have been working with EJB's for 2 years and have devoured Monson-Haefel's EJB-3rd ed, and skimmed over Mastering EJB by Ed Roman et al. Recently when I looked at "Head First EJB" (HFE) I was hooked on from the first page. All these books essentially provide the same information and with similar organization. However, HFE is direct upto the point and drives the concept strainght in to the brain. This book employs engaging common sense techniques to teach, which unfortunately is not so common. It marks the beginning of a new style of writing tech books, the way they were meant to be written. This book achieves what it claims to achieve, and clearly states what it does not achieve. Although casual, the content is coherent, precise, conspicuous, and lucid. Thorns:
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- The website for the book looks more oriented towards marketing stuff: selling T-Shirts and coffee mugs having images from the book imprinted on them, which put me off. The biggest thorn was that the code provided is very very minimalistic. I expected to see better examples. Hence the 4 stars. Missing info from all three books:
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- No mention of .ear and how they are associated to .jar
- No mention of the fact that the Application Server specific ClassLoaders have implications on way ejb packaged .jar files are loaded.
- No mention of the application deployment descriptor application.xml and how it could be used with the ejb
- None of these mention that that for an EJB project to be successfully requires tools for easing developement, testing and profiling EJB's. Recommendation For Mastering EJBs:
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The best way to understand EJBs is by implementing them, and the website falls short of providing the necessary code. I would recommend the following to comprehend EJB's: - If you are a beginner begin with the Head First EJB
- If you can get hold of the Monson-Haefel's EJB-3rd ed, then read the first chapter, and also get all the examples
for this book for different application servers. These examples are excellent and comprehensive.
- Practice, practice, and practice with these examples on atleast two application servers:
* the reference implementation and
* weblogic 6.1, with J2EE 1.3 features, and comes with a one year developers license for free.
- Read the preliminary pages of the J2EE 1.3 tutorial on Sun website to get an overview of how EJB's fit in the picture
- Must look at XDoclet, Middlegen, AndroMDA, and Hibernate.
- I strongly recommend reading Bitter EJB, and "EJB Design Patterns" by Floyd Marinescu, which is available at theserverside.com for free. - Monal
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: This is a very excellent book for SCBCD. Anyone interested to pass the exam should not miss this book. This book is very clear and makes learning EJB very easy. This book is very outstanding and I wish the authors write more books so that we can enjoy them. I passed the SCBCD with a score of 92% and I am very thankful to the authors. I cannot imagine how difficult it would have been to learn EJB without this book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Great!
Review: This is my first to write a review of any book.. I can't help it I just have to say I wish all books are presented this way.. It's the IKEA of all Java books... Unboring! Great!
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