Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners...
Review: This is a very well designed and written book covering EJB technology in a complete and in-depth manner. There's a quick intro to the subject, and then the rest of the book builds on that knowledge in tutorial fashion. You will build a cruise reservation system using beans, and in the process you'll learn a lot. It does assume that you have a solid foundation in Java skills before you dive in, so don't get this book unless you're already well on your way to learning Java. It's not for beginners.Another very nice feature is the companion workbook that you can buy for this book. It translates many of the exercises into more specific instructions for running them on the Websphere platform. This is an extremely valuable addition to the learning process. All too often, a writer has to assume a certain platform or system to be able to cover the material. If you also use that same system, you're OK. If you're not using what the author had, then there can be a translation process that can be frustrating at times. Having a workbook focused on your specific platform will speed up the learning and avoid the hassles involved in debugging your errors. If you're a Domino developer just getting into Java and J2EE technology, hold off on this book. While you may well get to this point in your career sometime in the future, it will be of little use to you right now. There isn't much that is applicable to the pure Domino world, and you'll need to be very well grounded in the Websphere world before this will start to gel for you. Conclusion
I would recommend this book to a good Java developer needing to learn EJB technology for their jobs. It's very complete and comprehensive. If you're just trying to get started in Java, this book is still aways off for you. I was pretty well lost through most of it, so I need to come back to it in a year or so once I have some more experience.
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