Rating: 
Summary: Well Written. A Good Product.
Review: EJB can be an overwhelming subject because developers must be well-versed in many other Java and non-Java technologies to really appreciate how advantageous beans are.This book does an excellent job of showing readers the motivation, architecture, and organization of the EJB standard. Sections that contain references to material covered in later chapters give the necessary amount of information to solve the current problem and delegate advanced topics to those chapters. The example code should have contained less business logic and more "to-the-point" EJB techniques.
Rating:
Summary: Larger than the first two ed., but better?
Review: As opposed to the first and second edition which were fabulous in terms of conciseness and didactics some slatternliness has crept into the third edition. Especially the chapters on container managed persistence could have been edited more precisely. Often it is not clearly stated how an entity bean is referenced (e.g., the beginning of the "one to one unidirectional" section of chapter 7). In terms of didactics it would have been good to have a summary of the hard rules, - like "relationship beans should always be local beans" -, something which is hidden somewhere within chapter 6 (I think). On the other hand some things were added or discussed in more depth which are quite useful. Especially chapter 15 (Design Stretegies") can give you an excellent start after having processed all the theoretical stuff. Furthermore I like the introduction of online material which can be used for exercises with some EJB containers. All in all, still one of the best and most comprehensive books on the subject! Don't forget to check Ed Roman's book on Enterprise Java Beans, however!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Short and concise. Good focus on new EJB 2.0 stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as I thought it would be
Review: I usually like the O'Reilly books but didn't think this one was a good as others. I didn't find the text and examples as clear as other books. If you just want to learn about Enterprise JavaBeans it is an okay book. I was disappointed because I think a book on just Enterprise JavaBeans should cover more than books that cover EJBs and other J2EE APIs. If you want to learn about J2EE as a whole this book doesn't add anything you can't get from books that cover the whole. This book also suffered from a lack of comments in the code examples (like many Java books). I was also using J2EE Unleashed, Professional Java Server Programming, and Special Edition Using Java 2.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I read this book from Preface to the Index Page. Its a VERY nice book. Many subtle gotchas have been very well poinetd out. But for a total stranger to EJB this book might be hard to digest in the first reading. The problem being the author scatters the discussion about a topic at various places in the book. So you need to go back and keep refering to what you read 50 pages ago.
As a first book Ed Roman is THE best. You can read it like a novel. Once you read Ed Roman, this book will help to understand and drill the concepts well. But I feel one should read BOTH Ed Roman and Haefel to master and understand EJB well..
Rating:
Summary: what can I say - hes the boss
Review: Read this book and you will know EJB. It is well written, easily understandable, and I never felt like he was giving me too much or too little.
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Summary: Best info on the EJB 2.0 specification
Review: This is the third edition of "Enterprise JavaBeans" in three years, which shows how popular this book is and how fast EJB technology is changing. This new edition has been updated for EJB 2.0 and it gives excellent coverage to the many changes in the new specification. Some of the changes covered include message-driven beans, the new CMP model for entity beans, the EJB Query Language, and how to build complex relationships between entity beans. The book is written for the advanced Java developer who wants to learn the complexities of Enterprise JavaBeans. This is not a simple tutorial for the beginner. The book starts with a brief introduction to EJB and then spends the next couple of chapters covering the complexities of the EJB architecture. After a brief review of the basics of EJB, the author spends the next three chapters covering the complexities of EJB 2.0 container managed persistence. Bean-Managed persistence and the entity-container contract are then covered followed by a chapter on session beans. The new message-driven beans are given a chapter. The book ends up with a chapter on design considerations for J2EE applications. The author does an excellent job of including diagrams at just the right places to help clarify difficult topics. Anyone who will be working with EJB 2.0 should own this book. Note: Companion workbooks are available from the O'Reilly website. These include instructions and versions of the sample programs for WebLogic and WebSphere.
Rating:
Summary: They did it again!!!
Review: If you're looking for an up-to-date, well-written book on EJB 2.0, don't look further; this is the one. Monson-Haefel did an excellent job on covering new features introduced in the EJB 2.0 specification, including the Local API and Container-managed relationship. He talks about how and why the local API was adopted and discusses its pros and cons. In the Container-managed relationship chapter, all seven possible relationships (one-to-one, unidirectional; one-to-one, bidirectional; one-to-many, unidirectional; one-to-many, bidirectional; many-to-one, unidirectional; many-to-many, unidirectional; and many-to-many, bidirectional) are covered in depth with supporting diagrams and examples. The author points out and discusses some problems of the EJB Query Language, such as the use of the tedious OBJECT() method in the select statement, the omission of the ORDER BY clause, and the lack of support for java.util.Date. He did a superb job on the security and transaction sections. The Titan Cruises example and diagrams are easy-to-follow... Good job! I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very readable, well done
Review: I'm one of those guys under pressure to transition from working in Visual Basic to the whole J2EE ball of wax (company policy now), and it's been a challenge to find Java books that teach *both* OOP principles and the syntax/implementation details of Java technologies. A consultant at work recommended the 3rd edition as a great EJB book for newbies and experts alike, and I concur. This book was really a pleasure to read, and compared to other EJB works, they did a superb job fitting just enough of the information that really matters into about 500 pages. The use of diagrams was also very well done, the authors seemed to sense when a reader might be getting to the point where a picture could clarify what was going on. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners, be sure to pick up the workbooks
Review: I give this a 5 only when supplimented with the workbooks available at ... I've been tasked with working with BEA Weblogic and EJBs at work. I have little time to prepare myself and this book, along with the supplimental workbooks, have been a huge help. I barely know java and have never worked with it in a production environment, let alone working with Enterprise Beans. I have learned a ton from this book. I feel comfortable with java and I feel comfortable working with EJBs. The supplimental workbooks provided at ... have been invaluable. I even wrote to the author congratulating him on his success. If you're looking for help with WebLogic or WebSphere, do yourself a favor and download the .pdf version of the workbooks at titan-books. In a sense these helped more than the book because he can apply the teachings to a particular EJB server, giving explicit examples and even showing installation instructions. Be sure to pick up the 3rd edition if you own the 2nd edition book. The implementation of local interfaces and messaging beans will help your apps and Monson-Haefel covers this in the 3rd edition book. Negatives:
I found chapter 3 of this book perhaps a little out of place. It describes resource management capabilities of an EJB server. What I was looking for at that point in the book was examples and ways to get my hands into enterprise beans and understand how they work, not the backend systems. I do respect the job the backend system does, but that should be described later once I have a knowledge of EJBs and can appreciate the work its doing for me. Therefore I had to choke down this chapter and just "get through it".
I also found that without the workbooks, the examples don't mean as much. Since he can't rely on one particular EJB server vendor, such as BEA WebLogic, he can't give specific examples that he can guide you step by step through installing.
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