Rating: 
Summary: Exhaustive and well organized; Suggestions for next edition
Review: I purchased this book to learn the fundamentals of EJBs, and then apply the knowledge to existing EJB application maintenance. I am pleased to say that I understand the theory basics and have moved from application maintenance to new EJB application development. The book can be exhausting, though, so plan to read it before reaching your bed (I read it while pedaling an exercise bike).The book took longer to read than I anticipated, however it was worth the effort. You can skip most of the code details and return to them later when you need examples to guide your own work. The organization is thoughtful and progressive, but I wish it had some more diagrams. Nevertheless, I will give it the highest rating because it has the needed content, organization, and results. My recommendations for the next edition would be to incorporate the JBoss EJB server into the examples (WebLogic examples dominate this edition), and demonstrate how EJB application deployment can be managed using Ant (a Java/XML descendant of Make). In this manner, the book's students can practice the examples using open-source, free software - which means everyone will be able to participate (rather than those whose companies use WebLogic).
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Really nice approach, simple examples, thorough explanation of the concepts, very useful appendix (appendix b. state & sequence diagrams), easy to read! Looking forward to see the revised edition covering EJB 2.0. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to EJB
Review: This book provides a good and practical introduction to Enterprise JavaBeans. The UML diagrams are helpful along with the code samples. Surely EJB is evolving and some specifics in this book may be outdated. But I do think it is a valuable book for anyone catching up with the EJB wave.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond useful, but not a silver bullet
Review: The 2nd edition of this book is the first which is truly useful and worth taking the time to read. I first purchased it direct from the publisher because it wasn't available elsewhere yet, and proceeded to read it cover to cover in a weekend. I found it to be one of the easier O'Reilly books to read in this manner, which I feel is very important considering the complexity of EJB to those new to the technology. The book does a wonderful job of easing you into the EJB framework with a high level overview of the components and how they interact. Each chapter starts to bore down deeper into the nuts and bolts of how a particular component works, giving you a chance to digest as you go. Some drawbacks of the content are a lack of coverage on deployment of EJBs. This may be attributed to the fact that most vendors provide tools to assist in this, but is still a failing in the book, since there are prescribed steps for deployment. Another is the fairly light coverage of bean managed persistence. Container managed persistence is a nice thing to know about, but I have found that as often as not, I am writing the persistence mechanism into a bean. It would have been nice to have a little more guidance in this manual than to have to buy another for that single topic. Finally, the constant differentiation between EJB 1.0 and 1.1 was a little irksome. It is fine to point out changes in the specification where they are relevant, but it would have provided a far superior reference tool if they had concentrated on the 1.1 specification and only noted the significant changes from earlier versions.
Rating:
Summary: Above and beyond the call of duty
Review: Read the other reviews its all been said, but this book goes above and beyond the call of duty. Not only does he do an EXCELLENT job of discussing ejbs, he also talks a lot about how the containers work, how they pool ejbs, etc. In his transactions section he talks quite a bit about database locking schemes. All this is bonus info. This is a great book and it is very readable.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: An excellent introduction to EJB; a must for anyone interested in getting into this area. Highly recommeneded.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Reference.
Review: If you're looking for a book on Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB's), this is the one to read. If you already know EJB's or need to learn about the technology this book is an excellent reference and resource. The 2nd edition has done an excellent job of integrating, comparing *and* contrasting the 1.0 and 1.1 specifications for EJB's. A must-have for any EJB Developer, it's that simple.
Rating:
Summary: Good EJB Introduction and Programming Guide
Review: Overall a great book. However, some deployment information is inaccurate and the organization of topics could be better. One thing the book falls fairly short on is design practices. It also over-emphasizes the use of CMP Entity Beans without addressing the reality of EJB 1.1 limitations in current vendor offerings (i.e. portability is still somewhat suspect). As an alternative, check out Professional Java Server Programming J2EE edition from Wrox (a little more up to date).
Rating: 
Summary: Content is good, binding is bad
Review: This is the first book I have that has problem with binding. The idea of "flexible lay-flat binding" enables you to lay the book flat on any page. However, the binding is so bad that the book is easily separated into parts. Besides this, the book has grammatical errors. Over all, the content is good. If binding is important to you, don't buy this book. I have "Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition Platform and Component Spefications" and think it is better than the "Enterprise JavaBeans".
Rating:
Summary: The EJB bible
Review: The best book. Covers everything you need to know about EJB.
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