Rating: 
Summary: Best J2EE 1.4 book and best Java book for my money
Review: Bought this book and have been very impressed with the content. There is a LARGE amount of very solid material in this book. Total page count is 1490 pages and the pages I've read so far have been wonderful. There is just about everything in here related to J2EE, alot of material on EJB, new Web Services coverage, JAXR, DSML, you name it and it is there. They havent skimped either (see the page count above). They have alot of examples and some pretty cool diagrams that have helped me understand the J2EE APIs. It is all J2EE 1.4 and some additional material. I dont write reviews but it is clear that they spent a alot of time on this book. Ive also been very very happy so far with the book and it is a permanent addition to my library so I figure that they deserve a good review.
Rating:
Summary: Best J2EE book around, great for new or experienced coders
Review: First off, at the time I bought it, this was the only book on J2EE 1.4 published. I don't know if that's still the case, and it doesn't matter to me, because this is without a doubt the only book I would need.I was kind of skeptical about it, because it promised to cover so many topics, but I was told where I bought it that I could return it within 60 days if I wasn't satisfied. So I figured it was worth a shot. It covers everything about J2EE, and unlike the vast majority of other books, isn't a simple regurgitation of the numerous APIs. The best part is that it starts off with the core information you need, and then builds upon it. If you know a previous version of J2EE, you can easily skip to any chapter you want and learn what you need, because the core is the same, but if you're new to J2EE, you can just read it right through. Most books will discuss a topic, make a reference to another one, and give a brief explanation of the referenced topic. This makes readers, me at least, feeling a little lost, wondering exactly what's going on. Then that topic is covered 20 chapters later. This book, however, starts with the fundamentals and builds upon it. There's never a "which will be covered later" in the book. I was afraid that the book would only skim over some topics, because it does cover the entire J2EE. However, due to the sheer size of the book (1350 content pages and another 300 pages on CD) it covers everything in detail. The only exception I think is EJBs, however anyone programming EJBs ought to pick up the O'Reilly Enterprise JavaBeans book anyway. This book covers it in enough detail that you can write and use EJBs, and gives a very thorough discussion of the lifecycle, process, and purpose, but is somewhat lacking on the configuration and advanced features of EJBs. However, like I said, it's such an extensive topic that any J2EE programmer should have the O'Reilly book in his library anyway. The only downside to this book is that there isn't much information that an experienced Java programmer wouldn't know. This is because the enhancements to J2EE, while numerous, are not in fact new. The inclusion of web services is new to J2EE 1.4, and so is not covered in older books, but it's been so common in use that many programmers already know quite a bit about web services. Still, it gives very good information on proper usage and the interactions between web services and the other components of J2EE. Coming away from reading this book, you're left not only with the ability to use the features of J2EE, but a solid understanding of how the components interact, what the purpose of various features are, and an incredibly thorough understanding of the workings of J2EE, something which most other books lack. The companion CD does not have any J2EE specific content, containing tools and information that further enhances your understanding of webapps (TCP/IP, HTTP, etc). I'd say this book is essential for any programmer learning J2EE 1.4, whether just new to J2EE or coming from a previous version. You're left with the ability to effectively use it, along with a thorough understanding of what's actually happening. Definitely the most used book on my shelf now.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to understand.
Review: I am new to J2Ee stuff. Some one gave me this book.
It is great book to understand and tie together different apis.
I felt the book covered very detail of the all the J2EE technologies (API). I did not implement any new applications in j2ee before this , now i feel i can do some of the J2EE APIs easily. Chandra Chadive
Rating: 
Summary: Expected something different
Review: I bought this book based on the excellent reviews it had. I expected to learn J2EE (more specifically EJB, as I know most of the other related technologies). This book failed to really teach me much. When learning something, I am more concerned with the how and why, than with the the presentation of many API's, and then having to proceed from there making decisions regarding application contstruction in my development. Although it might sound like I was actually looking for a book on J2EE (or EJB) design, this is not the case. I simply want to understand the technologies that I am working with, and the motivations for using them in specific scenarios. As a reference material, I would probably give the book 4 to 5 stars. It is a book I can keep as an excellent reference of just about any J2EE related API, but I will have to buy another book in order to get a better understanding of the technologies I wanted to learn, like EJB. From the reviews it sounded like the authors actually succeeded in covering in-depth such a wide range of topics in one text. In my opinion, I think that it is maybe still just too much to cover for one book (if you really want to explain the how's and why's of everything).
Rating: 
Summary: This book is good buy but I want more from it....
Review: I have learned a lot about JNDI through this book. But the problem I see is that there was no coverage about JNDI and Microsoft Active Directory. In fact I was able to learn about JNDI through this book but then had to surf the web on how to use JNDI with Active Directory. Had the authors included a large section on Active Directory with JNDI I would have given this book 5 stars. The CD that comes with the book is wonderful. Even though you can download all the material on the CD it was nice having MySQL, Ant, Apache Tomcat and other material on the CD. For now this is probebly the best book on J2EE 1.4 but I learn from examples and this book could have included a lot more examples. Again, if the book had more examples I would have given the book 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: This book is good buy but I want more from it....
Review: I have learned a lot about JNDI through this book. But the problem I see is that there was no coverage about JNDI and Microsoft Active Directory. In fact I was able to learn about JNDI through this book but then had to surf the web on how to use JNDI with Active Directory. Had the authors included a large section on Active Directory with JNDI I would have given this book 5 stars. The CD that comes with the book is wonderful. Even though you can download all the material on the CD it was nice having MySQL, Ant, Apache Tomcat and other material on the CD. For now this is probebly the best book on J2EE 1.4 but I learn from examples and this book could have included a lot more examples. Again, if the book had more examples I would have given the book 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Very large book well organized and many examples
Review: I have purchased this book and an older version of this j2ee topic book from the same authors.I have found this book to be an excellent book and am liking the books being put by Sams. All of the j2ee topics are covered and in a way that is organized clear. Listing some topics include the new ejb 2.1, new servlets, new java server pages, soap, jax rpc, jms, xml. There is also more. The reading is very logical and organized in a good sequence. The examples are many and everything about the j2ee is in example and described. The examples are run on weblogic and j2ee reference implementation. Only problem is my current j2ee implementation has some bugs. I have run also many examples on other j2ee servers.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I own this book and like it alot. Really covers everything. It is a huge book! I checked the J2ee 1.4 references and it is even ahead of the curve in terms of J2ee technology and standards. Perfect for what I am doing at work. Great job Paul, Krishna, & Tom! Mike Arcaya
Rating:
Summary: Very good reference, bad tutorial
Review: I purchased the book mainly for SAX, Servlets and JSP but I of course have read the other topics too. The book excellently gives details about the whole J2EE environment BUT it's not a beginner's book; For most of the subjects inside the book I had to consult simpler tutorials like the ones on Sun's web site or simple introductions that can be found on Web. You must have some serious knowledge about every component of J2EE covered in this book, to understand and follow the subjects.
So why should I buy this book if I have to consult many tutorials? The answer is: "This is a reference book". Indeed the book deserves 4 stars as a reference book but as a tutorial it's use is very limited; First of all, the example codes for the book are readily bundled on an extra CD (provided with the book) and this makes tracing of the classes, interfaces etc. as the subjects arise nearly impossible, because there are many example classes related with each other and it's practically very hard for the reader to write and trace the codes line by line. It would be much better if the writers presented the codes as the relevent classes arise IN THE BOOK, but just code snippets are presented, and rest of the classes are left for user to be explored from CD. This is not a good tutorial approach in my opinion. For instance If I were to change something in some example class provided with the book I had to change everything with the other related classes and It would be very hard to detect which class has code that could be affected from my change.
The book DOESN'T motivate you to WRITE OR CHANGE ANYTHING, rather it dictates you to FOLLOW EVERYTHING FROM CD. For instance there is really a large section present for XML processing but there is not even one inspiring idea for you to write some original XML data on your own. Also some sections doesn't provide enough information about THE WAY THINGS SHOULD BE USED; When should I use a servlets? or when should I use JSP instead? Why? Such questions remain unanswered by the authors. Why should I use Schema instead of DTD's and when? Unanswered. Just giving the API's and diagrams don't solve the problem. CORBA, RMI or EJB? Which one and when? Unanswered.
Shortly, as a reference book this one is very good but as a tutorial it may even deserve 2 stars. And if I needed a reference book, there is one present and free, "the J2EE tutorial" on Sun's web site.(That one also suffers from same symptoms but it's free).
Rating:
Summary: Great J2EE 1.4 book.
Review: I really liked this book, It had everything I needed to knoew about developing J2EE 1.4 applications. The authors did a really great job and Ive been recommending it to everyone.
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