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Summary: A step-by-step introduction to using EJB technology
Review: This book is the first devoted exclusively to helping front-line developers implement application components with Enterprise JavaBeans technology. In it, you'll find guidelines on many of the issues that developers face in getting started in developing EJB components. It's a simple, step by step introduction to using the Enterprise JavaBeans technology, explaining both its background and how to use it develop real-world applications. This book presents a sequence of easy to follow discussions, with complete code examples, troubleshooting techniques, and even application design guidelines. All of these are written from the point of view of a hands-on developer with years of experience in writing and deploying enterprise applications.
Rating: 
Summary: Too simplistic and full of typos
Review: This book takes a very high level simplistic approach. In doing so, it sometimes provides the wrong information.An 'old-line monitor'?? The author also seems to be confused with OLTP. There are plenty of 'white papers' and online tutorials on the web that provides better and correct information. The publisher should have provided better 'technical reviews' and 'typos checking'for this book. I would suggest the other EJB books that are currently on the market.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific book for starters
Review: This is a book for someone who has gone through the EJB specs and now wants to get a clear picture of the concepts outlined in the specs. This book will help in taking the reader to his first EJB program and further but there is a lot less material for an Advanced course on EJBs. This book does have the potential to be a Killer book in a later release with extra stuff added such as more information on stateful session beans, performance issues etc....
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Summary: An Excellent Introduction
Review: This is a delightfully lucid introduction to Enterprise Java Beans. Unfortunately, it was published in 1999 and is a lucid introduction to EJB version 1.1, not the more current 2.0. Let's hope Mr. Valesky has a new edition in the works! Also, it is a relatively brief introduction, not a comprehensive how-to manual, so many of the necessary but mind-numbing details are left out. Nevertheless, the book would be useful as a conceptual introduction, perhaps to be followed by something meatier.
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Summary: Must buy book for EJB
Review: Those of us who have struggled through Version 1.0 of the EJB specification to learn the subject would have appreciated reading a book like this. The specification is confusing in places, has no real sample code (they promised a developer's guide which didn't appear), and doesn't say much about EJB clients. Tom Valesky's book is a gentle, thorough, and authoritative book on the subject. He gives interesting and complete real-world examples. Tom really knows what he is talking about -- no fluff here. The book also shines in having lots of check lists, summaries, and advice to help you thread your way through this potentially confusing subject -- the problem is that EJB is an application framework, so it's not always clear by whom and when your methods are being called. The book also includes valuable tips on using Weblogic's EJB server, which has become the de-facto reference implementation for EJB. I love this book and will be using it regularly in my two-day course in EJB for UC Santa Cruz Extension. The book can be read and assimililated in a few days, so it's just the right length to jump start a beginner or EJB wannabe. In my opinion, this book will occupy the position in EJB that Jason Hunter's book hold for servlets.
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Summary: Better books abound...
Review: Valesky's book tries to cover the subject of Enterprise Javabeans in 323 pages. He starts with an excellent description and overview of the technologies available to the programmer and compares and contrasts them with EJB. The book's worthiness tends to drop at that point. Chapter 2 is an exhaustive and brain numbing chapter covering all the classes, methods and properties of EJB. By the end of this chapter my brain was reeling with information overload. Chapter 3, actually was an excellent chapter, giving a short and sweet example of EJB. I felt like what I actually read in Chapter 2 made sense despite the overload. However, the book goes permanently downhill afterwards. A supposed "simple example" in the following chapters cover an e-commerce system which is so big that the code was listed entirely in an appendix. I certainly couldn't qualify that as "simple" and made it extremely difficult to learn the basic concepts. Worse, he provides little explanation for his code examples. More or less it was presented, "Here's a code snippet that does X -- check it out". I think I could get much more out of the Sun doc pages. I was extremely frustrated with the book and its treatment of EJB. Ed Roman's book was so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Better books abound...
Review: Valesky's book tries to cover the subject of Enterprise Javabeans in 323 pages. He starts with an excellent description and overview of the technologies available to the programmer and compares and contrasts them with EJB. The book's worthiness tends to drop at that point. Chapter 2 is an exhaustive and brain numbing chapter covering all the classes, methods and properties of EJB. By the end of this chapter my brain was reeling with information overload. Chapter 3, actually was an excellent chapter, giving a short and sweet example of EJB. I felt like what I actually read in Chapter 2 made sense despite the overload. However, the book goes permanently downhill afterwards. A supposed "simple example" in the following chapters cover an e-commerce system which is so big that the code was listed entirely in an appendix. I certainly couldn't qualify that as "simple" and made it extremely difficult to learn the basic concepts. Worse, he provides little explanation for his code examples. More or less it was presented, "Here's a code snippet that does X -- check it out". I think I could get much more out of the Sun doc pages. I was extremely frustrated with the book and its treatment of EJB. Ed Roman's book was so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Dissappointing
Review: While much of the content was informative, this book was poorly organized, and left many key points out of the development process that made it very difficult to get the examples to function. There are also some errors in the code examples, like listing 3.7, on line 19, sets the remote interface to a class called "HelloRemote", while there is no other mention of a HelloRemote class in the chapter. This line should refer to the class "Hello".
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Summary: Much to light for real development
Review: While this book provides an OK overview, it's not very useful for real development. I learned more about EJB reading a magazine article.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Examples
Review: With little experience on EJB prior to accessing this book, I found the chapter 3 is an excellent one. I spend 2 hours reading through chapter 3 and I feel I understand EJB a lot better than I used to. I definitely recommend this book to EJB beginners.
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