Rating: 
Summary: A well written masterpiece!
Review: I can honestly say that this is the easiest-to-read book onJ2EE on the market. J2EE is a complex and deep topic. I is nearlyimpossible to cover it in a single text but this book comes close.The appendixes on JNDI, XML, UML based quick reference and making apurchase decision are invaluable additions. I think that anyexperienced Java developer armed with this book and:*The Java 2Enterprise Edition Developer's Guide *Designing EnterpriseApplications with Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (aka J2EEBlueprints)
..will be able to tackle any J2EE application!
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners
Review: I've used the O'Reilly book, the Sun tutorials, and this book (the Ed Roman book). This is the best of the bunch for getting started. The book gets you writing simple EJBs and deploying them into the weblogic server (trial cd included). It really doesn't get too deep into issues of how to design your application, building your cluster of app servers, or anything that might be construed as a "advanced".
After going through this book, you will not have mastered J2EE, but you will know how to write EJBs, which is a pretty involved process. If you don't know how to write EJBs, avoid the O'Reilly and Sun tutorials, which are tedious, long, and tend to meander.
Rating: 
Summary: My Honest Opinion
Review: I bought this book because of the fact that EJB is a very highly regarded field of Java technology, and because this book got some good reviews, however, I felt that it wasn't exactly adequate. I could barely pay attention to what I was reading through the first three chapters, and it was quite confusing to me. I stopped using the book because it was so frustrating. I had to return the book because I simply didn't have the resources. I downloaded the software that the book suggested, but there is no troubleshooting at all in the book, and though I followed every help guide I could find on the internet, I still could not manage to start up an EJB server. This was on my personal computer though. Also this book offered no help on usage of deployment tools that had to be used to deploy the ejb's, all it said was that you had to use one supplied by the vendor to deploy them. For me, I felt this book was quite inadequate.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Recommended
Review: I found this book to be flat and completely out of date. It has absolutely no material on EJB 1.1 (all it covers is EJB 1.0). In addition, its coverage of J2EE is dreadful and inaccurate. I recommend that you buy the OReilly book, which is much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to EJBs
Review: Thorough introductory treatment of EJBs. Though if you're looking for thorough treatment of advanced development strategies, design patterns and the like on EJBs, you may be disappointed.
Book can be downloaded from theserverside.com
Examples are of (yawn) an e-commerce site.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Finally, after working my way through several weighty tomes on the subject of Enterprise Javabeans, I have discovered a book that explains the subject thoroughly and in friendly, concise format. The first few chapters give the subject a broad overview. This can be a bit weighty, but is important to gain a total view of the technology.
Finally, in chapters 3 through 6, Roman begins the subject of Session beans. He starts off basic -- explaining the concept behind the beans and evolving one to a fully-featured worker. The examples make sense and demonstrate the concept presented. Several more chapters are dedicated to the other side of EJB, the entity beans. Roman also covers several details about transactions and integrating your bean with JSP and servlets. The book also covered more details in the J2EE spec like Corba / RMI, JNDI but with less detail.
While the book is arguably misnamed (it doesn't cover everything in the J2EE specification) it does, however, do an excellent job covering EJB's. His examples are appropriate and meaningful. About my only gripe about the book is the lack of deployment descriptors -- they are almost completely absent. I realize that the XML file is based upon your application server's requirements, but this was left as a bit of a black hole. In conclusion, I wouldn't attempt to read this book without a solid understanding of Java. A dabbling in JSPs and / or servlets is also helpful. Overall, this is an excellent introduction and learning tool.
Rating: 
Summary: Source code based on EJB 1.0, and still not update to EJB1.1
Review: I've checked this book's companion Web site, it still don't update source code to EJB 1.1. I think the author will update it in second edition(When?). But right now, many J2EE compliant Application Server is updated to EJB 1.1, so it will make confuse to the beginner. I think if you will learn EJB 1.1 exactly, wait for second edition of the book.Or read EJB 1.1 spec from Sun and buy some books for EJB 1.1 (like "Enterprise Javabeans, second edtion" by Richard Monson-Haefel)!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction to J2EE
Review: This book can serve as a very good introduction to J2EE elements, especially for EJBs. Helped me visualize all hanging pieces of puzzles/jargans together.
