Rating: 
Summary: One of the best EJB primer
Review: Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans... is the best EJB primer I read so far. It is complete, clear and covers almost every aspect of the EJB world. The appendices are quite useful.I particulary like the division of the book in parts that are independent enough to "take a break" during the reading. I also read Enterprise JavaBeans 2nd Edition by Ricahrd Monson-Haefel and for a beginner, it is harder to understand the concepts but if you combine the two books, I believe that you get the whole picture of the EJB world.
Rating: 
Summary: A so so book
Review: The major trouble of this book is it fails to convince reader why EJB is good. All the contents on that issue look like Sun commericials. It seems that the book was not written for programmers, who won't take anything for granted. After reading this book, my impression is EJB is only an extension of RMI and CORBA and, even worse, an overhyped naive technology. I am a Java programmer. I know EJB is good. I'm so sad that this book cannot even convince me.
Rating:
Summary: Reads like a Sun advertisement
Review: I must admit that I have only read the first half of Mastering EJB - I got sick of all the buzzwords and praises for EJB. It really sounds like an advertisement for EJBs and Java technology in general. If you like Sun's style of hyping their technology to death, you may actually like this book. But if you are more critical of all the promises the author (and Sun) makes about EJB, Java, components, re-usability of components in a closed-source world and hate all those articifial words that E, you will probably throw this book away...
Rating:
Summary: pros and cons
Review: pros: * Clear explanation, easy to read. * More complete and examples than <<Enterprise Javabeans>> by Richard Monson-Haefel * BEA Web logic CD * Good references at the end * Objective: it says what is good and what is bad as well. It seems to be a serious book and not a specfication/product advertissement. cons: * Duplication, not concise. * No explanation for CD. * No JSP, only examples for j2ee, does not really cover j2ee. * EJB1.0 only, not EJB1.1 Conclusion: Buy it with <<Enterprise Javabeans>> by Richard Monson-Haefel, or wait for a better one it you are not in hurry.
Rating: 
Summary: I can not finish this book!
Review: This book is full of duplicate contents. For instance, you can find the definitions of entity bean and session bean more than ten times and they are almost same contexts. I doubt the author tried to make the book thicker to make more money (It also wastes readers' lot of time, I hate this). After I found the book published by O'reilly, I never touched this book again. Be careful of the thick books!
Rating: 
Summary: Took the mystery out of EJB
Review: I thought Ed Roman did a great job on explaining all types of Enterprise JavaBeans. I was a bit mystified by EJB. I learn best from examples and he has plenty and they work. Although I had to update the deployment descriptors for WebLogic 4.5. I found the book straight forward and very understandable.
Rating:
Summary: Professional Javabean developers can add this book to their
Review: This is a very good book to learn the fine points of EJB. There are some topics in this book which is missing from O'Reilly's EJB book . This book provides a good tutorial for RMI for those who are new to J2EE . There is a chapter on integration of Java Servlets with beans which is very useful. Both these features are missing from O'Reilly's book. The new edition of the book covers EJB 1.1( unlike mentioned in some of the reviews ) and XML based deployment descriptors . There is a primer on XML as well . The samples are also okay . I rate this book the second best after O'Reilly's .
Rating:
Summary: my EJB bible
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone, at any level, who is interested in learning about EJB. Ed Roman does a very good job of capturing the essence of EJB while giving enough detail to thoroughly educate readers. I read the book 3 times front to back and rate it one of the top 5 books on programming subject matter that I've personally read, and I've read a lot of them including the classics. The book does not get into the Java language details but does not assume knowledge of anything but Java syntax. Therefore, it is an invaluable resource for people familiar with programming in Java who need to ramp up on the J2EE platform with focus on EJB. It also proves as an invaluable resource for the seasoned programmer who wants a "bible" with the core principles and fundamentals presented very eloquently and with solid, well-thought-out examples. It is a very organized study that works equally well as a thorough course in EJB, as a solid, unbiased essay about the subject, and as a "go-to" resource for programmers of all levels.
Rating:
Summary: my EJB bible
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone, at any level, who is interested in learning about EJB. Ed Roman does a very good job of capturing the essence of EJB while giving enough detail to thoroughly educate readers. I read the book 3 times front to back and rate it one of the top 5 books on programming subject matter that I've personally read, and I've read a lot of them including the classics. The book does not get into the Java language details but does not assume knowledge of anything but Java syntax. Therefore, it is an invaluable resource for people familiar with programming in Java who need to ramp up on the J2EE platform with focus on EJB. It also proves as an invaluable resource for the seasoned programmer who wants a "bible" with the core principles and fundamentals presented very eloquently and with solid, well-thought-out examples. It is a very organized study that works equally well as a thorough course in EJB, as a solid, unbiased essay about the subject, and as a "go-to" resource for programmers of all levels.
Rating:
Summary: Look out!
Review: I don't get how this book only got extraordinary reviews. At the very first example when the reader has to deploy its very first bean, it goes "Well, now it's time for you to check your container documentation to know how to do this...hopefully someday we will have great ides that will sove this for us" Thanks a lot! It doesn't even mention how to generate stubs and skeletons and besides that, it suggests you to go look in some messy documentation to learn how to do it. By the way, the book comes with weblogic apllication server, so nothing more logical than using it to illustrate the examples don't you think? What's the point in writting a book and tell people to look in the documentation ? I had to go to the developer's connection to get this info. The context in the book is good, but if you're looking for great hands on ready to go examples, better look somewhere else.
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