Java Frameworks and Components : Accelerate Your Web Application Development

Rating:
Summary: Dreary and heavy-handed
Review: Inside this 470-page book is a collection of decent short essays
struggling to get out. Unfortunately, in its present state, it contains
a wealth of redundant material. Nash begins by spending 55 pages
defining frameworks and touting their benefits, and then moves on to
another 50 page chapter entitled "Application Frameworks: What do they
provide and what are the benefits?" Similarly, two 30-page chapters
on the process of choosing between frameworks are separated by an 80
page catalog of synopses of more or less randomly chosen frameworks,
libraries, and development tools. This book is badly in need of
editing.

Curiously, the chapters in the middle of the book are entirely
unrelated to choosing application frameworks. There are long treatises
about open source (including over thirty pages of annotated
software licenses,) about development methodologies, about design
patterns, and even about IDEs. Why all this material appears in this
book is a mystery to me; again, an editor could have helped.

The last two chapters of the book, which concern best practices and
case studies, are a bit better and certainly more on topic. Readers
interested in the Struts, Cocoon, Expresso, or Turbine application
frameworks will benefit from the comparative study in the final
chapter.

"This book is a practical tool for Java programmers," Nash claims in
the frontispiece. I find it hard to imagine a typical Java programmer
having much use for this dreary, heavy-handed tome. A manager new to
software development might find it of more value.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Guide for Technical Managers
Review: When I managed a software engineering group (over 5 years ago) I used to have time to do Java(tm) programming on my own. Now that I no longer program, it is a huge challenge to maintain the knowledge needed to make critical decisions.

For example, my company needed to decide which Java framework to use, and as expected, there were different recommendations from different parts of the organization.

As I was responsible for facilitating a decision, I had to find a way to define criteria for the comparison of Java Frameworks. I needed to learn why and when one framework is better for my application than another.

Java Frameworks and Components was very useful in providing the information I needed to bring my organization to a decision. Finally, I was able to understand the issues being discussed between our technical experts. I found Java Frameworks and Components to be a very timely and useful book and I would recommended it to anyone looking to learn about Java Frameworks or tasked with deciding which Framework to use for their project.