EJB Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: Valuable resource in a convenient form
Review: Although some of the recipes don't fit directly into the strict cookbook form this book is still an excellent resource for J2EE programmers. The author intends this book to be read by engineers with some EJB experience who encounter challenges or problems with EJB. The book organizes these problems into topics by chapter (e.g. transactions, security, logging, data access, code generation, etc.), and then presents each problem within the chapter in a standard form; problem, background, recipe, discussion, see also.

If there is any fault to be found it is that some of the explanations are somewhat terse. It's not a structural flaw, however, since the purpose of the book is to provide brief answers to get you out of a tough jam.

Chapter two, on XDoclet generation is noteworthy. The authors explanation of XDoclet and it's use in generating various EJB and J2EE artifacts is dead-on easy to understand. I also appreciate that he mentions it so early on because it is such an important part of EJB development.

For J2EE developers, and more specifically EJB developers, this is a valuable resource for day-to-day development challenges. Well worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: An OK reference for recurring tasks
Review: EJB Cookbook is a collection of recipes for the common EJB developer, wondering how a certain task can be accomplished with EJBs.

The authors state early on that the focus is not on teaching the EJB technology and basics. Despite of what the authors just said in the preface, the book starts with exactly the kind of basics that encourage quick browsing.

The 2nd chapter is a U-turn and points the book to the right direction for most of the journey. The overall level of the recipes is still a bit too simple for my liking -- the toughest questions have been left out. On the plus side, I am happy with the fact that the authors have included chapters on using XDoclet for EJB development and on unit testing EJBs with Cactus. The body of the book is, simply put, a compact reference for accomplishing recurring development tasks.

Excluding the chapters on XDoclet and unit testing, the EJB Cookbook is not an exceptional book. It is a reference, albeit a useful one.

Rating:
Summary: Good idea, poor implementation.
Review: The book is well structured, and looking into the contents you can see that it concerns a wide range of really interesting topics. It is not as boring as other EJB books.
But ...
Do you think that 300 pages could cover topics like EJB security, transactions, messaging, XDoclet in such a depth that you can use the recipes in action?
The other point is that the the book is full of very serious errors. Code examples are never tested and there are conceptual mistakes in the text. Did you find the errata at the publisher's web site? I didn't. It will be published in another book.
So ...
It would be the best book on EJB if the authors wrote it in 600 pages, got the sample code fragments from a running application and hired a publisher's reader.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent quick reference
Review: This book does just what it claims. I don't need to read the whole thing to learn something new, I can open to any recipe. I just bought this book, and I really like it. I keep it handy while I am coding. It has a great index that makes it easy to find what I need. Definitely recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Software architect
Review: This is an excellent book. Not only is it clear the authors are extremely knowledge but the organization of the book makes it easy to find the information you need quickly. The recipes not only provide the needed information to solve problems but also lead you to better overall design decisions. Also the intoduction to XDoclet was appreciated.