Essential JTAPI

Rating:
Summary: Gatting started
Review: I am a Franch student, beginner in CTI and JTAPI. This book helped me to understand all the basic paradigms of CTI and what is really JTAPI. I think it is the best way for getting started. CTI developpers don't have time to answer newbies'question on forum, so, with this book, you can avoid bothering them with the "can't get provider" error.

Moreover, after having understood the concepts of JTAPI, you can focus on what is important for you, implementing JTAPI or Developping with JTAPI.

This book gives you knowledge and know-how, it was when I read it that I have been able to really start using JTAPI.

Rating:
Summary: The author spends too much time trying to justify use of JTA
Review: I have read a number of other attempts to write a book about JTAPI and this is the only one that comes close. This book gives lots of background and code examples. This is the only JTAPI book one should buy!

Rating:
Summary: Well Rounded Book
Review: Not a book for beginners, very focused, but at the same timeproviding insights. The author does explore some territory outside the subject matter, but it is related content, much of it rather interesting, especially the discussions about the design of the API itself...

Rating:
Summary: Useless for me
Review: This book is huge relative to information that the contents. It has too long introduction on Telephony (which is not very useful either) and too long introduction to Java and JTAPI. What the book wants to tell you is how to implement JTAPI using Microsoft TAPI, but there are too many unuseful things.

It tells you a little about Microsoft TAPI, you could buy a book on Microsoft TAPI to make your understanding better on it. It also tells you a little about Java Native Interface (JNI), again the Java online tutorial on JNI is better than this book. The event handling mechanism used in this book is not the event handling suggested in JTAPI 1.3 specification, it is a little bit old now.

If you are beginner in telephony API, maybe you should buy this book, but if you are already a CTI programmer, what you need to do is buying "Java Native Interface" book by Liang and downloading JTAPI specification. But if you still need to understand how to implement JTapiPeer maybe you should also buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: An unexpected delight!
Review: This book should have been called "How to improve your Java skills while mastering JTAPI"

A problem with generic book reviews is that a book is intended for a particular reader. The author of this book is speaking to a capable programmer who is new to telephony and using Java, itself a relatively new language. That audience is a good choice, because it represents the majority of us who would buy such a book. I devoured the book, and I think the author worked very hard to make sure that he enlightened the reader about the central issues such as Java's fitness for telephony. JTAPI is an interface based specification, hence the author pushed the concepts of using interfaces. TAPI/JTAPI is neccessarily event based, and the author really went to town with that.

My opinion is that I wish Mr. Roberts would write a book on the entire subject of object oriented software development including analysis and design. His JTAPI book merits serious thought, it's not just another throw away cookbook that some people are always looking for. His thoughts and experience in software development withstands the test of time, and long after the versions of Java and JTAPI are changed, I'll still pick this gem up from time to time for a sanity check on my own software development thoughts.