Jbuilder Essentials

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Coverage, Well Written, Outdated
Review: A very well written book with thoughtful insights and good topic selections, but unfortunately very out of date if you are using the latest version of JBuilder (version 6). While one is able to learn many of the essential features of the JBuilder IDE, and gain good information on various topics (database access via JDBC, layout management, debugging) many of the examples involve interacting with dialogs, wizards, and muti-tabbed panes that have radically changed in the newest release of JBuilder. Despite the gains one achieves by figuring out how to perform such actions with JBuilder 6, I spent many moments in frustration. Good for additional information on Java, but look elsewhere for information on the JBuilder 6 IDE.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I went looking for a book that would help me learn to use JBuilder. I found that in JBuilder Essentials.

It walks you through a number of examples in clear, consise language. After creating just a couple of applications, it was easy to move onto the next chapter while remembering what I had learned in previouse chapters.

It comes with an older version of JBuilder (Trial version), and that's OK, the newer versions just build on what I learned from this book.

If you want to learn JBuilder, * B U Y T H I S B O O K *

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for in-depth JBuilder development
Review: JBuilder Essentials is not for novices learning Java but is an excellent book that covers adequately many of the difficult areas in JBuilder such as database and model-view architecture (topics missing in most other books and poorly covered in Borland documentation). Writing style is excellent and very readable. In working through the model-view examples I did find some errata. In looking at other errata posted, there are only minimal entries -- generally, a well-edited book. I would highly recommend this book for anyone working on developing applications -- it is not for novices. The book admits to "thin" coverage on some topics (sql, jdbc, etc.) but does provide references where the authors have limited their coverage (by necessity, not oversight).

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to JBuilder
Review: When I bought this book I knew a little about Java and nothing about JBuilder. This book does a good job providing an introduction to JBuilder. Since the book was written for JBuilder, the examples don't always work if you're running JBuilder2. Although the examples are basic, they are helpful and I refer back to them from time to time. I also found the examples were more meaty than JBuilder's online tutorials. The book also did a decent job explaining various database topics. Over-all a good introductory book ... it should be updated for JBuilder2.