5 comments about Tomcat Kick Start.

1. This book provides a lot of overly simplistic examples, and does not provide any explanations of how to get anything done. For example: instead of describing in detail what is involved in setting up a server, this book provides instructions without explanations for setting up a specific example - leaving the reader wondering how to adapt these instructions to different situations (beyond your basic 'hello world' example).

   The book is too high level to be useful for a developer or admin. I tried using it to get up and running with a new project, but honestly got absolutely nothing useful out it.




2. This book only touches the important subjects on the surface. This book is not good for someone who seriously wants to learn tomcat. It does not discuss most important parts in detail except for the installation.

   For me, it was a waste of money and I had to buy a another book called Mastering Tomcat Development, which is a great book for beginners and experienced tomcat users.




3. I think this is a very good book.

   Some who wrote in were expecting A and got B. A lot of books on the computer field are long on theory and short on practice. Tomcat Kick Start is more of the reverse, shorter on theory and longer in practice. This can frustrate someone who is expecting a lot more theory.

   One of the commenter's says, "Basically, this book tries to demonstrate how to develop enterprise applications on pretty weak examples, and this does not help you learn how to do these tasks in a generic manner." I disagree with this comment, many people do learn by example. Lots of people don't like to wait and read and read and read, then try something... I think the Tomcat Kickstart appeals to the impatient. And the simplicity of the examples encourages users to try things. I think this is a great way to get going quickly.




4. This is a decent book - I have to congratulate the authors and editors in trying to keep each topic cohesive and self-contained. However, a chapter or two on integrating with J2EE App Servers like JBOSS might have been useful.
   
   As a book author myself it is a challenge to pick examples that can be listed on a page or two supporting the topic of the chapter. So given this the choice of currency conversion example is probably o.k though for some it might look simple. Important thing is not the examples but the JSP/webapp constructs and facilities available that are being illustrated through the example. If you read CSS by Owen Briggs - he has an interesting approach to keep the reader attention on the concepts and not on the examples - the text he uses for displaying using different style sheets - "Lorem impsum dolor sit amet. ..."
   So some reviewers concerns about better examples may be uncalled for.
   
   This is a good book for someone who is familiar with Java and want to come upto speed with JSP/Servlets/Struts and those familiar with JDBC but wanting to migrate to using connection pooling available with commons-dbcp. I would expect such person to find things on their own after reading this book. Many time being impatient I used Google only to find tons of search results and wasted time reading crowded blogs/bbs when what I was looking for was right in the book - the best way to use this book - don't sit before the computer - finish readng a chapter and then try the examples in the chapter - it works straight.
   I would have preferred if the authors included ant build files with each chapter and also some explanation on how to integrate tomcat with JBOSS.
   Being written in 2002 it is still valid with Tomcat 5.0 - but an updated version would be timely and can also provide some information on other webcontainers. They could have picked a different cover image = it looks like a mechanical or aerospace engineering book .



5. Along with Jason Hunter's "Servlets" and Marty Hall's "Core Servlets", hard to beat in useful tricks per ounce: servlet listeners, DAOs, URL rewriting, custom tags. Except for some errors in chapter 5 (the downloaded web.xml is missing some tags), all the examples run.

5 comments about SOAP Programming with Java.

1. This book started good with a description of the SOAP protocol and entry-level programming discussion with examples for the Apache SOAP API. However by page 100 (out of 377), the book quickly loses its technical value.

   After introducing extremely basic uses of SOAP (passing only primitives to methods/functions that take only primitives as arguments), instead of jumping into more complex SOAP issues (different kinds of API's available like GLUE or IdooXoap with different call paradigms) or more complex examples (I would've liked a more concrete examples of using Apache SOAP with complex, nested datatypes or paradigms for programmatic security using UDDI as an case study) it instead jumps into a myriad of Java technologies which can be trivially adapted to utilize SOAP as an RPC transport protocol.

   Basically any Java technology that does RPC or can transfer a chunk of text can be "adapted" to use SOAP. The author gives considerable coverage of orthogonal Java technologies like JavaSpaces, JMS, and JavaMail which are interesting, but don't actually demonstrate any additional complex uses of SOAP. If the book taught details of using complex SOAP API's in a transport independent way, I could pick up a separate book on JMS, JavaMail, etc... and quickly get started writing real-world apps.

   Instead, I get coverage of the same trivial SOAP topics over and over again. While they are supposed to be in "different environments," the actual core code is still the same, as are the SOAP-based issues and pitfalls that are left unspoken.

   This book would only be suitable to someone was a total beginner in both the Java AND SOAP worlds. If you have any significant knowledge of one of these two topics, you'd likely find more than 60% of the book to be of little value.

   I still might considering keeping the book as a lightweight summary of various Java technologies, since the author does write in a clear and understandable way. He has a good presentation style and his prose is very readable. However, I cannot justify keeping a book of this cost that has only 100 pages of hardcore content in it.




2. It's a struggle to penetrate this book. I got halfway through a few times and forgot what SOAP was, or forgot why I wanted to know; that's dull stuff. The book suffers from poor editorial direction, uninspired technical writing and a catch-all approach to content.

   For starters, the title is misleading. There's enough coverage of supporting, overlapping, and competing technologies -- including a whole chapter on .NET's "position" in the market -- that the book primarily feels like a technology overview. I counted about 40 XML/SOAP listings ("snooped sessions") in the main text. Some of them are 1-2 pages long; I'm supposed to want to read them? No line numbers, no boldface: what am I supposed to learn? How does this relate to programming SOAP? The author often doesn't say.

   I also counted 80 or so hyperlinks in the main text. Some are duplicates, but most send you off to the site for some spec or a tool or a SOAP-crazy vendor. It feels pointless to read the book without a browser open and waiting. In particular, the section on deploying a SOAP-ready server gives links to instructions when it should explain; if you aren't sure how to set up a server, these instructions won't help, because each only tells you how to set up one piece of the puzzle.

   The author doesn't seem engaged with the subject, which makes some chapters tough reading. He's going through the motions, even diligently, but why? Sme of his client-server protocol transcripts aren't inherently meaningful but he leaves them that way. Then there are pages of term definitions for XML and SOAP; did he try to digest anything for the reader's benefit? The Java stuff doesn't even start until p. 81.

   SOAP is formative and there's too much going on to track it all; ok. It's the author's to maintain interest and focus, and avoid regurgitating information. The author probably shouldn't say that SOAP isn't likely to replace anything else. Why, then, would we buy this book? For the XML anatomy lesson?

   There's a CD-ROM in the back, but I couldn't get myself to bother playing with it.




3. While I believe the review by corporateprogrammer below was right on, my criteria for judging a useful book is rather different than his in that if I find a single chapter of unique use in a book I will often buy it and find it useful. My time is worth more than the price of this book and it definately saved me several hours of working some things out for myself.

   While I would never recommend this as a first book about SOAP, I found Chapter 8 very useful and also enjoyed Chapters 4, 5, 12, and 13. In my judgement Chapter 8 (SOAP over JMS and SOAP over Javaspaces) alone justified the purchase.

   My judgement is that this book belongs on the bookshelf of every programmer who aspires to become a Web Services expert.




4. This book does not really explain HOW to develop SOAP applications. Instead, it just spends page after page describing all the different technologies competing in the SOAP and web services arena. Upon completing reading this book, I had a much better understanding of what was happening in the chaotic development of SOAP, but I would not be able to develop anything using SOAP. This seems to be typical of this author's other books. I've read three of Brogden's books and they all tend to get bogged down in specification versions, generic overviews of APIs, and other occassionally interesting but not usually very useful informaiton. Then he doesn't take the time to carefully explain HOW to use the technologies in a practical way. This will be my last Brogden book.



5. As a developer, I've read several titles on SOAP and web-services - and found most to be too 'architectural' (view from the top - v. little hands-on, detailed understanding). While SOAs and web services architecture are all fascinating - when one gets down to the development - one needs a thorough understanding of SOAP - its various implementations - and current stumbling points.
   This book provides all of the above for 'java' soap (it was written prior to Axis release - but still contains enough useful information). For .NET soap - I use OReilly's Programming .NET web services - which is also excellent. I have no complaints about this book - I got what I needed from a developer's perspective and also some from an architectural perspective (for e.g. - the author illustrates how using JMS with SOAP provides a truly resilient and flexible SOA).

No comments about Java: La Guia Total del Programador--Manuales Users, en Español / Spanish (Manuales Users).

5 comments about EJB Cookbook.

1. 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.




2. 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.




3. 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.



4. Finally, one and only, the best cookbook. It has so many good code examples - finally developers will be able to quickly find a solution - perfect. Very clear, nice, neat, easy to read.
   
   I would like to see a cookbook by the same author about J2EE, e.g. best practice or most common techniques. Hopefully one day.
   
   If only it has more than 350 pages, please add more.
   
   
   I hope there will be a second part, with even more stuff in there.



5. This book is for the experienced developer who wants to keep a reference at hand of useful patterns (or recipes). Good to have in the library.

4 comments about Understanding SQL and Java Together : A Guide to SQLJ, JDBC, and Related Technologies (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems).

1. In the pletoria of books on Java and databases, this is the one book that just must be read. It gives a thourough enough introduction to JDBC 1.0 and 2.0 and SQLJ Parts 0-2. Very readable! Covers the subjects to just the right level for developers and database experts.



2. Very excellent book. Here's why: 1. The book is readable without being verbose. 2. After every English explanation of a topic, there is a short code example. 3. The code examples show just what's relevant -- no fluff. 4. The authors tell you what topics they don't have space to cover in depth, and refer the reader to the appropriate sources.

   I found this book perfect for getting started with database access using Java.




3. I found the the C code examples unbelievable in a book that says it's for Java. The SQL is not your standard JDBC SQL its PL/SQL style. I wish I hadn't opened the CD in the back so I could return it. A waste of time and money. Perhaps if you are a very advanced SQL person and have a lot of experience with Java this might be a helpful book, but then you wouldn't want this book either, nothing good here.



4. I purchased this book for an independent study and found it severely lacked pertinent information. The core of JDBC is the Java objects that assist you in accessing a database, but this book fails to provide a decent explanation of them. The first 2 chapters are filler on Java and SQL, which someone learning to access a database using Java should already know. If you don't know them, the coverage in this book is hardly sufficient. Descriptions of code examples or discussions leading up to the code examples were probably the biggest shortfalls of the book. There is so much going on underneath that this book fails to explain.

5 comments about Java Distributed Computing (O'Reilly Java).

1. The people below slamming this book should have taken the time to finish reading it. After reading the first two or three chapters, I thought it was pretty weak (and there are a few bizarre tangents the author takes in there, too). But the book as a whole is very good, especially the later chapters and the downloadable source code (how nice to have code that actually works!).



2. I lost a lot of time reading this poor book and trying to run incomplete code. The line followed by the author is very confusing. He is always trying to approach a lot of things at the same time. I think a better help with working examples would be Java Distributed Objects by Richard Soley. I would give a zero-star review for this.



3. Given the explanations included in that book, I can't imagine anybody would learn anything but vague concepts about networking you would find much better documented in many other (much better) books. The mere 12 pages dedicated to CORBA for instance won't teach you anything, unless you have never heard about it before. Not worth even opening it.



4. In general, this book will give you quite a good overview of distributed Programming in Java. It covers many subjects from sockets to security. Some of the subjects like sockets and RMI are explained fairly well, but others that are complex like CORBA and Security are not explained in detail. The nice part about this book is that it gives a good overview of most API's and subjects related to Distributed Computing in Java. For people, looking for a clear book with lots of examples and details on this subject, this book is NOT for you. This book is not excatly EASY to read and its definately NOT full of examples, BUT if you are patient enough while reading, you will learn quite a lot from this book. I also warn you that you may need to read other books on some subjects in this book like CORBA to be able to understand them well. In conclusion, if you are a newbie that wants to learn distributed programming in Java I suggest that you buy this book ALONG with another one that is clear and easy.



5. Do not buy this book. The code is full of bugs and does not appear to be tested by the author. You will spend ... and waste many hours trying to get the code to complie. The code is not very well explained in the text. Overall, the book is very disappointing, and really a huge waste of time.

   O'Reilly have a big turkey here. Save your money - buy something else.

5 comments about Java Black Book: The Java Book Programmers Turn To First.

1. The book is not bad but author does very lousy job in explaining how swing works and because of that do not get this book. AWT is the thing of the past. Swing is the future and he does not do a good job in that area.



2. Author does a good job explaining a AWT but AWT is the thing of the past. Swing is the thing of the future. In swing he does very very very bad job in explaining how classes intaract. If you are starting in java get a book that does a good job in explaining how inner classes work and how you can exploit them.



3. This book is a gentle introduction. It does not go into nearly as much depth as the Deitel and Deitel book (Java - How to program) but is definitly easier to get through. I like the writer's style of the Novice Programmer and the Boss giving him constant problems to overcome. It's the sort of book that you could use to look up a topic to get a high level understanding - then use something like Java in a Nutshell to fully understand it. With a name like "Black Book" you'd expect a definitive guide or something to make you a "Black belt" in Java, which is something this book is not.

   To summarise - a pleasure to read but don't expect to be an expert after it.




4. Maybe the author has written a lot of books, but obviously he is not an efficient writer. For example, in every chapter, he introduces a 3-8 lines of dialogue of a novice programmer. If you remove these excessive sentences, you can save 300 tedious pages of paper. Secondly, the author tries to cover almost every subject in Java 2, but his examples have no depth; sometimes he uses the same example again and again to explain different concepts. Thirdly, because the examples are too simple or rather unrealistic, a reader like me has no idea or confidence as to whether he can actually write a professional Java program after having read this book. To sum up, what this book lacks is the professional examples which can help readers write programs instead of just touching on the concepts. Although we are novice programmers, we need a book that not only can teach concepts, but also show us how to code professional after sacrificing couple weeks on digesting the contents of this 1200-page java encyclopedia!



5. I have read two books written by Steve Holzner. Java Black Book and Perl Black Book. If you want to learn the language itself look no further. He brings Java down to earth and makes it very easy to understand. The examples are complete and great. I literally learned Java and Perl from this author. I am looking forward to reading other books written by him.

2 comments about Java Applet Powerpack.

1. All of the applets are out of date. It is a shame to sell this book.



2. Nothing but examples of applets no one over twelve years old would find fun or beneficial. For a business reference book...a zero.

3 comments about Java-Sig's 100 Best Applets.

1. The idea is good: put together a book with lots of different java programs on CD, and sell it. Great, except whomever mastered the disc put it in 8.3 DOS file name format. The CD is worthless, and for the amount of time you'd save downloading the files rather than rename them makes this book a poor value. Hopefully there will be a second edition.



2. I develop webpages for a living -- everyone wants Java applets. This book gives my clients something to flip through, point at, and say "yeah, I want that". The descriptions of the applets are dynamite -- clear, lucid (sometimes even funny) and the organization of the book makes it really easy to find the applets you need.



3. This is the first book I have ever returned. I expected it to contain the code and detailed explanations. Its not there. The code might be on the CD but based on a previous review it sounds like the CD is screwed up. I didn't open the CD so I could return the book. An example of what I expected the book to contain can be found in Naughton & Schildt's book Java 2: The Complete Reference. The last couple of chapters of that book present some applets along with the code and some very good explainations. Infact I liked those chapters so much thats why I bought Java-Sig's 100 Best Applets. I wanted more of what Naughton and Schildt had provided. I didn't get it. I guess I should have known based on the number of Applets they are reviewing that they could not provide anything more than a feel good explaination of why they like the applet. I wanted to be able to review the code at my leisure, perhaps while I am lying on my couch or something. Instead you are forced to sit at your computer to get anything out of this book. Rather than buy this book just search the web for some applets and their source.