5 comments about Java 2 Micro Edition: Professional Developer's Guide.

1. This book is an excellent presentation of the current world of Java in embedded devices with enough detail to get someone started but also not too much of detail to get people confused. It provides a good overview of the problem space of resource restricted operating environments and performance tuning. In a very structured way, the book describes the J2ME specifications and discusses CLDC implementations from Sun (KVM for Palm), Motorola and RIM. As a little goodie the author also describes Waba. Generally, the tone of the book is very light making it a very pleasant reading experience.

   As a bottom line, this book is extremely recommendable for everybody with Java experience who is new to the embedded Java space!




2. This book is an excellent presentation of the current world of Java in embedded devices with enough detail to get someone started but also not too much detail to get a reader confused. It provides a great mixture of background and hands-on information. In a very structured way, the author shows the problem space of resource restricted operating environments and provides some guidance on when employing Java in a device makes sense and how to tune and address performance issues. After an overview of the J2ME specifications, three actual implementations of the CLDC/MIDP are discussed in detail (Sun's KVM for Palm, Motorola's J2ME SDK and RIM's Blackberry JDE). All of those implementations are included on the CD, which allows for some really good hands-on training. As an additional goodie the book also discusses Waba.

   Generally, the tone of writing is very friendly making this book a very pleasant reading experience. The bottom line is, that this is an excellent introductory book to J2ME for people who know some Java already!

   I definitely cannot agree with some other reviewer's perspective in regards to the author just having collected the Tech Tips he wrote into a book. However, this book together with the Tech Tips make a great combination to jump start J2ME development.




3. This is a great book to help you get a handle on the Java2Micro Edition. Need to know the difference between a Profile & aConfiguration? Wondering where PersonalJava fits in with regards tothe J2ME?

   The weakness of this book is the 'code' aspect. Theauthor goes through various implementations with a Tic Tac Toe game,but fails to go through in any detail of the main API's that aren'texactly in the J2SE (Records, Connector, how to draw low-level, Highlevel GUIs, etc..). Also, after reading this book it failed to mentionwhich DataStructures are available. Also, the detail of theimplementations is either slightly out of date, very light orboth.

   Besides all that, it is a good book (hell it's the only J2MEbook that I know). For an overview book you couldn't ask for more.Easy writing style and helpfull diagrams, but not overdone. I wasinspired enough to write a J2ME game...




4. Although this book was published about a year ago, it still has an incredible value to everyone seriously interested in developing applications in J2ME. It is one of those few books that is capable of covering major topics without being too broad and digging deep into details without being boring.
   Eric explains how to think in Java in J2ME. The thing is that normal Java programming paradigms often will not apply to J2ME, since we have to work in a very constrained environment. The author from the beginning gives you an overview of what can be done and what should not be done with J2ME. Those first chapters are worth the price of the book alone. Subsequent chapters cover the essentials of J2ME for different hardware platforms including Palm OS.
   All in all, I think this book is a must for everyone who intends to write professional software for mobile devices.



5. I like Eric's books normally; but this one is a bit dated and not much more than a review of the J2ME specification, which you could obtain on the internet without buying the book.

   Lots of spec stuff and very little 'how to...' stuff. Give it a miss and buy his newer book with Ortiz as the co-author.

5 comments about The Java Handbook.

1. I found the book a fine read, and a good guide for experimentation. I learn by doing, and this book certainly provides good motivation and examples. The writing is clear and economical, with wit and literary value. I've read it twice so far, just for fun. Naughton's introduction of the Futurist applets in the end is inspiring.



2. As a technical introduction to Java, this book is excellent because it assumes nothing and moves you along fast. Best book I have tried for the serious beginner. Writing style is very readable and not stuffy. Bits of Java history add color. You can go from nothing to fully skilled Java with relative easy. Java 1.0, but fine for learning.



3. This is a great book. Patrick Noughton style of explanations and choice of examples are just great. The insight about the green project and the experiences are interesting to read. Learning Java in nutshell, you can't find a better book. gets you productive from day one.

   great work done Patrick !!!




4. I did not like this book much at all. It contains an excessive amount of Microsoft-style flack where deficits are described as advantages. Also, the metalanguage used to describe the object-oriented elements of Java keeps changing from page to page in a very disconcerting way.

   There is a surprising incidence of just plain incorrect English, by anyone's grammar book, in addition to a good bit of fog. The lack of verbal precision gives me the distinct feeling that the author, Naughton, was not an actual developer of Java but rather a "shaker and mover" in an executive capacity.

   Given all that, I think that if you are not overly sensitive to flack and lack of precision you might be able to learn quite well from this book, as others have liked it very much.




5. This book explains the language and the concepts well, without the usual flab that one finds in computer texts. I am still waiting for P. Naughton to write an updated edition to cover java 1.1 - java 2.0. I now have several books on Java - some more recent but none as easy to read or understand. What was the best Java book is loosing "stars" as time goes on but is stil an easy, informative and entertaining read.

5 comments about J2EE Best Practices: Java Design Patterns, Automation, and Performance (Wiley Application Development Series).

1. Truly remarkable book. Lots of important nuggets of information in here. Good compliment to some of the other Java patterns and blueprints books out there. Author is someone who obviously spent time with J2EE and knows about software architecture. Nice to see how he used Struts in the sample app. too.



2. Finally, a book that tells it like it is. The author points out the highs and lows of the J2EE architecture and provides countless practical and useful patterns for avoiding pitfalls in J2EE development. I've used several of his ideas already and have been extremely impressed with the included examples and clarity of the text. Additionally, there is much more detail in this book than I've found in other similar texts that seem to stop after explaining the basics.



3. This is the best J2EE helper book period. I've been developing J2EE based applications for 2 years now and have read many books on the subject. Most of the J2EE books just repackage the specifications and write about common sense approaches.

   J2EE Best Practices, will give you concrete information on how to use EJB 2.0 for the "real" world now!. You can and will use this book to ensure the success of your current EJB 2.0 project.

   The material on CMR Entity beans is extremely valuable for anyone trying to implement Business Objects based on J2EE.

   I use Cocoon for my Web Interface, but this book has some good info for Struts users as well.

   Go to your nearest book store and get that edge you've been looking for. While your buddies are reading "Core J2EE', "Bitter EJB', "Expert One on One J2EE Design..", "Mastering J2EE..", etc...




4. This book is out of date. The struts examples use the perform method (version 1.0) and there has been a lot of changes from 1.0 to 1.1. Version 1.1 has been out in beta for 2 years now and officially for 1 year...

   Forget about it for now and wait for a new edition with Struts 1.1.




5. I am sorry, but this book is the biggest pile of crap I have seen in a longtime. The Sample code is very sloppy and over engineered. I honestly think the author needs to go back to CS101 and find out what the Framework is all about.

   I rather burn the money than buying this book and waist my time.

No comments about Beginning Java™ ME Platform (Beginning from Novice to Professional).

3 comments about Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite.

1. I searched for something like that so long. The tool is definetely already state of the art to enable Developers producing professionell applications under the J2ME Plattform. This book supplement the already existing and good documentation and explains everything from higher perspective.
   
   Very Well done !



2. When you first learn J2ME, you learn about this fantasy world where all devices follow the J2ME specification to a tee. But in the real world, because of the interpretive nature of the specifications, no two devices really implement the specification exactly the same. So this requires either targeting a particular device or have many versions of you app to run on different devices.
   
   Man what a pain. But that is where J2ME Polish comes to the rescue. J2ME Polish provides pre-compiler directives to allow you to write code such that J2ME Polish's build script can automatically create different versions for you on the fly however you want. There is a lot more to J2ME Polish than just that, but this is a book review.
   
   So let's get to that review. Well, first Robert Virkus is J2ME Polish, well he is the architect and lead programmer for J2ME Polish. Who better to write a book about it? Consider this book the hard copy of the manual for J2ME Polish. If you are going to use J2ME Polish, then this book is a must. It is the reference book that you will need to find anything you need to know about J2ME Polish.
   
   Now, it isn't really a read all the way through the book and you can be J2ME Polish expert. You really need to be actually using J2ME Polish at the time, to better grasp what is being explained. The book can be hard to understand, not because of the writing, but because J2ME Polish is feature rich and there is lots to learn.
   
   I highly recommend using J2ME Polish and buying this book if you will be developing for more than one device, and also to get their cool looking GUI screens, rather than MIDP 2.0 High Level GUIs.



3. I'm a serious J2ME developer. I bought this book because it claimed to solve the 600 phone problem. It also promised to do some fancy GUI which are otherwise completely lacking in J2ME.
   
   However, right out of the box the first demo, the menu sample, fails utterly. Ant crashed because I didn't put an Ant jar file in the any classpath then the menu sample didn't work. I had to search some forum to find there is a bug in the latest RC4 download. Apparently no one at Enough caught or fixed it. To fix it I had to patch a css file deep inside the project. If that wasn't enough the actual menu demo looked horrible on WTK 2.5. Couldn't see the menu highlights and it scrolled incorrectly.
   
   Then I tried the roadrunner game. But the game didn't fit on the screen properly--isn't this the 600 phone issue? Ultimately, when I tried to exit, the game (or emulator) crashed. I looked at the jar file size and it was a whopping 462 KB on just 1,433 lines of source! Unreal.
   
   I tried the tabbing demo which looked decent and worked well enough but it was 430 KB on just 200 lines of source. This is awful.
   
   J2ME Polish depends on Ant and preprocessing of #ifdefs which were recognized a bad idea when C introduced them 30 years ago. C++ introduced const (and Java, final) partly for this reason. Actually, in J2ME Polish (and NetBeans) they're not #ifdefs but //#ifdefs because Java never bothered, and rightly, with this silliness--and here they are back again. They make the code less readable and they're virtually impossible to debug.
   
   Then there's this matter of integration of the IDE (I use Eclipse) and Ant. I mean, why bother with an IDE if you must still use Ant? Throw in some .css files, too, for good measure. I just don't get it.
   
   Indeed, I'm returning the book for a refund. I had enough from Enough.

5 comments about JMX: Managing J2EE with Java Management Extensions (Java (Sams)).

1. This book will be of particular interest to you if you're using JBoss as your app server, as JMX forms the fundamental glue used to implement the JBoss server.
   

   The book starts out with some nice introductory coverage for Standard MBeans, which are about the most dirt simple classes to code so I expected some good writing here. From there we start getting into Dynamic MBeans where the fun really begins. I was particularly interested in the implementation of ModelMBeans, which are dynamic MBeans that can map to a resource (like a printer for example) and provide automated attribute caching etc.
   
   While the Dynamic MBean coverage was fairly adequate I was pretty disappointed with the ModelMBean coverage. Not enough time was spent describing all the Info classes and Descriptor attributes you need to implement. I spent a lot of time experimenting, reading the JSRs, and working through a subsequent ModelMBean implementation chapter to figure things out. There are also numerous bugs in the sample code for ModelMBeans.
   
   The Chapter discussing the MBeanServer was a little light but reasonably well done. Enough to help you understand how it works which is all you need to program with anyway.
   
   One sorely lacking area is JMX notifications. The interfaces are briefly mentioned, but there is little by way of sample code, or in depth discussion of the default JMX notifications. Since notifications are based on the AWT Event model you can find plenty of other source material for how the notification mechanism works, but I'd like to see more detail on the JMX standard messages etc.
   
   I enjoyed the JMX standard services section. They were very instructive, and helped indirectly patch together some of the notifcication stuff.
   
   The JBoss chapter is, of course, quite good with detailed information about how JBoss uses JMX, how everything fits together in JBoss with JMX. All in all it's a great case study of what you might do with JMX.
   
   This book was a good introduction to JMX, but I felt it lacking in certain areas of detail. Since there are relatively few JMX books (in fact I think this might be the only one) it's not a waste of money, just not as insghtful as I'd hoped.




2. The example code, ...doesn't match the examples in the book. The files are all in a single directory instead of being seperated by chapter. This makes it more difficult to work with.

   Some of the examples will no longer compile due to changes in the JMX spec. There's no errata files.

   Other than the difficulty of the examples, the book provides a good introduction to JMX.




3. Although the contents in the books are a little haphazard and the samples don't run out of the box, its has excellent content.
   This is definately not an intro to JMX if you're not ready to poke around.
   Interestingly the difficulty in running the samples and the poking around ultimately led me to get a much deeper understanding of the JMX concept.
   Its sort of like how you remember the directions well after you've been lost a few times and havinng to figure your way out of it.
   If you use open source software and are used to poking around to troubleshoot its an excellent book. Just don't except too much handholding.
   Thanks guys for introducing me to the fascinating world of loosely coupled systems based on JMX and dynamic proxies!!



4. First reading this book and then the JDMK 5.0 Tutorial from Sun I was struck by how much of it is copied from the tutorial. The tutorial seems very well written and complete, and I would recomend it before this book.



5. While JBoss has been successful in various aspects of its operations, this book by them is now obsolete. The industry has largely moved away from JMX. The book was written at a time when JMX seemed like the Next Big Thing. Alas, the book does not indicate that in practice, JMX proved too intricate. Since then, Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture have become more popular choices, for building dispersed applications.

3 comments about Java Media APIs: Cross-Platform Imaging, Media and Visualization (Sams White Book).

1. This book is more up to date than many of the other books on JMF. And the author does explain quite a bit about media timing, and the various classes involved, etc. And I even give him credit for taking extra time to spell out some particularly confusing areas, such as the many Sun classes and interfaces with similar names.

   However, the specific reason I bought this book was to learn how to manipulate the individual bits and bytes of audio and video, and the book did not provide a single JMF example. Granted, this would have required some low level discussions of video or audio formats, but at least one example of each would have been appreciated.

   Even more frustrating, the author mentions again and again how one "could" do this and "could" do that - and the chapter and section heades indicated that we'll eventually get there, but at the end he punts and refers to the Sun web site. As an example, he talks about how you could add a custom JMF Codec or Processor to add a simple reverb to an audio stream - this is mentioned several times - but when you finally get to where the example should be - he pulls the "well of course this would beyond the scope of the book" - LAME! So I felt that the book really did promise this, and then did not deliver.

   Fortunately I only paid $10 for it, and there was some useful info.




2. Well, the book tries to cover JAI, JMF and J3D all in one book.
   And does not do too good a job on either (JAI and J3D). I have not tried the JMF chapters. Also my major peeve with the book is that the code for J3D is not available online. I think this was just rushed out of the door.



3. This book is a poor overall introduction to the individual Java Media API's. The first four chapters, primarily about the Java 2D API, which is technically not a Java Media API at all, are not as good as the book by Knudsen on the same subject. Chapter five is about the Image I/O API, which contains the codecs for the various image types so that image files can be easily written to and read from. This chapter does have some useful code and information on using this API, and the code is worth examining. Likewise, chapter six, which is about the Java Advanced Imaging API does a pretty good job of discussing the JAI and has some useful code snippets that help the reader see how to use the JAI methods in a program. Where the book really falls down is in the chapters devoted to the Java Media Framework (JMF). Code for creating a player is shown, but the player part of JMF has been around since release 1.0 and is not hard to master. Instead, the authors waste your time with program after program that prints statistics about available capture devices and other information that does not really have anything to do with processing media. What the author should have done in these chapters is have examples that are at least as good as the examples that you can download from Sun Microsystems. The questions the author should have answered about JMF are: How do you frame seek inside a movie? How do you create a movie from a list of JPEGS and vice versa? How do you screen grab?...and so on.
   The third part of the book is on 3D graphics, virtual reality, and visualization. The overview the book gives on Java 3D is not as good as the book "Java 3D Programming" by Selman, but overall it is a decent explanation with some useful code snippets. The book does a fair job talking about some of the applications of Java 3D in the realms of VR and visualization. People interested in virtual reality programming that would like to use Java 3D will find this information useful. The best chapter of the book, in my opinion, is the unique chapter 14 on integrating the various Java Media APIs. The two fascinating examples shown are for a streaming 3D chat room using JMF and Java 3D together, and real-time terrain rendering using the JAI and Java 3D together. I implemented the first example and part of the second example, and so far I have not found any errors in the authors' code. The chat room had problems because of the JMF itself, not because of the code.
   In summary, if you want to learn about the individual Java Media APIs, there are better books from which to learn. In particular, Java 2D and Java 3D are explained better and in more detail in other volumes. The chapters on the JAI, however, are pretty good and are recommended. The main course of JMF 2.0, the processor which enables frame-by-frame control of media, has numerous bugs and since the dotcom bust has basically become abandoned by Sun Microsystems. If you want to control media via Java, you would be well advised to switch to Quicktime for Java. However, if you are set on using JMF, this book is really not helpful with anything other than the media player. However, if you are interested in visualization and virtual reality and using Java3D to do it, this book is very useful. Likewise, if you are interested in integrating the various Java Media API's chapter 14 is a worthwhile read.

5 comments about Oracle PL/SQL Developer's Workbook.

1. This book covers a wide range of material. In this sense it is good for someone of every level but it also means you will only use a part of the book. Each chapter is structured like a quiz - answer the questions and then review the answers. It does not work you through problems but there is a lot of useful material in here that you will not find anywhere else.



2. This is a great book to test your PL/SQL knowledge no matter what level you are at. In fact each chapter is devided into 3 sections: Beginner, Intermediate and Expert. This is an excellent book to get after you have worked through a PL/SQL course and want something to give you the extra edge on all the various PL/SQL topics. There is some very good hard to find information in here.



3. I thought this book was great. If you like getting into specific, real-world programming tasks and figuring out the best solutions then this book is for you. He provides helpful explainations along with his solutions. There are a lot of top-notch, practical techniques that you learn as you get into the nitty-gritty of working on small pieces of pl/sql code. There are also questions that test your conceptual understanding of different facets of pl/sql programming --- questions that you could face on a job interview. Even though I've been a pl/sql developer for a few years, I found this book very useful.



4. If there is any book which will "fine-tune" one's knowledge of PL/SQL, this is it. It is written in Feuerstein's inimitable style which will keep you engaged with the book much longer than any other peer book of it's kind. There is so much to learn from this book really - and it applies to beginners as experts alike. This book explores the tiniest nuts and bolts of PL/SQL in an exercise-like format which gives the reader a chance to ponder on the problem before he/she looks up the answers. And I must add, you are in store for a lot of surprises when you look up the answers in the second half of the book ! (escpecially in the experts' section)



5. If there is any book which will "fine-tune" one's knowledge of PL/SQL, this is it. It is written in Feuerstein's inimitable style which will keep you engaged with the book much longer than any other peer book of it's kind. There is so much to learn from this book really - and it applies to beginners as experts alike. This book explores the tiniest nuts and bolts of PL/SQL in an exercise-like format which gives the reader a chance to ponder on the problem before he/she looks up the answers. And I must add, you are in store for a lot of surprises when you look up the answers in the second half of the book ! (escpecially in the experts' section)

No comments about Objects, Abstraction, Data Structures and Design: Using Java.

5 comments about Java: The Complete Reference (Complete Reference Series).

1. Awesome book, organized in the same way as "C - the complete reference". If you are a C/C++ programmer who wants to learn java - this is the book for you. Shildt seems to know what you want to know, and definitely knows how to present it. (Damn ugly cover though :)



2. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Java programming language. This book not only acts as a very good reference, it also acts as a great tutorial. So, whether you have never programmed in Java before or you are experienced in it, this is a must-read. I know this book has brought my Java programming to whole new level. I give it a 9 becuase some of the things I really wanted to be totally informed about weren't in there. I.E.- the FileDialog class. Other than that, it's just great.



3. Hello, I am Johnathan Mark Smith from the Staten Island Java Group and I think this book would've been a 9 but I rated it a 6. This book is pack with great example and thing you would not find in alot of book. The only thing is that it is base on jdk 1.0.2 and not JDK 1.1



4. I've got more than a dozen JAVA tutorial and reference books from a wide variety of authors, but when I'm really stuck ... this is the one I reach for. As a matter of fact, all the best programming reference books on my shelf are Schildt's.



5. A complete book to get introduction to in-depth information about Java. When I had to quickly deliver a prototype in Java (I was a C/C++ programmer then), this book came to my help and ever since, it became a bible for me.

   The language is simple, the style is good and the approach is fantastic. Since the authors come from both the backgrounds, the treatment is very different.

   I would strongly recommend to anyone who wants dive into Java. (I should say special thanks to my colleague who suggested this book)