EE Books

The material in the book was thorough and detailed, and I appreciate the coverage of Tomcat, as we did not use JBoss in the course for which I used the book.

The presentation lacked somewhat, though. For instance, the program and web page examples that are given are listed, page after numbing page, with little commentary, then at the end of the listings are notes about the salient points of each listing. One has to flip back and forth to connect the comment to the line of code. To make things worse, there is nothing to visually set apart lines of code that demonstrate the ideas developed in that section from the numerous other lines that hardly changed, so locating the line referred to by the commentary is quite difficult. At one point I even missed critical information about a new concept; it was buried within a paragraph, with no highlighting or emphasis, and was very difficult to find while I was reviewing.

The attempts at humor were only mildly amusing; they could have been omitted

Perhaps the author, in subsequent editions or other works, could consider some of these enhancements.

This book was a plethora of useful knowledge. However, it wasn't a jump in and get dirty type of title. When starting the path towards EJB/J2EE coding, one needs to do less messing around with devshed pre-coded examples, and learn by doing.
This text references proprietary JAR packages from the authors. It is my feeling that APress let down the beginning J2EE/EJB programmer here. This book is not for the beginner java programmer -
Repetition goes far when learning a new area of any language.

Bottom Line:
If you want to get up and go and are good at installing all the pre-defined jargon (or are highly skilled with guesswork) and just want some great examples, this book is great for You. If you prefer the repetition route, look elsewhere.
- Hope this helps.

Not happy with this book. The author does not provide enough details on environment configuration, unless you use JBoss. I would stick to Core Servlets by Marty Hall.

I bought this book to learn the newer concepts introduced as part of Java EE 5. This book did'nt meet my expectations, the example code described in the book has already been deprecated and just don't work on Glassfish. The code on the book may be tested to use beta version of Java EE5 reference implementation ! I could'nt figure it out.

This book was published too early. By that I mean, Java EE 5 was not finalized so the code examples starting in chapter 9 don't work. Another example is chapter 10 titled EJB Entity Beans. According to the Sun tutorial, Entity Beans have been replaced by the Java Persistence API.

My impression is that the author had worked on a day job where he participated in converting an old fashioned, outmoded JSP Web App into a JSP Web App that uses Spring to implement EE patterns in vogue back in about the year 2003.
The problem is that EE patterns are a poor fit for Spring. Spring was designed as an alternative to EE that replaces clunky EE solutions with simple, lightweight solutions implemented in a simple J2EE container like Tomcat.
Spring was initially developed as a reaction against the clunkiness and heavy handedness of EE. In this book however, the author demonstrates how to use Spring to implement those features of EE that Spring was designed to replace, not enable.
I did not see any examples in the book of using Spring annotations. Nor did I see any mention of the new Spring taglibs used in Spring 2.x and higher to simplify configuration of transactions, etc.
This book did not add to my knowledge so much as it copy/pasted code examples from the web application he was assigned to on his day job. It was not a fun book to read. It felt at times like reading a very dull, old phone book.
By comparison the book about Groovy by Venkat Subramanium is a real page turner. Groovy, Grails, and Griffon are where the future of web development is going. (The company that develops Spring, SpringSource, has purchased G2One, the company that makes Groovy/Grails, and is folding Groovy, Grails, etc., into Spring).

At the very outset, I would like to mention that Pro Java EE Spring Patterns book is meant for people who are well versed with J2EE/JEE and the Spring framework. If you are looking to learn Spring, there are other books that might be more suitable.

The idea of this book is to illustrate the major JEE design patterns and how you can use Spring to implement those.

The author, Dhrubojyoti Kayal, has a distinctive style of writing that is easy to understand and follow. There are code snippets galore in the book and configuration details. These two facets make the book a very valuable asset for any serious JEE Architect who is looking to make the most out of the Spring framework. Towards the end, there is a chapter that demonstrates how to ease development of Spring based projects using Maven and the pretty nice Blazon ezJEE IDE. The IDE, based on Eclipse, has the necessary plug-ins already configured thus making life easier for the developers.

Overall, this is a very good book that talks about the core JEE design patterns and the Spring implementation of it.

What do you gain from this book?

* A unique insight into how Spring can be used to implement Core JEE patterns
* A recap of the JEE patterns
* Using the power of Maven to make development less tedious

I highly recommend this book to JEE Architects and designers.

Great job done!!!

I am a student of computer science, an older adult learner, and I rely upon Amazon to build a library of good technical books to further my education. This is a five star book. The writing is clear and direct. The author explains complicated subjects in an easy to understand manner suitable for the self learner and computer science student alike.

I went through the whole book trying to find usefull information, but infortunately, it's a book filled with definitions. I didn't find any value, or I don't think can bring anything to developer, except may to none technical manager who wants to sound technical.
I am a bit annoyed that in 2005 still authors, write books about denitions, without any clear porpuse.

Note: This is a review of Volume 1 only.

I read the book because I had to. I mean intelligent, well-read commentators on modern America have usually read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (obviously that excludes many of the pundits on today's cable television!) and since I desire to be one myself, there was no way in which I could have not read the book. So what are my thoughts as I finally finish the book.

First and foremost, the language is exceedingly convoluted and takes its own time to fathom. The book was only some 400 pages long but it probably took me at least twice to finish this work than what it might have taken to finish a modern work on similar topics. (The language of the book reminds me of yet another classic that I had myself read for the same reasons as mentioned earlier: Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Readers of Veblen will understand what I mean.) It requires a great deal of patience for one to plod through the book and what makes it harder is that the rewards of the exertion are limited. The key lessons emerging from the text are few and can be summarized into the following few sentences: "America has represented a fertile breeding ground for democracy, in no small measure, because of its geographical isolation and the character of its first inhabitants. The first American inhabitants, descending from the English, were well learned, and had been acquainted with democratic institutions in their home country and were able to create republican institutions that heavily rested on a concept of "citizen democracy" which was first introduced by the Greek philosophers. When these "pilgrims" immigrated, they were searching not just material wealth, but pursuing a dream, and arrived at a land that was immense in its geographic scope and one that offered rich rewards for industry. The natural consequences of these favorable circumstances of geography and history made the Americans industrious and democratic at the same time." The author then also engages in a detailed discussion of the balance of powers between the municipalities and local city councils, the governments of the states and the federal government and the tensions between the perceived need and desire of a strong federal government by some, counter-balanced by the fierce autonomous streak of the states (and their citizens), which thought of themselves as sovereign nations. Being a Frenchman himself (yes, there were some French who have admired the American experiment), he also tries to draw out the implications of the American experiment in democracy for his home country of France, in particular, and Europe in general, and speculates on the progress of democracy and republican institutions in those settings and how and when democracy would triumph over monarchy and aristocracy, the dominant governing form of Europe in those times.

My final comments: if you are reading the book like myself, for the mental comfort and satisfaction from knowing that you have read Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I guess you have to plod through the book. However if your aims are more humble and are instead to acquire a sense of key features of the U.S. federalist system or the underlying causes for why the American institutions are the way they are, then probably you should read something written by a modern commentator. In the first place, you will not be held back by trying to fathom language that is very long-winded, and second, you will also get to reflect on those aspects of our polity in the light of everything that has happened between 1848 and 2008. The book "Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation" which I read recently (and reviewed as well on Amazon) might meet that need as I am sure will some others written by contemporary scholars.

Not long ago, Justin Hallwood had been a hard-driving, big-city executive. Now he was inexplicably drawn to the little village of Haven - especially to Sarah Conroy, a lovely single mother with an adorable baby son. What hold did she have on him?

The Man She Couldn't Forget
Once, Sarah thought that she and Justin would be together always. Then she'd announced her pregnancy, and he was gone. Two years later he was back - with no memory of their shared past. Sarah knew that Justin was so close to remembering - but if he did, would it mean that Justin would be lost to her again...this time forever?

"Famous books and authors are data in the history of national ideas. The course of thought in America can be traced though its relation, near or remote, to religious and ethical controls. It is a line that passes through the dominance of religious faith and ethical precept in the seventeenth century, the challenge to the altar by the shop till and the flag in the eighteenth century, the challenge of the nineteenth century to the flag by the treasure vault and the machines it served, the twentieth-century breakdown of the money-changers after their capture of flag and machine and altar. And according to the weight of present evidence, as I see it, among both populace and intellectual leaders, something invincibly American is making frest estimates as to the things that are desirable and praiseworthy and is facing the future perhaps with less confidence but with unshaken hope.

In following this line of thought I have tried to deal scrupulously with the writers and writings passed in review and to avoid forcing a thesis. I am sure that there are many other factors in American literature, many other illuminating approaches; and I have tried to indicate their places and proportions. Fortunately for the readers of literary history the chief documents are easily available to anyone who will stop running long enough to read.

It is impossible to make due and explicit acknowledgment to all who have helped toward this formulation. I have thanked them one by one, and I thank them together on the dedicatory page." -- Percy H. Boynton

This book includes American literature about Colonial Backgrounds, The Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century to the Revolution, The Revolution, 1762-1807, Provincial Independence, Early Metropolitans, New England -- Left Wing, The South Asserts Itself, Metropolitan Convention and Revolt, New England -- Right Wing, Southward and Westward, Deferred Reputations, Democracy and the Dynamo, The Contemporary Scene, Points of View, Facts about the Authors, and an Index.

When I reviewed the book its a good book just need to tell some more stuff about the test, the book , and why the book was written. Other then that its a very good book.

Published in 1959, Stanley Elkins' Slavery opened up new avenues of debate in the historiography of American slavery. Though a generation of historians would later prove him wrong, Elkins argued that there was little uncharted ground left to explore in our knowledge of slaves' material conditions, and that the debate should shift to consideration of the psychological effects of bondage upon slaves. Regarding the role of whites in the institution, Elkins cared less about their economic motivations than their philosophical views, arguing that the lack of a true intellectual class or established institutions exerting moral authority prevented the United States from settling the slavery debate in a peaceful manner. His approach to the subject was thus vastly different from previous historians, yet with the exception of abolitionist literature he relied almost entirely on secondary studies to reinforce his arguments, preferring to break new ground in interpretation rather than in presenting new evidence. His sources include not only historical studies, but also go beyond the field to include philosophy and psychological studies as well. To determine the effects of bondage upon the slaves themselves, Elkins compared them to Holocaust survivors and drew upon studies of mass psychology in the concentration camps, arguing that the brutality of slavery was much like that experienced by victims of the Nazis. He asserted that the horrors of the Middle Passage stripped slaves of any previous cultural values or expectations, allowing masters to completely rebuild slaves' personalities in a manner that suited them. Because masters were the dominant figures in slaves' lives, slaves became like children; dependent, lazy, dishonest but cheerful "sambos". Confronted by the fact that the "sambo" personality was unknown in Latin American slave societies, Elkins argued that the Spanish system was less totalitarian in its treatment of slaves, allowing them legal and family rights, spiritual growth, and the chance for eventual emancipation, and therefore did not psychologically damage them to the extent that slaves in the American South were. Later historians, outraged by Elkins' comparison of slavery to the Holocaust, and his assertion that slaves were stripped of their native culture and reduced psychologically to the status of children, have succesfully disproved most of Elkins' conclusions. However, this is still an important source for the serious student of American slavery, for it was the first to consider how slaves themselves experienced slavery, and the impetus for a good deal of further research.

The book explains the fundamentals for design and methodology of SOCs. It also addresses the design reuse concerns. However, the book does not cover practical examples of SOC design and does not explain the difference between ASICs and SOCs.

Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963) was a prolific American critic and historian who wrote a wide variety of historical, literary, and autobiographical works.

In this installment he focuses on the transcendentalist period in writing and the way that writers emerged and blossomed in the American landscape. He makes an explicit link between the regions and the writers, with chapter headings such as "Melville in the Berkshires" and "The South: Constance Fenimore Woolson".

As a reader I found myself out of sympathy with the tone of the book. It may simply be the age of the prose that made it hard for me to read. The book was published in 1949 and there has been considerable change in the style of literary criticism since that time. I liked the anecdotes about the writers and the quality of the prose itself. However, I missed a sense of unity and clarity. I frequently found myself getting impatient and out of sorts while reading.

The book may well be of interest for someone looking for background color for the time period, but seems limited for more focused research purposes.