Product Description

EJB 3.0 has made huge advances in ease of development, and its drastically simplified programming model has been widely acclaimed. Targeted at Java and J2EE developers both with and without prior EJB experience, Beginning EJB 3 Application Development takes readers through the details of the EJB 3.0 architecture, and shows how EJB can be used to develop powerful, standards-based backend business logic. With 12 years of combined EJB experience, the authors offer many practical insights into the entire EJB architecture and cover all areas of the EJB 3.0 specification, including

• Complete exploration of all types of beans, from session beans to message-driven beans and entity beans
• A deep look at the new EJB 3 persistence and object-relational mapping mechanisms
• Application client integration
• Testing inside and outside the EJB container
• Comprehensive sample application with integrated EJB components
• Upgrade headachescommon issues encountered when migrating from EJB 2.1 to EJB 3.0

With Java and SQL under your belt, this book will teach you EJB 3 from the ground up. It provides a complete and practical roadmap to EJB 3 architecture and programming. And it covers upgrade issues that youll encounter when migrating from EJB 2.1 to EJB 3.0, so its highly relevant if youre already an EJB developer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #593580 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

About the Author
Raghu R. Kodali is a consulting product manager and SOA evangelist for Oracle Application Server. He has worked in the software industry for over 10 years as a developer, consultant, and presales engineer in emerging technologies.

He is responsible for J2EE features with expertise in SOA technologies like EJB, Web Services, and application development frameworks. Raghu has been the lead product manager for EJB design-time features in Oracle JDeveloper since the EJB 1.1 specification. His current area of focus is evangelizing service-oriented infrastructure and implementing service-oriented applications.

Prior to product management, Raghu held presales and marketing positions in Oracle Asia Pacific. Before joining Oracle, he worked as a software developer in Singapore. Raghu is frequent presenter at number of technology conferences such as Oracle Open World, Java One, Java Zone, JAOO, and Sun Technology Days. He holds a master's degree in computer applications.

Jonathan Wetherbee is a consulting engineer and tech lead for EJB development tools on Oracle's JDeveloper IDE. He has over 10 years of experience in development at Oracle, working on a variety of O/R mapping tools and holding responsibility for Oracle's core EJB toolset since EJB 1.1.

Prior to joining Oracle's development staff, Jon was a product manager for Oracle's CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tools. In 1999, he received a patent for his work on integrating relational databases in an object-oriented environment. Jon holds a bachelor's degree in cognitive science from Brown University.

Peter Zadronzny brings over 20 years of experience to StrongMail Systems, where he serves as chief technology officer. Zadrozny joined StrongMail Systems from Oracle, where he was vice president and chief evangelist for Oracle Application Server. Previously, Zadrozny served as chief technologist of BEA Systems for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa--a role he held since launching WebLogic's operations in Europe in 1998. Prior to BEA, Zadrozny held executive and technical positions in many countries around the world for companies such as Macromedia, McKesson, Electronic Data Systems, Petróleos de Venezuela, and Sun Microsystems, for whom he started operations in Mexico. Zadrozny authored J2EE Performance Testing with BEA WebLogic Server, coauthored Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server, and is the founding editor of WebLogic Developer's Journal. He has written numerous technical papers and articles, and is a frequent speaker on technology issues around the world. Zadrozny holds a degree in computer engineering from Universidad Simón Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela.

Customer Reviews

Easy to read
This book is targeted at developers who are experienced with Java and have built multi-tier applications using earlier versions of EJB. In order to work out the examples in this book, you should be very proficient in using the command line and/or Ant. Working knowledge of the GlassFish application server is also needed.

If you have already worked with the previous versions of the EJB specifications and want to migrate to EJB3 - or even just want to find out how it works - this will be the perfect guide for you. The examples throughout the book should give the reader a very good understanding of EJB3. It should be easy to migrate your earlier versions of EJB applications to EJB3 with this book in your library.

The only issue I had with the book was with the build files (Ant scripts) provided. I have been using Ant for several years and didn't feel they were up to the level of the rest of the book. For example, the book suggests you set an environment variable for GLASSFISH_HOME, but this value isn't used in the build files: instead, a property is set in the properties file for chapter 1. If you skip reading the readme file (and who doesn't?), you will spend a lot of time probing what went wrong before you find it.

Once you finish reading this book, you will agree with me that the new EJB 3 specification (JSR-220) offers great improvements over the earlier EJB versions in terms of simplifying development, adding new features, facilitating test-driven development, and focusing more on POJOs rather than on complex APIs.

While the material covered in this book is outstanding, there are more mistakes than I would expect in the samples. On the other hand, the authors do have a link on the Apress web site for corrections. While working on the examples, I recommend you have a printed copy of these corrections. I would recommend this book to developers who want to migrate to EJB3 or those who want to build applications using this new simplified EJB3 architecture.

With EJB 3 gaining momentum, there are a number of books now available in the market. I read two of the books "Beginning EJB(tm) 3 Application Development: From Novice to Professional" from Apress and "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Fifth Edition"from O'Reilly.

If you have had previous experience with earlier versions of the EJB specification, or plan to migrate to the new spec, then the book "Beginning EJB(tm) 3 Application Development: From Novice to Professional" would be an excellent choice. On the other hand, if you would like to see what EJB 3.0 offers, "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Fifth Edition" sets the standard.

If technical material is of great importance, both books provide this equally well. However "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Fifth Edition " gets a little tedious if you continue reading for a long time when compared to "Beginning EJB(tm) 3 Application Development: From Novice to Professional". In contrast, if you want good working examples then I would suggest you look at "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Fifth Edition".

In conclusion, both books have some strong and weak points, get a book buddy or your colleague and buy both of them. That way, you get the benefits of both books.

A good book for developers with previous EJB experience
I found this book very useful, but it is not for developers new to EJB. If you have a previous experience with EJB 2.x, this would be a very good choice. In my opinion, the coverage of the Java Persistence API (JPA) is a little bit shallow. I prefer Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API by Mike Keith in JPA. Other than that, I found it a very good book specially the chapter that is talking about performance testing.

It gets around to it...
The book is a good summary of the specs and gives a nice introduction to the new things in the world of EJB 3. The section on converting your v2 apps to v3 was particularly useful. Appropriately marked "From Novice to Professional" the book touches on many aspects of the J2EE world in a manner that treats the novice with care and the professional with grace and insight/direction.

On the negative side... The book has a lot of repetition. Many pages are nearly identical (especially the sample building) and could have been condensed and made more useful by sticking to use of Ant and examination of the scripts. The same can be said for the "copy-and-paste nature" of some of the writing. However, one can tack that up to "consistency in writing style."

The book is not what I would call an "easy read," but was informative none-the-less. It serves as a starting point and base reference.

The authors have provided a generally well-rounded book and I would definitely recommend this to others.