<pre>
Author/s : Brett McLaughlin
Publisher : O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Category : J2EE and Distributed Computing
Review by : Junilu Lacar
Rating : 5 horseshoes</pre>
This is the first of three volumes that will cover the entire process of building Enterprise applications with
Java(tm) technology. This volume on architecture discusses the database, persistence and business layers.
I have mixed feelings about this book. I like it that the author makes a point to give reasons for making each design decision. But I think that he could have balanced the discussion better by citing more pros for the design options that he didn't go with. There is good coverage of accessing LDAP services with Java. However, discussion about other architectural issues apart from managing users and permissions are brief at best.
After giving an overview of the sample application to be built, the first hundred pages covers detailed database design (which I thought was unusual for a Java book on architecture), LDAP setup and a few select EJBs. The last hundred pages, a good third of the book, is comprised of code listings and platform-specific instructions to get the sample application to work. This leaves the remaining hundred or so pages in the middle for discussion of Java code to access directory services and manage users and permissions and, briefly, message-driven beans.
Other shorter discussions that you might find useful are
EJB adapter classes and schemes for generating EJB primary keys. Apart from this, you will probably find this book a little disappointing. Hopefully, the next two volumes will pick up the slack.
More info at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596001231/javaranch rel="nofollow"> More info at Amazon.co.uk