To the author

Welcome on board.
Can you give a brief introduction to the commons project? Can you also give how the book makes it easier to make use of it? If it is all some extra classes that are available to be used why do we need a book for that?
Thanks,
Vasu

Hello Vasu,
Commons consists of many small, reusable components, each of which makes specific tasks easier and more systematic. The scope of these components is huge and there definitely is something for every Java developer. I would suggest that you try out a component of your choice. You will see that the Jakarta Commons isn't just some extra classes but a lot lot more. It's like a Swiss army knife for Java developers. A collection of small and handy yet very powerful tools.
Apress Author Page
Pro Jakarta Commons
Implementing DbUtils (An article based on the book's contents)
Jakarta Commons

Harshad,
Any idea if this book w'd make its way to Indian stores? We w'd be happy to have it here.
thanks.

Yes I have good news on this front. I have been pushing for an India release of my books.
My book 'Oracle JDeveloper 10g: Empowering J2EE Development' was released about a month back.
The Commons book also might have already appeared on shelves at a bookstore near you. If not, it should get there in very few days.
Shroff Publishers is reprinting it in India.
Unlike many books that release in India many months after the international release, Apress, Springer and Shroff have worked to get my books printed in India just few days after the intl. release. So hopefully the books will get to Indian bookstores in record time.

Won't using of such external tools create dependencies? One of the most frequent complaints against our competetors and our strength is that we do leave any foot prints on customer's machines ( nothing to be installed on client machines to run our applications). Will that have to be compromized if we start using external tools?
Thanks,
vasu

Of course that depends on the tools being used. In the case of Jakarta Commons libraries, you can distribute the dependency .jar files along with your application without having to GPL your own source code, etc. If, for some reason, you wouldn't be able to distribute those dependencies, then yes it would require the user to download them on his own.

I personally haven't faced any issues with clients complaining about 50-100 kb commons jar files being placed in the lib directory of webapps. The good name that Apache has also seems to help as even non-techies think that code from Apache is acceptable.

Thanks Lasse and Harshad. I agree it is not a big deal if all we have to do is put these jars in the WEB-INF/lib. I would look forward to reading the book soon. Is there a e-copy of the book available?

Thanks,
Vasu

Won't using of such external tools create dependencies? One of the most frequent complaints against our competetors and our strength is that we do leave any foot prints on customer's machines ( nothing to be installed on client machines to run our applications). Will that have to be compromized if we start using external tools?

dont worry about dependencies too much since you are probably using windows anyway. ;-)
Technically speaking you are not installing on client machines. (its a jar not a dll) You are using it on the server. You have installed a particular version of java, is that a dependency ? You have installed an IDE, so dont worry.

An official e-copy of the book is not available. I hope nobody is pirating the book already.
Go on and buy the book. Some online vendors are offering it at a pretty good discount.
http://www.mysimon.com/4004-4181_8-666657806.html

Harshad,
I will wait and see if I win it here

before buying it.

Vasu

Originally posted by vasu maj:
Harshad,
I will wait and see if I win it here before buying it.

Vasu

Good Luck

Frisode,
You are right. It sill be shipped along with the product as an extra jar which is not a big problem. It is not a dll which is something that clients need to install on their machines which are causes for worry.
Thanks,
Vasu

Thanks Pradeep

vasu

This is available at bookpool.com for even less.
Thanks,
vasu