It depends on your experience level

I was very disappointed with this book. I was expecting lessons learned on the battlefield, like Rod Johnson's "J2EE Development without EJB", but what I got instead was essentially an extended series of book reports on books and papers covering a very broad range of J2EE topics. Unfortunately, I already knew literally almost everything in this book because I have already read all of the other books.

If, on the other hand, you are relatively new to the field, you might find this broad reference useful since he does cover a lot of ground and does point you to a lot of references. But, be forewarned, you are still going to have to buy and read the books he talks about on any subject that interests you since he is merely talking _about_ rather than _in_ any of these topics. I cannot see how you could learn enough about any topic to actually use it, you will only learn enough to get interested in studying a topic. Think of this book as a detailed course catalog that you used in college to pick which course you wanted to take.

While I don't doubt the author's professional qualifications, this book does not prove that he has actually used any of this technology in production, merely that he has read about it. And, I think he misunderstood Rod Johnson's book, to boot.

One last quibble, while the writing is acceptable, it is entirely devoid of passion, conviction, or the scuffs that come from experience. It might as well have been written by a librarian reviewing the latest accounting periodical.

I am giving it 3 stars instead of 2 since it might be a very useful survey for relative beginners, but I really found it a waste of my time.

Other Reviews

• An Excellent Agile Development Primer
• Good overview of Java open-source projects.
• It depends on your experience level
• Rapid application development - but not just for J2EE