This book covers almost everything related to EJBs in their new reincarnation. Its author have rightfully chosen to scrap any information concerning EJB 2.1. This is the right path to take as the new 3.X standard is so radically different (read much more useful) from the earlier versions.

The book starts out with a fairly detailed introduction to JPA 1.0 persistence mappings, entity relations and inheritance. It then moves on to covering session beans, interceptors, JAX-WS/RPC, the JNDI ENC and JTA.

This is a massive amount of stuff and still the author manages to convey its primary use, pitfalls and corner cases in an engaging technical style. So from a topical point of view you get what you pay for (and then some). The book is however not without some problems. First of all it contains some annoying errors, like:

1) In the interceptor chapter, the author fails to inform you that EJB interceptors are only used on direct invocations. That is if you put a interceptor on EJB A and inject it into EJB B, then delegated method invocations on EJB A from B are not intercepted. This is annoying at best, and at worst it could be considered an enormous flaw in the EJB spec.

2) Some JPA information is just plain wrong (like the use of named parameters in native queries). Most of these errors can be traced back to the fact that the author uses Hibernate which indeed supports this non-standard functionality. While understandable, it does confuse you some when confronted with strange errors in other containers

Many other errors exists and this book badly needs a review from some of the other EJB/JPA spec members, preferably someone not involved with the JBoss container. Another and more grave problem is the fact that the book presents most technologies as separate entities, and thereby you fail to see the complete picture. I really miss a complete real life EJB applications including:

1) Security (propagation of client role to the server (i.e. getCallerPrincipal)).
2) Interceptors (for logging and security).
3) Use of EJBs from a web application.
4) Testing of EJBs (best practices for easy unit testing).
5) Packaging and compiling (these days you cannot write a JEE book without a complete Maven sample)

This might sound like allot of grief, but I still choose to give the book four stars from the simple fact that it is complete, contains allot of useful samples (like the .NET SOAP application client) and manages to make many hard topics easy to understand.

In general a well written and useful book with a heap of information, written in a pragmatic style without to much fluff.

This is a great introduction to EJBs in general, and now EJB3. (the JSR 220 standard) Just like EJBs are now easier to develop with version 3, so is it easy to read and study this book. I hold O'Reilly in a high regard, (doesn't mean I'm a fan boy though, they do have their share of bad apples) and their high standards show in the quality of writing in this book. You will be happy with your purchase.

To be brief, this is a great book, but you will almost certainly want the newest edition of it.

I recommend this book. The book cover almost topics in EJB 3.0 and you can depend it for preparing the SCBCD 5. The author explain and describe the topics in easy way.

The problem of this book have more error in code I escalation it for author. cause the book have his name not auditor name.

I will give this book three stars for losing the quality.

I found this book very helpful getting me up to date with the latest version of EJB. I had used EJB 2.1 before, but this book is good even for complete beginners. The first couple hundred pages are about the new Java Persistence Architecture. The last couple hundred pages are on using EJB 3.0 in JBoss AS. The middle of the book covers the rest of EJB 3.0. I still reference this book from time to time when working with JPA and complex relationships. I highly recommend this book.

I have been building J2EE based applications for about five years now and this book has given me exactly what I needed to move to the new version of the specification. I'm using it as a study guide for the Sun Certified Business Component Developer certification exam.

Fun to read with great working examples included with the Jboss Workbook at the end.

If you're planning on using EJB 3 ( which includes moving from EJB 2.1 ) you'd love this book. I come from EJB 2.1 background and therefore to move to EJB 3 was such a delightful experience. The book covers everything you'd ever need to know about EJB 3 and includes practical insights as to " How to make it work"

I'd suggest you buy it with JBOSS at Work ( not needed really, but hey, if you're an enthusiast those two gel really well with each other ).

All in all a good buy.

Regards
Vyas, Anirudh

Maybe the topic is simply too large, but this book is not very good unless you are looking for a very superficial overview of EJB3.

At the time of this writing (June 2007) this is for me the best book for the EJB 3.0 specification currently available. It covers all the grounds and it is very, very dettailed. Session, Entity and Message Driven beans are very well explained, as well as new new JPA (Java Persistence API); other chapters focus on the services provided by the container (Timer Service, Interceptors, JNDI ENC, Transactions, Security and Web Services).

The books closes with an overview of J2EE and EJB for the Real World (when/how to use them).



Down sides:

- lot of tiny errors; while they are not deal breaker, it'd be nice if ALL the code presented was truly functional. It's usually little things that can be solved by googling the topic (like forgot to implement Serializable, a variable's name mispelled, etc.).

- where's the source code? No CD comes witht he book (thumb down) and following the link provided in the book takes you to the JBoss source, rather than the examples's source.

- Web Service chapters (2), try to zip a 800+ topic in 60 pages. While it's true that web services are a HUGE topic, maybe dedicating a little less time to XML semanthics and focusing on a *runnable* web service example would definetly be a pro. The web service was the only chapter I couldn't make the example work.

- Sometimes it looks more like a reference guide; author could definetly learn from the Head First guys about didactic AND fun!



The theory part of the book is general in nature, specifying which behaviors are specs dictated and which are vendor implementation dependant. The practice part is JBoss specific, which is one of the main reasons I bought this book.



The Head First EJB (3.0) is still unannounced (estimated Spring-Summer 2008), and there isn't yet a SCBCD specific book available; so your best chance is to get this book, find any extra material online and you'll be ready to go!

At the time of this writing (June 2007) this is for me the best book for the EJB 3.0 specification currently available. It covers all the grounds and it is very, very dettailed. Session, Entity and Message Driven beans are very well explained, as well as new new JPA (Java Persistence API); other chapters focus on the services provided by the container (Timer Service, Interceptors, JNDI ENC, Transactions, Security and Web Services).
The books closes with an overview of J2EE and EJB for the Real World (when/how to use them).

Down sides:
- lot of tiny errors; while they are not deal breaker, it'd be nice if ALL the code presented was truly functional. It's usually little things that can be solved by googling the topic (like forgot to implement Serializable, a variable's name mispelled, etc.).
- where's the source code? No CD comes witht he book (thumb down) and following the link provided in the book takes you to the JBoss source, rather than the examples's source.
- Web Service chapters (2), try to zip a 800+ topic in 60 pages. While it's true that web services are a HUGE topic, maybe dedicating a little less time to XML semanthics and focusing on a *runnable* web service example would definetly be a pro. The web service was the only chapter I couldn't make the example work.
- Sometimes it looks more like a reference guide; author could definetly learn from the Head First guys about didactic AND fun!

The theory part of the book is general in nature, specifying which behaviors are specs dictated and which are vendor implementation dependant. The practice part is JBoss specific, which is one of the main reasons I bought this book.

The Head First EJB (3.0) is still unannounced (estimated Spring-Summer 2008), and there isn't yet a SCBCD specific book available; so your best chance is to get this book, find any extra material online and you'll be ready to go!

If you are buying a book on EJB 3, this should be it.
This book has no equal.

Interesting/Relevant examples, no "stretching" to prove/illustrate a point/concept, straight-forward, smothered in suggestions for constructive thought process in your designs, filled with reference to methodologies and their value, etc. etc. etc.

I cannot speak highly enough for this book.

From beginner to advanced EJB developer, you will find this as not only a valuable reference, but a wonderful insight into how to go about designing your Java-based enterprise applications.

The wide variety of topics covered do not take away from the primary focus of the book: Entities, Session Beans and MDBeans. These core principals are beautifully illustrated in this book in a wonderfully architected example.

The book touches briefly on the principals of Web Services, WARs, packaging, JBoss, etc. etc. etc. These brief touches show that while all of these aspects are involved in Java enterprise systems, that the core of all of them is the powerful ESbMDb structure. The author leaves it to specialized books to speak of these topics rather than trying to munge them into his in-depth coverage of their core principals.

I am very delighted by this book. It explains and shows new possibilities of EJB 3.0. Of course I knew generally how it works. But after reading of this book I am sure I will mainly use this version. There is a lot of new specification concepts explained directly from its leaders (Java Persistence, Entity Manager, new behaviour and control of transactions in stateful session beans and much more). I was also very surprised by Exercise chapters. You will learn how to work with JBoss application server. You can download working examples. This book is the absolute must for developers certified in previous versions as it is in my case.

This book will help anyone who buys it with it future developments in EJB 3.0.

For those (like me) comming from EJB 2.1 it's a must, EJB 3.0 redefines (in fact eases) most of the workarounds of this technology.

I never read a book for EJB 3 with such good examples .It helps everyone to learn JPA through concept and examples. Obviously you can download and able to run all examples with JBoss . This is one of my favorite books :) and my only favorite book for EJB 3.0.
Note -If you want to avoid reading lot of theory you can jump to exercise area where u can simply run and see it .For all examples explanation are provided and I believe it is good enough.

I never read a book for EJB 3 with such good examples .It helps everyone to learn JPA through concept and examples. Obviously you can download and able to run all examples with JBoss . This is one of my favorite books :) and my only favorite book for EJB 3.0.
Note -If you want to avoid reading lot of theory you can jump to exercise area where u can simply run and see it .For all examples explanation are provided and I believe it is good enough.

This is a review of the fourth edition which covers EJB 2.1 and EJB 2.0. While there is a newer edition covering EJB 3.0, I specifically needed to buy the older version since I had to learn EJB 2.0 for my application. This is truly an outstanding book. Very rarely have I seen a book of this level of detail and quality at the same time. The author presents the topics in very clear tone, so it is easy to follow. The author does repeat same concepts sometimes but I found it to be helpful to remember. There are tons of examples spread through out many chapters. The JBoss workbook provided in the second part of the book is by itself worth the price of this book. Clear instructions and explanations are provided as part of this workbook. I tested all examples in the book in JBoss 4.x and with a couple of exceptions noted here, they run fine. My only disappointment with this book relates to the chapters on web services - the explanation was not good enough to follow nor was I able to get the examples to run in JBoss. However, this is not a book on web services, so I guess it is ok. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants to learn EJB's especially by testing the many examples given in this book. Kudos to the authors for doing an excellent job.

This is a great book. It is clear and concise. The style is not at all dry. I found it provided the information I wanted as well. Probably my only criticism is the JBOSS workbook which comprises the second half of the book. There's nothing wrong with it per se. It just seems like it should be a different book. An EJB reference (Such as the JavaScript reference in the O'Reilly JavaScript: The Definitive Guide) would have been more helpful.

Otherwise, I highly recommend it.

The book intends to explain and demonstrate the fundamentals and advanced topics of the EJB 3.0 and Java persistence API. Because EJB is an extremely complex enterprise technology, this book is not intended for beginners. The reader should be proficient in the Java language and have practical experience developing enterprise applications. A fair amount of JDBC experience also helps to follow along with the examples.

This book covers EJB 3.0 and Java Persistence 1.0. It also uses Java language features from the Java SE 5 platform. If you're a J2EE developer, this book can be used as a reference guide to understand this new paradigm. The aim of the book is to help the developer develop scalable, portable enterprise applications. This book however does not include any material on previous versions of the EJB specification.

While EJB 3.0 makes application development much simpler, it's still a complex technology which requires a significant amount of time to learn and master it. If you have the time and the interest to learn this technology, this book is for you.

All in all, this is a very helpful and useful publication from O'Reilly. I believe the authors were successful in achieving what they set out to do, provide you with the foundation needed to jump start your EJB 3.0 development. The JBoss workbook should provide you with all the required knowledge to use this technology with greater confidence.

Last but not the least, this book is a good addition to the library of any J2EE developer.

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. Here is a straightforward comparison to help you choose the book for your needs.

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.

Muy buen libro, fácil de entender incluso para mi que no tengo tanta práctica con el idioma inglés. Lo recomiendo al 100%.

This is an excelent book to learn all aspects of EJB 3 and also to be used as a reference.

The author covers all the topics related to enterprise application development, including, as well, the necessary background to develop web services.

The explanations are great and easy to follow. If you have never developed enterprise applications before, this book is a good start point.

There is also a great workbook for those who wants to work with JBoss. By the way, you do not need to have any earlier JBoss knowledge. This workbook is easy enough to follow. Even a chapter with installation and configuration instructions is provided.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in EJB 3.

I have pro ejb3 and this book. For me the other is significantly better. This book is less concise, and repeats itself in a way that is truly remarkable, -as if different authors took turns trying to explain the same thing every few pages, or maybe one author pasted together things written at different times. Such repetition is really irksome when a new concept is introduced without explanation, or the very often given explanation of "this will be explained in chapter 14". I found Pro EJB3 better organized, easier to read and more informative.

Are fluent in the Java language and have some practical experience in developing business solutions? If you are, then this book is for you. Authors Bill Burke and Richard Monson-Haefel, have done an outstanding job of writing a 5th edition of a book that provides a straight forward, no-nonsense explanation of the underlying technology, Java classes and interfaces, the component model, and the runtime behavior of EJB.

Burke and Monson-Haefel, begin by defining component transaction monitors and explain how they form the underlying technology of the EJB component model. Then, the authors defines the architecture of the EJB component model and examine the differences between the three basic types of enterprise beans: entity beans, session beans, and message-driven beans. Next, they explain how the EJB-compliant server manages an enterprise bean at runtime. The authors then walk you through the development of some simple enterprise and entity beans. They continue by explaining how entity beans interact with the new entity manager service. Then, they define the basic relational database mapping provided by the Java Persistence specifications. Next, the authors expand your understanding of persistence and complex bean-to-bean relationships. The authors then discuss entity bean inheritance and how an object hierarchy can be mapped to a relational database. They continue by addressing the EJB QL, which is used to query entity beans and to locate specific entity beans in Java Persistence. Then, the authors cover the life cycle of an entity bean and how you can write classes that can intercept entity life cycle events. Next, they show you how to develop stateless and stateful session beans. The authors then show you how to develop message-driven beans. They continue by showing you how to use the Timer Service in EJB 3.0. Then, the authors explain the JNDI ENC as well as the new injection annotations and their XML equivalents. Next, they discuss EJB interceptors and how you can use them to extend the behavior of your EJB container. The authors then provide an in-depth explanation of transactions and describe the transactional model defined by EJB. Then, they walk you through the basics of EJB security. Next, the authors explain the XML, SOAP, WSLD, and UDDI web services standards. They continue by discussing how the JAX-RPC API supports web services in EJB. Then, the authors provide an overview of Java EE 5 and explain how EJB 3.0 fits into this new platform. Finally, they provide the basic design strategies that can simplify your EJB development efforts and make your EJB system more efficient.

This most excellent book is organized into two parts: the technical manuscript (of which I have just covered), which is followed by the JBoss workbook. More importantly, the JBoss workbook provides step-by-step instructions for installing, configuring, and running the examples from the manuscript on the JBoss 4.0 Application Server.

This book is good overall but has too many errors. Simple proofreading would remove much of the confusion. I was asking myself at least a dozen different times, "did they really mean that?" and after looking at the errata it seems that the authors or editors or whoever is in charge of the final copy was lazy/understaffed. This seems to be a growing trend with technical books. Very disturbing considering this field is all about being precise.
That said the formulation of the book works and the explaination is fairly well done. One of the better book on this subject for sure.
Get it if you plan on doing EJB 3.

'Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0' by Bill Burke is a wonderful book that will help all Java developers in their continued development and learning. Packed to the brim with over 700 pages of material, this is a bona fide smash hit!!!

Chapter Listing

01. Intro
02. Architectural Overview
03. Resource Management & Primary Services
04. 1st Bean Development
05. Persistence: EntityManager
06. Mapping Persistent Objects
07. Entity Relationships
08. Entity Inheritance
09. Queries and EJB QL
10. Entity Callbacks and Listeners
11. Session Beans
12. Message-Driven Beans
13. Timer Service
14. JNDI ENC & Injection
15. Interceptors
16. Transactions
17. Security
18. EJB 3.0: Web Services Standards
19. EJB 3.0 & Web Services
20. Java EE
21. EJB Design in the Real World

Along with these fantastic 21 chapters, there also is a 160+ page workbook to help you solidify these concepts and get them ingrained into your brain.

If you want to learn about JavaBeans and all the ins and outs of working with them, you simply cannot go wrong with this book!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book was released in May 2006, so all reviews earlier than that are talking about an earlier edition of this book, which is a completely different animal than this edition.

This book explains and demonstrates the fundamentals of the EJB 3.0 and Java Persistence programming models. Although EJB makes application development much simpler, it is still a complex technology that requires a great deal of time and study to master. This book provides a straightforward, no-nonsense explanation of the underlying technology, Java classes and interfaces, the component model, and the runtime behavior of EJB. It does not include material on previous versions of the specification, however.

Although this book focuses on the fundamentals, it's not an easy read. EJB is an extremely complex and ambitious enterprise technology. While using EJB may be fairly simple, the amount of work required to understand and master EJB is significant. Before reading this book, you should be fluent in the Java language and have some practical experience developing business solutions. Experience with distributed object systems is not required, but you will need some experience with JDBC to follow the examples in this book. I review this book in the context of its table of contents:

1. Introduction - Defines component transaction monitors and explains how they form the underlying technology of the EJB component model.

2. Architectural Overview - Defines the architecture of the EJB component model and examines the differences between the three basic types of enterprise beans: entity beans, session beans, and message-driven beans.

3. Resource Management and Primary Services - Explains how the EJB-compliant server manages an enterprise bean at runtime.

4. Developing Your First Beans - Walks you through the development of some simple enterprise and entity beans.

5. Persistence: EntityManager - Explains how entity beans interact with the new entity manager service. This chapter focuses on the details of the persistence service and how it can be accessed within Java EE and with regular Java programs that run outside of a Java EE environment.

6. Mapping Persistent Objects - Defines the basic relational database mapping provided by the Java Persistence specification. This chapter takes a thorough look at the process of developing entity beans--specifically, mapping them to a relational database.

7. Entity Relationships - A continuation of chapter six that expands your understanding of persistence and complex bean-to-bean relationships.

8. Entity Inheritance - Discusses entity bean inheritance and how an object hierarchy can be mapped to a relational database. This chapter modifies the Customer entity defined in earlier chapters to make it fit into an inheritance hierarchy. It extends a base class called Person and define an Employee class that extends a Customer class.

9. Queries and EJB QL - Addresses the Enterprise JavaBeans Query Language (EJB QL), which is used to query entity beans and to locate specific entity beans in Java Persistence.

10. Entity Callbacks and Listeners - This chapter discusses how you register your entity bean classes for life cycle callbacks as well as how to write entity listeners that can intercept life cycle events on your entities.

11. Session Beans - Shows how to develop stateless and stateful session beans.Session beans fill the gaps left by entity beans. They are useful for describing interactions between other beans (taskflow) and for implementing particular tasks. Unlike entity beans, session beans do not represent data in the database, but they can access data. This means that session beans can read, update, and insert data in a business process.

12. Message-Driven Beans - The message-driven bean was introduced in EJB 2.0 to support the processing of asynchronous messages from a JMS provider. EJB 2.1 expanded the definition of the message-driven bean so that it can support any messaging system, not just JMS through the JCA. EJB 3.0 does not really expand on the feature set of earlier specification versions, but it does simplify configuration with the use of annotations. This chapter examines both JMS-based message-driven beans as well as the expanded message-driven bean model available to EJB 3.0 developers.

13. Timer Service - The Timer Service is a facility of the EJB container system that provides a timed-event API, which can be used to schedule timers for specified dates, periods, and intervals. A timer is associated with the enterprise bean that set it. The rest of this chapter describes the EJB Timer Service API and its use with stateless session and message-driven beans, as well as providing some criticism of and suggested improvements for the Timer Service.

14. The JNDI ENC and Injection - Every EJB container that is deployed in an application server has its own personal internal registry called the Enterprise Naming Context (ENC). This ENC is implemented by JNDI and is a sandbox where the EJB container can hold specific references to its environment. Think of it as the EJB container's personal address book, where it writes down addresses to various Java EE services that it wants to look up and use within its business logic. This chapter shows how you can populate the ENC and use it as your own JNDI registry, and also how to use it to inject environment references into bean fields.

15. Interceptors - Interceptors are objects that are able to interpose themselves on method calls or the life cycle events of session and message-driven beans. They allow you to encapsulate common behavior that cuts across large parts of your application. This behavior is usually in common code that you don't want in your business logic. Where most of the changes to the EJB 3.0 specification were designed to make EJB easier to use for application developers, interceptors are an advanced feature that provide you another way to modularize your application or even extend your EJB container. This chapter shows how to write an interceptor and shows various real-world examples of where interceptors can be used.

16. Transactions - In business software, a transaction embodies the concept of a commercial exchange. This chapter provides an in-depth explanation of transactions and describes the transactional model defined by EJB.

17. Security - Although a small programmatic API is available for interacting with Java EE security services, users rarely have to write any code to secure their applications because setting up security is usually a static declarative process. Only session beans can be secured in the world of EJB. Java Persistence does not yet have a mechanism to secure access, but it is possible--depending on the RDBMS system you are using--to assign privileges at the database level. This chapter focuses on how to set up authentication and authorization for your session beans.

18. EJB 3.0: Web Services Standards -Explains the XML, SOAP, WSLD, and UDDI web services standards.

19. EJB 3.0 and Web Services - Discusses how the JAX-RPC API supports web services in EJB.

20. Java EE - Provides an overview of Java EE 5 and explains how EJB 3.0 fits into this new platform.

21. EJB Design in the Real World - Provides some basic design strategies that can simplify your EJB development efforts and make your EJB system more efficient.

The rest of the book, chapters 22 through 37, consist of an applied workbook for the first part of the book. Chapters 22 and 23 discuss the installation of JBOSS, an open source Java EE application server. Chapters 24 through 37 consist of exercises that cover the material in chapters 4 through 19. This workbook is based on the production release of JBoss 4.0.4 and many of the EJB 3.0 examples from Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0, Fifth Edition. All of the examples will work properly with JBoss 4.0.4 and above, but not with earlier versions of JBoss.

This is truly a very densely packed but informative book. A good companion to it is "JBOSS At Work" which is pretty good at explaining Enterprise Java. I highly recommend this book to the Java professional who is already familiar with developing business solutions.

I've been using java for WEB apps development but I'm moving my apps to a EJB server by now and decided to find a book about the new specification of then EJB. I loved the book. It comes in an easy language and covers in details the new features of EJB 3.0 and how it applies to Session Beans, Transactions, JMS, JNDI, Time Services. All in the book can be used in any EBJ server, but the last chapters explain how to install and configure the JBOSS server, which for me was very handy.

I began to learn EJB 3.0 from JBoss EJB 3.0 tutorial and demo examples, and found that the EJB 3.0 is really a amazing technology in Java evolution. After finishing half of the book, I feel much more confident on EJB3.0. The book has more detailed explanations and examples comparing to the tutorial. If you want to learn and practice Java EE 5, the book should be the best start.

Good book.

Easy to read and contains comprehensive examples and excercises for JBOSS App Server.

Does not contain enough examples on creating EJB architectures, which is ok as that was not the intention of the book.

The one thing that threw me off every now and then is the book's coding conventions, like calling "Data Transfer Objects" "Dependent Objects", naming such objects with DO in the end instead of DTO, which is the way done in NetBeans 5.0 IDE when creating EJBs.

Overall, it's a very good starters' book. Looking forward to the next book about EJB 3.0

This book in a previous release was my start in the world of J2EE. Since then I've worked on many project with many technologies involved and, of all the books I read, at the end I always came back to this one for more insight and details.

One of my best buys ever and a must for anyone interested in real three-tier applications.

[...]

RMH is an excellent author. His books on JMS, Web Services, J2EE topics are living examples to his penmanship. I highly recommend this book if you intend to work with EJBs. The treatment of EJBs - SLSB, SFSB,Entity Beans and MDBs plus the new additions as part of EJB 2.1 have been well explained. A great reference book for consultants who go on the road to customer sites, for quick resolution of issues.

Anil Saldhana,
Chicago Java Users Group.

I admire the author for having written such a beautiful book. However, I'm questioning whether or not we still need this book because EJB is too complex to write and entity beans are embarrassment for Sun.

EJB 2.1 and the previous versions slow the entire development process. You'd better off go without EJB and use servlet/JSP/JDBC and others.

I'm eagerly waiting for EJB 3, in which writing EJB would be as easy as 123 (no more remote and home interfaces) and entity beans are plain old Java objects.

First note that I am a long-time OO developer, but relative newcomer to Java and J2EE. With barely a year under my belt of Java, JSPs, and Servlets, I found this book an excellent learning resource for EJB. Were I a rank beginner, I think I may have been lost.

I had the luck (?) to have begun reading the Third Edition before realizing that it wasn't the latest. I have found the Fourth Edition to be a vast improvement over that one -- easier to understand and less outdated info.

very clear explanation, deep enough for developers.Should buy quickly otherwise out of stock.

This is a great book, I finally finished it and I think it gives a good undestanding of EJB

overall value of the book:
5=Well done! This book will be a valuable teaching and reference tool.

Instructional value of the book:
4=I would recommend this book to someone interested in its topic.


Reference value of this book:
4=This book has earned a valued place on my reference shelf.

This book provides a good insight into enterprise java beans. although, this book is NOT intended to

be for beginners of Java, fundamental concepts of each aspect of EJB are explained. the book assumes

a prior knowledge of java and assumes experience developing business applications. after an initial

explanation of the conxepts, the book dives deep into the nuts and bolts of EJB.


the author has taken the time to explain the concepts with sample code, schematic code, and screen

prints to explain the contents of the chapter. the concepts of states and session in the context of

an EJB are well explained in this book. the book further explains the container-managed persistence

(CMP) and the relationships among those objects. a sample reservation system is used to explain how

to use beans for an RDBMS encountered in the business world.

the book also contains a workbook for JBoss and appropriate exercises for the contents of different

chapters applicable to JBOSS.

this is a well written book and it has found a place in my reference shelf.

Ravi Mahalingam
Java Users Group, Columbia, SC.

I like my mix to be a combo of theory and technical step by step instruction. The first seventy pages are theory overkill, but you really get lost by page 99 where he lists four class files you are supposed to have written but he's only given you the CabinBean.class and two others that arent on the list. Very confusing. I am now looking at Applied Enterprise JavaBeans Technology by Kevin Boone.

The workbook is great and what can I say, JBoss is great. I've never implemented Entity Beans in any project so after performing the exercises on how to integrate them into JBoss, I see what a piece of crap this is, but this is not the authors fault. O/R has them by you know what and specifications need to change to include them. Wait, its coming in EJB 3.0. Can't Wait to see it.

I dont understand one thing, and thats my ding for this book, and that it took the author 4 chapters to explain Entity Beans, to be re-implemented (Make your life and our lives easier - look at Hibernate) out in next release of EJB 3.0 specifications. And do a rush job on explaining J2EE Services ( Sessions as Endpoints ). To me, it should have been reversed.

Also, as indicated by the author, what a piece of crap the Timer Service is. Its like as if we needed another reason to crash the server.
Chapt. 16 Transactions was very interesting and I was intrigued by it. I would have dinged this book to 3 star rating, but his coverage on JMS ( Hurray to the Unified API ) and Transactions earned him the 4 star rating.

Also, it would have been nice to see versions of this book along with workbooks for other servers such as Weblogic or Websphere. That way, one can choose which version to pick up. As you know, just because you know how to do it in one server, means nothing to a stupid hiring firm, if you have not used the same in their server.

I spent a few weeks trying to find something to use to improve my EJB knowledge. The books I found usually spent too much time on using the J2EE reference implementation and spent too little time on EJBs, or else were for the wrong EJB specification. This book was exactly what I was looking for.

O'Reilly again hits the nail right on the head!