John Ferguson Smart's JAVA POWER TOOLS is a key foundation pick for any library strong in Java programming. It offers some 30 open source tools designed to improve Java practices and developer routines, from metrics tools and those used to generate good documentation to issue management tools and web interfaces. Lead developers receive a range of specific tips important for optimum Java management, making this a basic library choice. A 'must' for any collection serious about Java development.

If you want to be efficients and productive as a Java programmer I highly recommend this book to you. It is not about the Java language, but how to use various tools to use deploy your time productively. It introduces you to tools such as maven, SVN, JUnit, etc. which are very useful. And it is a well written text, well organized.

I was really surprized how much info is in this book, most of them is very useful for me and my team, with this book we can reach more automation in ours work ;-)

We are moving to hibernate on my project, so I bought several books to help introduce me to the subject. I got Hibernate Quickly and Beginning Hibernate along with Java Persistence With Hibernate. I enjoyed Hibernate Quickly because it really does give you the 20% that constitutes 89% of your tasks. However, I still had questions and found this one.

The author of this book has excellent examples and tutorials of what he is introducing you to. He builds the project as if it were really going to production. He explains not only the Hibernate, but the build files and what is being accomplished quite thoroughly. As you work through the logically ordered chapters, you are introduced to and apply new Hibernate concepts and put them to use in the example project you are building throughout.

Chapters 10 through 14 are an added bonus and multiply the value of this book. The authors cover connecting to MySQL and how to integrate Hibernate plugin into Eclipse and use it. They also include chapters on Maven, Spring, and Stripes.

The chapter on Maven is as informative and useful as I have found. Seeing how the definitive guide isn't available until about August, this is a great standby and introduction to Maven and the functionality it has. In this chapter, he also explains in some detail the projet management model (pom.xml).

The chapter on Spring is excellent in that it gives high level details about dependency injection but more importantly, gives a clear overview and exercise in the Spring Framework ORM module and how it can abstract out much of the grind of Hibernate. I learned a lot about Spring and how to use it to interface to Hibernate.

The last chapter on Stripes was mainly of interest since our project may use Stripes and there isn't a lot I could find on the subject. It too helped me understand Stripes and how to integrate it into and set it up in a project. It also gives clear examples of Stripes and how it plays with Hibernate.

All in all, this book has been and will continue to be a valued addition to my library primarily because of my current development context. However, the material on Hibernate will be much referenced no matter what context I am in.

The book is enjoyable, extremely well organized and covers a wide range of open source tools needed for any successful software development life cycle. I would recommend Java Power Tools to anyone writing Java. My only complaint is the size of the book; but I think in order to cover 30 tools , and the breadth of material covered for each of these tools do make up for its weightiness.

This book is written with a Java developer audience in mind. I should however say that Java is not actually the main focus of the book, and I believe this book would be of great interest to anyone concerned in writing better software.Readers should have a basic knowledge of Java and XML. You don't need to have any prior experience with any of the tools covered.

Java Power Tools can be used as an introduction to various technologies and also as a complete and easy-to-use reference work. After having read and reviewed numerous book over the past 5 years, I think it safe to say I have not read another text that so well combines the best attributes of both.

To begin, I should note that I was a technical reviewer on this book. Ever since I reviewed it last year, I've been telling everyone who would listen that "Java Power Tools" was going to be one of the best books to be released in a while. If you are on a Java development project, you must have this book! I'm still amazed by the breadth and depth of the information in it. As it states in the back of the book, it's like having 30 reference books all in one. And, it's not like John simply gives a high-level overview of the tools. He goes into great detail such that you can take the examples and use on your own projects. The beauty is that he has weeded out all of the bad tools and given a concise set of tools to immediately help improve your team's productivity. What's more, they're all open source and you can download them immediately and try them out. He covers all of the major tool types in the development process including version control, build, CI, issue management, testing, code metrics, etc. "Java Power Tools" helps you automate your own development processes. If you'd rather be spending time creating software rather than trying to bend your process or tools to meet your needs, this is the book for you.

Definitely focused more towards beginner Java users (competent/advanced users will have already discovered the majority of what is covered in the text), this is a wonderful, quick examination and look into the world of each tool covered. It's thorough enough to get you started and get your brain wrapped around some of the common tools used by everyone out there. However, it is not overkill. You are pointed in the proper directions for more detailed information on things covered.

However, this book isn't necessarily "Java" power tools. The book covers various topics in SDLC including CI options, VCS options, etc. all of which could be removed to cover more "power tools" that are specific to Java (i.e. Jakarta Commons, etc.).

So, while it contains some good information, I just cannot go over 3 stars due to the fact that moves in-and-out of the Java realm frequently. Sure, the topics covered relate to some of the tools, but it's out of focus to explain here. Typos are frequent, but mostly just little things and you won't get thrown off by them.

The book should really have been focused less on VCS, CI, etc. and more on the other common libraries/tools that you see out there used exclusively with Java.

I really liked this book. It is modeled after the very useful "Unix Power Tools" that was first published 15 years ago. Since Java was first introduced it has grown from a simple web page enhancement language to one that does all kinds of useful computing work. The proliferation of tools and acronyms that have grown up around it have been quite frustrating to me. Usually you are faced with a book about a particular tool and having to decide if this entire book is worth opening your wallet. Instead, this book is organized around tasks and then goes into detail on what tools you need to do the job. There is plenty of detailed technical information on how to use the tool and why to do things a particular way. The book is organized as follows:

Build Tools - Used to coordinate, federate, and binds the other SDLC (Software Design Lifecycle) tools together into a single, coherent process. The build tool ensures that your project can be built on any machine, in any environment, if possible. Two tools dominate this area, and both are examined. The first is Ant, the traditional Java build tool, which uses a straightforward procedural approach and benefits from a very large user base and a rich set of extensions. The second is Maven 2, which uses a powerful, declarative approach to project build management and goes much further than being a simple build tool.

Version Control Tools- A version control system provides critical backups of your source code and enables developers to work together on the same project without interfering with one another. Version control systems also allow you to identify versions and coordinate releases and (if necessary) rollbacks. CVS and Subversion are the tools covered.

Unit Testing - Correct unit testing helps ensure that your code works and fosters cleaner, more modular, and better designed code. Automated unit testing takes this a step further. By simply integrating your unit tests into your standard build process, and running them automatically with every build, you can go a long way toward increasing the quality and reliability of your code. Test coverage tools help you check how much of your application is actually being executed during your unit tests. This in turn helps you identify untested code and improve the overall quality of your tests. JUnit 4, TestNG, and Cobertura are the tools covered here.

Integration, Load, and Performance Testing - This section examines other testing techniques such as integration, load and performance, and user interface testing. All of these are important, and all can benefit from being integrated into the build process. This section illustrates how to integrate performance tests into your unit tests, how to load-test your application, and how to automatically test web services as well as your web interfaces and the functioning of your Swing apps.

Quality Metrics Tools - It is important to be able to measure the quality of your code in objective terms. Code quality has a direct bearing on the number of bugs and the ease of maintenance later on. Code quality metrics will make inexperienced developers familiar with coding conventions and best practices. This section looks at a range of automated tools that measure different aspects of code quality, including CheckStyle, PMD, FindBugs, and Jupiter.

Technical Documentation Tools - A significant part of documentation can be generated automatically from source code and comments. This section describes tools that can help you generate good technical documentation.

Issue Management Tools - Issue tracking systems are used by testers to uncover bugs and by developers to document bug fixes. They can also be used to help organize and document releases, to plan iterations, and to assign work tasks to team members. The first tool discussed is Bugzilla, the original open source issue tracking system. The second is Trac, which contains some innovative project management and wiki features.

Continuous Integration Tools - In software development, the longer you wait to integrate your code, the more difficult the task becomes. Continuous Integration is based on the idea that you can greatly facilitate this process by committing small changes regularly, and then running automatic builds whenever code changes are committed. All of the tools and techniques discussed so far can benefit from being run automatically on a regular basis. Although this sort of integration is certainly possible with a shell script and a cron job, nowadays there are a lot of new tools that can save you a great deal of time and effort in this area. This section examines the open source tools of Continuum, CruiseControl, LuntBuild, and Hudson.

This book is not really tailored for managers looking for overviews. It is for programmers looking for solutions. Highly recommended.