This books seems to achieve the goal it has in mind, that of providing the user with the information necessary to use the Java Persistence API. Unfortunately there are real problems in the execution of this book.

A book like this should not only be full of examples, but it should be structured in such a way that it is easy for someone using the book to duplicate the examples on their own system. This book fails to do so.

In chapter two we are promised a complete application using the new API by the end of the chapter. The source code is provided for the application discussed and it is a pretty good example of the API discussed up to that point. Unfortunately there isn't enough information for the reader to build and run the application on their own computer. There is no reason for this kind of omission this early in the book.

The problems with the book continue as one moves on. I recognize that the target audience for this book includes only professional programmers of reasonable skill. I consider myself a very good Java programmer. That doesn't mean that I want to waste my time filling in gaps that should have been covered by a book I already spent my money on. It isn't any excuse for the omissions in this book.

This book is a joy to read. Object relational mapping is explained in a very simple manner. What I like about this book is that it explains a certain concept and then immediately talk about the specific use-cases when that concept/design may not be the best choice. The authors then give excellent suggestions and alternatives.

Very good reading material, simple examples used to explain complicated concepts. Writing style of the authors is also very engaging.

A very good buy.

This is the best book out there that explains in detail how JPA works with some good examples. I found the book to be well structured and easy to read.

I would recommend this book for anybody who is looking to work with JPA.

Pro EJB3 is a great book. Having been using it for over last 6 month on my recent project, I can definitely say that this book is invaluable.

Have been worked on EJB 2.x for many years and on several projects with different application servers (Weblogic, JBoss, WebSphere), I understand the basics of EJB. So I want not only understand the basic how-to in EJB3 and JPA, but also want to understand the in depth explanations on transaction, persistence context and different behavior in the new system.

The book explain all these topics very well. I had brought other book (hibernate in action with JPA pdf version), but found that book was too focused on hibernate (even I was a fan of the previous edition of hibernate in action book). This book is well focused on JPA,and I really likes JPA APIs.

The book author is really nice and accessible. I have emailed Mike questions and he consistently replied promptly.

This book worth the money !!!

Chester

Anything that requires getting a bunch of jars on the server classpath was deemed unsuitable for automated deployments. I wonder how people manage automated deployments and configurations, especially in a multi-server clustered environment.

This book is very well written. Everything is explained in a simple manner. It gives you a good understanding of JPA.

I bought this book to learn the intricacies of EJB3 and for the most part it did a good job. There are good and bad points to it.

The good - Since Entity Beans and the concept of using them with EJB queries and the Entity Manager are the biggest change to hit EJB3 this book focuses mainly on that. It goes into good depth on the various annotations to use and how they are used. In addition he has a chapter devoted to writing queries. Which while sounding trivial for those not use to hibernate or EJB3 can be a major pain since they are different from writing regular SQL queries.

The bad - this book for the most part is very light on the MDB and Session beans. Of course there isnt too much to say about them. I just expected for a Pro book a more in depth analysis. However, for most people that would have been boring anyway. Also, I didn't think some of the advanced examples were hard enough.

course this being all said i'd still give it 5 stars. It focuses on the major items of EJB3 you need to know, and you can come away with some solid cases.

I got the feeling that the authors were stretching the content a bit to bring it up to book length, and I would have preferred denser material with the same information. Still, a good (and easy) read. I'd learned java in the pre 5 days, and so annotations were totally new to me.

I got the feeling that the authors were stretching the content a bit to bring it up to book length, and I would have preferred denser material with the same information. Still, a good (and easy) read. I'd learned java in the pre 5 days, and so annotations were totally new to me.

A good tech book has no fluff or filler, makes it easy to see and reference the major points and principles, and has solid unambiguous examples. This book disappoints on all three counts. This book has a lot of padding: it spends a lot of time repeating what it already said or prefacing what it will say next, or using an entire paragraph to say what a single clear sentence would. The principles and major points are then buried in that muck instead of being clearly stated and highlighted. On the bright side, chapter 7 (Query Language) had plenty of nice examples.

A good tech book has no fluff or filler, makes it easy to see and reference the major points and principles, and has solid unambiguous examples. This book disappoints on all three counts. This book has a lot of padding: it spends a lot of time repeating what it already said or prefacing what it will say next, or using an entire paragraph to say what a single clear sentence would. The principles and major points are then buried in that muck instead of being clearly stated and highlighted. On the bright side, chapter 7 (Query Language) had plenty of nice examples.

Late in 2006 I needed to update a class my company teaches on EJB. We wanted to move to EJB3 + JPA. I had read the reviews of this book so I decided to get it. Without a doubt, this is an excellent coverage of JPA. I actually read the book cover to cover and learned quite a bit along the way.

I did augment reading with a lot of coding, but I was able to use this as my primary reference. The only place where I needed to use other resources was in the area of error handling in the JPA provider's implementation. This is clearly beyond the scope of the book and I do not blame the book for that.

If you are going to be using JPA in a JSE environment, be prepared to use this book to understand what you should do and use the source code of your JPA implementation to figure out what you must do.

Having now spent some time with the new JPA I have found this book (Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API) to be an invaluable resource. The ability to use this API across a variety of Java platforms/technologies I find invaluable and the clarity and completeness of this reference is a 'gold mine'. I find it to not be a dry reiteration of the specification but an interesting book to read that thoroughly describes the JPA specification and how to use it. The original intent in acquiring this book was to use it in the development of EJB 3.0 components. However, I have also found it to be quite useful beyond this specification. There are many coded examples in the book as well as online to illustrate the discussed concepts.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to use the JPA spec.

This is a must have book for anyone whow wants to learn and use efficiently the new JPA API. The authors explains very easily how to map all kinds of classes to a database, even for more complexes relationships between entities.

It is also a great book to be used as a reference when designing enterprise applications. Mainly if you are a Java programmer and not an expert database architect.

I highly recommend it.

This is a surprisingly comprehensive and useful book. It looks at all the key issues that stem from the problem of making objects persistent in an enterprise application, provides thoughtful analysis, and supplies proven solutions. Along the way, the book addresses seemingly diverse topics such as transactions, unit testing, and deployment with candor and authority, while providing expert coverage of core persistence topics like object-relational mapping and querying.

While this book is the definitive text for EJB3's Persistence API, it goes well beyond this and should become the standard text on object-relational persistence in general. For EJB developers this book will be essential, but even if you are maintaining or developing your own non EJB3-persistence solution, the insights offered by this book are invaluable. All the key issues surrounding enterprise object-relational persistence are described in detail, and the EJB3 solutions are explained clearly. If you want to understand what object-relational mapping is, this is the book.

Persistence is a complex problem that lies on the critical path to project success. This book explains how the new Java Persistence API in EJB3 solves this problem more simply (and more completely) than earlier versions of EJB. With "plain old Java objects" instead of cumbersome "components," design, development, and testing is radically simplified. But because of the nature of the o/r mapping problem, there is the potential for complexity - you are dealing not only with developing Java code, but also database schema, queries, XML mapping files, code-annotations, managing persistence-units, and all the deployment and runtime considerations that go along with application servers. However, even when things get difficult, there is now a success-path you can follow. This book does not gloss-over these details - through careful explanation it shows a path through them. At no point do you feel that this was written by technology evangelists intent on selling you on EJB 3, but instead by expert developers who want to show you how to use it to your advantage.

For those who have followed the development of the EJB spec, there are great (and for me, even entertaining) insights into the evolution of EJB's vision of persistence. Those who remember the clunky Entities of the early specifications will be shocked by the flexibility and power that the new approach provides. This book makes it clear that, for the 3.0 release, the EJB specification writers have taken the time to understand and solve many of the problems of persistence. The authors take the time to explain the approaches to the persistence problem that different versions of the EJB spec (and others, like JDO) have attempted, and shows rather convincingly that the new EJB3 Persistence API is firmly based on tested products and approaches from industry (like TopLink and Hibernate). EJB and o/r mapping are now mature, industry-ready technologies, and this book clearly explains how to understand and use them successfully.

Developers of enterprise applications should read this book to understand persistence issues and how to use EJB3 products (or adapt their own persistence frameworks) to address them. Managers should to read this book so they can make sure that their teams are aware of these issues and that their project plans take them into account. Sales engineers can use this book as a tool to educate their clients about how EJB3 products solve the object-model / relational-model "impedance mismatch."

A great book - many people should read it, and if they do, the quality of our software can only improve.

This book provides a very thorough coverage of EJB 3. The authors clearly explain each element of EJB 3 and then provide an example in code showing how to actually use each element. Often, the authors show multiple ways to accomplish a task and follow up with the advantages and disadvantages of, or why you would use each approach.

The book covers the simple and common elements of EJB 3 up front and progresses to intermediate and advanced topics. Advanced concepts include useful real-life examples that include handling large queries, paging, transaction management, and locking. It even covers alternate mechanisms for use -- external XML and annotations, for example. The chapter on testing with various approaches to unit and integration testing is really nice -- it is a bit of a change moving from EJB 2.1 testing to the much simpler EJB 3 testing, but how? The examples show one clearly how to leverage the easier testing model.

Descriptions are explicit and clear -- there is no requirement to dig through the EJB 3 specification documents to comprehend the information in the book.

This is pure EJB 3. Although there are minor references to TopLink, Hibernate and Spring, you will not find extensions these implementations offer in this book.

I highly recommend this book not only as a readable reference book, but also as a great "how-to" book.

I found this book to be an excellent reference for the Java Persistence API. Very easy to read as well, with very good examples of usage. It was very interesting to read about the "behind the scenes" expectations of the JPA specification. I have recommended this book to several colleagues.

This was a very good starting book for EJB 3, and also provided some good background on the other parts of the specification. I found it easy to understand and liked the way it went from the simple concepts to more advanced ones. I haven't downloaded the code examples yet, but the inlined code was good enough to explain the complicated parts.

EJB3 is all about "easy to": easy to deploy, easy to read code, easy to port... but then you get to the EJB3 especificiation, and it seems that someone forgot to think about "easy to read".

This book covers the new features that EJB3 brings to the comunity but in a much more understandable way than you will find anywhere else. And I'm referring to both, text and code in the examples.

This is almost a definitive guide to Java Persistence API (JPA). No matter if you are new to JPA or have some previous experience with other frameworks, you need this book as a reference. It covers most of the basic and advanced topics.
My only comment about this book is that there are some typos and wrong references to figures and listings.