That being said the book fails somewhat, and thus the four stars, because it isn't organized in the problem/solution manner of the cookbooks. Most of the chapters are about testing but these are organized around the tool and not the problem. I would have preferred a section on web development that combined information on Tomcat and Ant, and one on web testing that talked about HTTPUnit, JUnit and Ant. In that way the book addresses problem areas without relying on the reader to understand the tool that would address his problem in addition to understanding his problem at hand.

My gripe is not so critical. The content in the book still remains very valuable and if you are looking for a concise how-to in these Java technologies you should have a look at this book.

This isn't a tutorial on XP. Instead, it concentrates on the tools you need to make XP work for you and become part of your normal development process. In some ways, a more accurate title for this book would be the Java Extreme Programming Tools Cookbook. The format provides a nice basic introduction to each tool, where you can download it from (as well as where to find the complete documentation), and then a number of problem/solution scenarios from basic install to more complex automation tools.

For instance, let's take one of the tools; JUnit. JUnit is a tool that does unit testing on your code. You define a test class as well as test cases that should either pass or fail. Once you have your test class and test cases set up, you can quickly test your code after making changes to make sure that all the results are still accurate. In XP methodology, you actually write your test cases first, and then write the code to make them pass. In that way, your testing drives your coding. This book will give you the overall information on what JUnit is, how to install it, and how to run it. You then run into a number of situations, such as running tests concurrently, repeating tests, testing naming conventions, and organizing tests into test suites. Using the problem/solution layout of the Cookbook series, it's very easy to get the base information you need to stay productive.

If you are brand new to XP or the tool set, you might be a little lost since it's not a "step-by-step" how-to of each tool. It assumes you either have a small amount of working knowledge, or that you'll supplement your knowledge with the tool's documentation. Still, you can't look up what you don't know, and this book made me aware of some tools I didn't know existed. An experienced user of these tools might also gain a few tricks that they didn't know about, and it might be worth it for those tricks alone.

For Websphere developers, you might find that a couple of these tools aren't necessary. For instance, Websphere Studio does your build for you, so Ant isn't as critical as it would be if you were running a J2EE server such as Tomcat. Also, JUnit integrates directly into Websphere Studio, so it's very easy to run that tool in your environment. Even so, having this book will help you expand your horizons.

Conclusion
If you are a Java developer using the XP methodology, get this book to learn the tools you need to make your build and testing process flow correctly. Even if you don't practice XP, the automated build and testing tools will help you to write better code.

You don't have to be a die hard believer in all aspects of XP to find this book useful either. If you're a Java developer and you believe in unit testing, this book is worthwhile. It will help you sort through the various tools out there and find the best one for your situation. It will also give you clear explanations and examples of good techniques.

You don't have to be a die hard believer in all aspects of XP to find this book useful either. If you're a Java developer and you believe in unit testing, this book is worthwhile. It will help you sort through the various tools out there and find the best one for your situation. It will also give you clear explanations and examples of good techniques.

The XP stuff is covered quickly at the start, the meat of the book is in the "recipes", which walk you through configuring and using tools such as Ant, JUnit, Cactus etc. to build, unit-test and manage the development of a Java project.

The tools and tips the authors have chosen to include are a good representation of current practice, but I have a few reservations about the organization and structure of the book. My biggest worry is whether the target reader is actually likely to find many solutions. The authors seem to assume that everyone will pore over the several pages of "contents" at the front of the book every time they hit an obstacle, but in my experience they are just as likely to flip through pages or head for the index at the back, neither of which works particularly well. Worse than that, they may never think to look in the book in the first place - the "Extreme Programming" in the title may help it sell, but it's not something that jumps to mind when you are struggling to get Ant to deploy a web application to Tomcat.

That said, I'm glad I've got it, and some of the recipes now have little sticky notes to try and remind me that it's often an unexpectedly good place to look for Java development tips.

The XP stuff is covered quickly at the start, the meat of the book is in the "recipes", which walk you through configuring and using tools such as Ant, JUnit, Cactus etc. to build, unit-test and manage the development of a Java project.

The tools and tips the authors have chosen to include are a good representation of current practice, but I have a few reservations about the organization and structure of the book. My biggest worry is whether the target reader is actually likely to find many solutions. The authors seem to assume that everyone will pore over the several pages of "contents" at the front of the book every time they hit an obstacle, but in my experience they are just as likely to flip through pages or head for the index at the back, neither of which works particularly well. Worse than that, they may never think to look in the book in the first place - the "Extreme Programming" in the title may help it sell, but it's not something that jumps to mind when you are struggling to get Ant to deploy a web application to Tomcat.

That said, I'm glad I've got it, and some of the recipes now have little sticky notes to try and remind me that it's often an unexpectedly good place to look for Java development tips.

The thing that sticks out most in my mind about the book is that while I already had most of the knowledge contained in it (I've used most of the tools in J2EE projects in the past), that knowledge took a lot of time to figure out along the way. This book like this could have saved me substantial time in setting up a project using these tools.

Extreme Programming appears in the title, but you don't need to be using that methodology to benefit from the contents; nearly all of it is applicable to any project following good software development practices.

I recommend this book very much to anyone wanting to add these tools (Ant, JUnit, Cactus, XDoclet, etc.) to their project.

The tools covered are Ant, Junit, HttpUnit, Mock Objects, Cactus, JunitPerf and Xdoclet. Tomcat and JBoss are addressed in a chapter together. Because of the brevity and focus of the book, probably not everything that you want to know about a tool is mentioned. After you already know why and when to use a tool, this book can help with the how.

The book is a good reference tool and could save someone a lot of time, but look elsewhere for more in-depth explanations.

The authors obviously have a strong belief in testing. Here is a list from a companion article from the publisher's web site

"Top 12 Reasons to Write Unit Tests"
1. Tests Reduce Bugs in New Features
2. Tests Reduce Bugs in Existing Features
3. Tests Are Good Documentation
4. Tests Reduce the Cost of Change
5. Tests Improve Design
6. Tests Allow Refactoring
7. Tests Constrain Features
8. Tests Defend Against Other Programmers
9. Testing Is Fun
10. Testing Forces You to Slow Down and Think
11. Testing Makes Development Faster
12. Tests Reduce Fear

Any of these ring true with you? They did with me too. I immediately bought the book. I initially wanted to learn about Mock Object's to help build test rigging for a complicated environment at work. After my success, I thought the book would end up on the bookshelf, but, because the book is so approachable and easy to read I found myself exploring other topics (in my case XDoclets and the discussion on XP in general). Check it out. It's a really great (and hands-on) introduction to this technology!