I bought this book because it was marketed as a guide for the beginners and intermediates. Lie.

I needed to learn websphere for my job, so after the first few chapters I had to stop because the thing started to fly way over my head. All I needed was something to explain me the basics and the most common architecture and mechanics.

This book doesn't do that. Maybe if you are a veteran with Websphere, this might be good, but if you are looking for something to get you started, stay away from this book.

I bought this book because it was marketed as a guide for the beginners and intermediates. Lie.

I needed to learn websphere for my job, so after the first few chapters I had to stop because the thing started to fly way over my head. All I needed was something to explain me the basics and the most common architecture and mechanics.

This book doesn't do that. Maybe if you are a veteran with Websphere, this might be good, but if you are looking for something to get you started, stay away from this book.

I am glad others found the book useful. I found it nearly worhtless although I was pleased with the WSAD 4 coverage. However, explanations are minimal and trying to deploy your first app to WebSphere 4 using this book was a waste. After reading and re-reading everything it said, we still had no success so we just dug in, trial and error, several days and finally got it. Discussions on virtual hosts offered us nothing but a few descriptions that only make sense after you understand what a virtual host is. With paragraph after paragraph labeled understanding, I would have thought some would have been imparted - we needed quick understanding in a real project and the way things are today, we needed it fast. The book gets rarely referenced by myself. There is just not enough in depth explanation to save one from the school of "hard knocks". A student, with time may get some value as an introduction but overall I was disappointed.

This book is an excellent resource for WebSphere administrators and WebSphere developers. In fact, I have attended instructor-led courses by several major system providers and this book taught me more about J2EE programming than either provider. Examples and a complete application are available for download and they're in .jar .ear format which makes importing and running in WSAD much easier than generic texts. The target audience is somewhere between beginner and intermediate student. The language and detail level is effective for Java students. You won't need a dictionary of OO terms to follow the author's explanation and purpose of components.

I recently started a job that is using WAS for their application server. I needed a reference book to help jump start me, and I felt this book did a great job. It covers the install and admin pieces quite well, and I am beginning to go through the development sections. I like the fact that they have a lot of code examples and an overall running project example. I get alot of use from looking at actual working code. The book does use the WSAD(WebSphere Studio Application Developer) tool to illustrate the examples, but I just used my favorite editor and Javac with out any problems. Overall this book explained well the things I needed to know and I would recommend it to others.