Thanks for the excellent "comprehensive" notes on EJB's. I find the deployment descriptor the most useful of them all. The deployment descriptor with all allowed tags surely will be a very good addition to the HFE book.
I once proposed Kathy to include them in her book, but the problem was that my cheat sheets make a heavy use of colors and HF books can only be black and white with shades of gray.
I first read HFE once and then on questions that i went wrong or answered doubtfully i referred the spec for details. For a quick reference and revision i used the notes by valentin.
If you have understood the topic well and can answer questions on it correctly (including the HFE exercises and all the mocks) without guessing or being doubtful then do not bother with the spec. If you are doubtful that means you havent yet got the concept right, then go back to the spec and try to understand it thoroughly.