The book covers the majority of standard
Java EE 5 technologies and APIs such as developing web applications with
JSF, EJB 3 development, object relational mapping with JPA, web service development with JAX-WS and more.
It also covers NetBeans' Visual Web JSF tool, which allows to build visually pleasing JSF pages by simply dragging and dropping components from a palette into a page.
Most chapters contain self contained simple and focused examples that illustrate one concept at a time, this approach helps minimize extraneous irrelevant code in the example.
There is one chapter that builds a semi-realistic application that takes advantage of several of the APIs discussed in the book, such as JSF/Visual JSF, JPA and EJB 3.
David