The words "A Case Study" added to the title of this book would more clearly explain what this book is about. This book doesn't really work as a stand-alone introduction to
J2EE development but should be thought of as a companion to your favorite J2EE book. The premise of the book is a case study of an imaginary company (Pizza2Go) which wishes to take its current applications and migrate them to a J2EE internet application. The migration goes through stages as the developers first move to JSPs and
servlets followed by the edition of various Enterprise JavaBeans. Following sections include integrating a J2EE application with an ASP application, messaging using JMS, and adapting an application to handle wireless devices. The last section discusses how to thoroughly
test your application including stress testing. The case study is the heart of the book and is both the book's strength and its weakness. The book features an enormous amount of code but in some places little discussion of that code. Without some knowledge of servlets, JSPs, and J2EE this book would be difficult to follow. However, if your complaint about other books is that the examples are too simplistic or not realistic then this book may be just what you want. Although the book does discuss topics within BEA WebLogic Server, there is little if anything that can not be adapted to any J2EE server.
Overall, I found this book to be a very helpful and interesting case study.
(Thomas Paul - bartender, July 2001)
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