Pro Jakarta Struts by John Carnell, Rob Harrop

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : John Carnell, Jeff Linwood, Maciej Zawadzki
Publisher : APress
Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Thomas Paul
Rating : 6 horseshoes</pre>
This book is a reprint of a Wrox book that APress bought when Wrox went out of business. Although the book has a publication date of September 2003, it was actually published by Wrox earlier in the year. Also, APress intends on releasing a second edition of this book (ISBN:159059228X) in December 2003. With that in mind, let's discuss the contents of this book.

The book is broken up into five sections. The first and longest section discusses Struts. This section is very good as it concentrates on developing a Struts application and demonstrates good design while discussing the issues that make bad designs bad. This section ends with a look at using ObjectRelationalBridge (OJB) as a data access tier. Unfortunately the book uses an beta version of OJB (it is still not in release) that makes this section obsolete. The remaining chapters cover other open source tools available to developers including Velocity (template engine), Lucene (search engine), and Ant (build tool). Although it is interesting to see how each tool integrates into the Struts application developed earlier, the chapters are not long enough to give detailed information on any of these tools.

The conclusion is that if you are looking for a book on properly building a Struts application, you probably want to wait for the second edition. Since the OJB chapter is obsolete and the chapters on the other tools are fairly brief, this book doesn't provide anything that shouts, "Buy Me" from the shelves.


More info at Amazon.com
More info at Amazon.co.uk
[ July 22, 2004: Message edited by: Book Review Team ]

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : John Carnell, Rob Harrop
Publisher : Apress
Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Mark Spritzler
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
This book is the second edition and is a great improvement over the first. Originally released by Wrox, the first edition was pushed out the door just before they went out of business. Apress bought the book and now publishes it.

In this edition they removed the chapter on Lucene and replaced it with a chapter on Tiles, which was briefly mentioned in the first edition. Also added are chapters on dynamic forms and the Struts Validator framework and on XDoclet. These chapters, along with the improvements and corrections in the other chapters make this edition a great choice for those learning Struts and for those that want to learn how best to architect a Struts based application.

I really admire a book that goes above and beyond teaching the basics and is more than just a glorified tutorial book. Pro Jakarta Struts goes above and beyond and presents the reader with an easy to read, well written book that gives us a formula for building successful web applications.

My only suggestion is to skip the chapter on OJB and start learning Hibernate or a JDO implementation for you database mapping tool. If you are building a simple app with a simple database, then OJB can work for you, but I found it to be fickle. I also know that if they tried to add a Hibernate chapter, this book would be very large.

If you want to learn Struts the right way, get this book.


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More info at Amazon.co.uk

[Mark Spritzler]

I wanted to point out that I wanted to give this book 8 1/2 Horseshoes, because I was between giving it an 8 or 9 horseshoes. But we don't don't have 1/2 horseshoes in our stable.

Thanks

Mark

[Ko Ko Naing]

Nice reviews... Thanks for them...

Originally posted by Mark Spritzler:
But we don't don't have 1/2 horseshoes in our stable.

We can find some pieces of broken horseshoes somewhere in the trash bin in out stable and stick them to become 1/2 horseshoes...

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Dirk Schreckmann
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
"Pro Jakarta Struts, Second Edition" by John Carnell with Rob Harrop is the best book on developing Struts-based web applications I've read. (I've read at least five or six others.)

The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer, as it covers much more than just Struts 1.1 fundamentals. This book aims higher, including chapters on web application Patterns and Antipatterns, XDoclet, Velocity and ObjectRelationalBridge, along with good explanations of various Struts-specific topics.

"Pro Jakarta Struts, Second Edition" is a pretty thick book at 578 pages. I didn't notice a single page wasted to printing some API. It isn't really a technical cookbook to be placed on a nearby shelf for quick reference during development to look up the basics of using some technology. Instead, the authors focused on good practices used when developing web applications, including explanations of why a technology should be used and how to use it, recurring problems that others have experienced (Antipatterns) and what to do instead (Patterns), and other pieces of advice designed to get the reader's brain thinking in web applications.

If you're in the market for a book on Struts-based web applications, get this one. It covers Struts 1.1 well, but it doesn't stop where Struts leaves off.


More info at Amazon.com
More info at Amazon.co.uk

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Book Review Team:
<pre>Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Dirk Schreckmann
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>

Mmm... Exactly the same as the review from Amazon.... :roll:

Anyway, it's nice to have many reviews like these so that we can estimate that the book is suitable to which type of readers and how...

[Mapraputa Is]

Mmm... Exactly the same as the review from Amazon.... :roll:

Well, would you prefer if our reviewers said one thing on Amazon and another on JavaRanch? Amazon has probably (still) broader audience than JavaRanch (but we are working on it), so there is nothing wrong with posting a review there too.

[Lasse Koskela]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
there is nothing wrong with posting a review there too.

We have indeed read Amazon.com's review guidelines and they only require the submitter to have the necessary rights on the review. Nowhere does it mention exclusiveness.

[Peter Laurinec]

Hi.
This surelly looks like good book for a struts.
Does anyone have red Struts: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series) by James Holmes
details on amazon.com

Thing is i'm deciding which book to buy because my brother is in US now so he can bring me one I choose cause I can get them back home in Slovakia.
My point is that sure i would like to have some kind of the reference book but more important for me is that books shows some more advanced practises not only the theory. Do you think this Pro Jakarta Struts is best for me?

Thx a lot

Lnn

[Mark Spritzler]

I think you should get Pro Struts instead of the reference, because you can go online and do a search just like you would in a reference. Plus a reference book is just so hard to read.

Good Luck.

Mark

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Seconded.