Marcin Skrzek

I`d congratulate winners but have also question to forum staff.
Does automated process qualifying messages for win work fine? I`ve noticed that 2 of 4 winners in this case have neither ask nor answer or comment question about the promoted book. So I doubt if this whole "book promotion competition" has any sense...

I haven`t any experience in plugin development yet, but I have very specific problem to solve.
I want to ask, if "Eclipse Plugins" book is good material for me to solve it.

Problem description:
I`m responsible for big JEE project with its own web framework (based on Struts). Most of web components in this framework are implemented as xml files, which define various artefacts - forms, lists, toolboxes and other elements of view. Each of these components refer to specific local EJBs (through special tag in xml), which are entry points to business logic layer and are also divided into different types - FormManagers, ListProviders, etc. according to different types of view components, they serve.
I would like to make plugin which will provide following features:
- extention to EnterpriseExplorer in Java EE perspective (or separate navigator) which will let explore (using dedicated icons) different web and ejb artifacts independently of actual location in file/files
- explorer tree should also contain links to dependent components. F. e. "form" element should have such subelements as FormManager, toolbox etc. which allow to jump to that component
- customized outline view for web (xml) components which will list references to framework-dependent properties (tags in xml files), such as EJB references, which will work like outline in java files, which moves cursor to selected element
- "Open Type"-like tool to search for different web artefacts by name

My question is, to what extent the book will give me answers, how resolve above mentioned issues.

Can you reveal, if Appendix A.1. called "Plugins" contains the list similar to the EclipsePluginCentral list or there are any new intresting plugins listed.

Maybe this is not very sophisticated question, but about what are "RFRS Considerations" subchapters, which occur in some chapters along the table of contents of the book?

I have briefly looked at summary of the book, and I`m curious to know if Chapter 4 gives knowledge about building standalone SWT applications or this is only about using SWT in building plugins?

Eric Clayberg wrote:The 3rd edition only deals with Eclipse 3.4 and does not explicitly cover backward compatibility although that is touched on lightly in a couple places.

I`m new to plugin development. How much the book gives universal knowledge, if any? If Eclipse 3.5 or higher occurs, will most of rules, API, etc. of plugin development stay the same or there will be potentially totally different stuff to learn?

Welcome, and i have one question. How much does eclipse 3.4 plugin development differ from previous versions of IDE. Is it only matter of new features or elementary API has changed as well?

Thanks for Your kind words

latha,
I would suggest to read chapters 1-12, 13.1, 14.1 and quickly look at chapter 15. And don`t forget to read advanced topics f.e. in Mikalai`s study guide.
Simulator is available here:

Alim,
I don`t know O`reilly book, so I can`t tell anything about it, but after reading a few posts in this forum i think it must be sufficient. For me it was just too boring, and style of "EJB 3 in action" book seems more interesting for me, but it`s my point of view.
Do I feel I should use Oreilly and Whizlabs also? Well, I think one book is enough to get familiar with EJB 3 concepts. Nevertheless you need something else - I`ve chosen Mikalai`s guide, but specs are also good. I just had neither enough time for specs, nor enough money for Whizlabs tests

Struts 1 was something like "reference" MVC framework for a long time, until new technologies like JSF and AJAX emerged. How do you, authors of "Struts 2 in Action" think? Is Struts 2 best choice for Java EE 5 application among other frameworks like Spring MVC, Wicket, JBoss Seem. I don`t have time enough to study all these frameworks and want to pick up the best one for my company`s project (my backend is based on EJB3 and Spring and my old frontend was based on Spring 1 with lot to much javascript I want to replace now with Ajax).

I`d like to ask authors of "Struts 2 in Action" how much does Struts 2 support Ajax, one of the most important modern web technologies. Are ajax-tags you mention in description of the book easy to use in real-life situations?

I`ve passed SCBCD 5.0 exam yesterday with 56/61 correct answers. I strongly recommend these three positions:
1/ EJB 3 in Action
2/ Mikalai Zaikin`s "SCBCD 5.0 Study guide"
3/ Enthuware EJBPlus V5 Simulator

I`ve started to prepeare for the exam exactly two months ago, having no earlier knowledge or experience with EJB 3. The first problem I had to solve was lack of the "Head First EJB 3" book on the market I`ve spent plenty of time searching topics in this forum to find out which is better - o reilly`s "Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 5th" edditions or Manning`s "EJB 3 in Action". Even though many peaple have written, EJB 3 in Action is too introductory book, I don`t regret from today perspective, I`ve decided for this position. In my opinion this is excellent book for people (like me) new to the EJB 3.0 technology. It`s maybe not enough for the exam, but gives good understanding of things. Beginning from basics to more advanced topics, this book LEARNS and not only lists features from specs. What I`ve liked a lot about this book was also describing EJB 3 topics in wider context. F.e. before MDB`s where described, there was great introduction to JMS architecture. At the moments, the book went even beyond EJB 3, like in the great chapter about EJB3 and Spring integration (That even inspired me to use Spring-based Entity Access Objects in my company). Comming back to main topic "EJB 3 in Action" gave me very good knowledge about EJB 3 and helped to understand things, not only memorize.
After reading the book I`ve tried "Enthuware EJBPlus V5" mock exams for the first time scoring 64% (39/61). The questions I failed, were not covered in book, but there were rather details. That`s why I`ve mentioned earlier this book is not enough for the exam. So I started to read Mikalai Zaikin`s "SCBCD 5.0 Study guide" to learn more advanced things. This guide is also great, covers almost everything on the exam, but I can`t imagine to start with it - it`s to hard for beginners. After having read Mikalai`s guide I`ve tried Enthuware tests again with following scores: 79%, 74%, 79% and 81% in final exam. Enthuware Simulator is the third material I must recommend - I`ve found 8 questions on real exam, very similar to the ones in simulator!!! The style of questions in the exam is also very similar. Despite my score I think SCBCD 5 is very hard exam and you really need some time of preparations to score well. Especially, that there is no single HeadFirst-style book to just-read-and-pass. But I`m sure, the three positions I meant are enough.

I`ve passed SCWCD 1.4 yesterday with 91%. It took 10 days for me, but earlier (one year ago) I have read HFS&JSP. So now I`ve read it once again a little bit faster. I took final mock exam at the end of the book and 2 Enthuware (JWebPlus) tests, having 85% and 92% which gave me score very close to real exam score. These mock tests were very close in form and style of questions to the real exam, really.
What surprised me, exam has 80 questions, not 69 which I expected. These 11 questions are something like beta exam for SCWCD 1.5 and are not scored... but on my confirmation after exam i see: "You answered 63 questions correctly of total 80 questions, which gives you 91%", what sounds a little bit strange . But don`t worry, there is extra 45 minutes for these beta questions, so exam lasts 3 hours, not 2:15. Another think is, that beta questions weren`t marked in any way, so I didn`t know if I answer real qustion or only not scored question. Another surprise where errors in questions which were in some questions, for example about security-constraint. I don`t intend to disclose real question, but there was something similar to:

<auth-constraint>Admin</auth-constraint>

instead of

<auth-constraint>
<role-name>Admin</role-name>
<auth-constraint>

and there was no answer, that it will cause error or something like that.
There was also one question which had 3 correct answers and 2 answers could only be selected. There were also some minor errors in style of questions, which were not concrete enough and I had to guess which answer, as the autor of the question think, is correct.

And that`s it - just HF Servlets&JSP + Enthuware and exam becomes pure pleasure

I have a question to Authors of "EJB 3 in Action" book. I`ve noticed there is no EJB 3.0 book on the market yet, which fully covers new Sun Certified Business Component Developer Exam (EJB 3.0) stuff, like "Head First EJB" has covered old SCBCD exam.
My question is, how much helpful is "EJB in Action" to pass the new exam? How many exam objectives, which are listed here:

http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/CX-310-091.xml

are not mentioned in "EJB 3 in Action" book?

Congratulations!
I must say, I fully agree - K&B Study Guide is awesome

It costs something about 50$

Marcin