Grady Booch wrote the foreward to this book where he speaks
highly of these two authors, and I'd have to agree with his
positive assessment. I don't often give out top ratings, but in
this case I was fairly impressed.
The book addresses these two key technologies and describes in
very practical terms how to really use the UML to help create
successful J2EE-based enterprise apps. Even though most of the
chapters go into significant depth and detail, the book is still
very readable by a wide audience. I think someone who is
relatively new to either of these technologies would gain lots
from this book, and even near-gurus should be able to find many
useful items here.
The book covers UML modeling of Java servlets, JSP, and all
current types of EJBs using the latest standards and extensions,
including JSR-26 and WAE. Early chapters go through the UML
mapping for standard Java language constructs, and suggest a
streamlined version of RUP used to develop the case study during
the rest of the book. Different approaches used by popular UML
modeling tools are shown, along with some ideas on future
directions.
I was impressed by the technology coverage for the different
J2EE components. Through a close examination of the architecture
and the different mechanisms at play, the reader learns a
significant amount about how J2EE components such as EJBs work,
how they're intended to be used, when they make sense to use,
and when they don't. There's also discussions on performance,
and some of the newer features in J2EE 1.3. Both J2EE 1.2 and
the new J2EE 1.3 are covered, which amazed me given the amount
of lead time a book like this needs to be published!
Downloadable code for the case study is available from the
publisher's site. The study is fairly compact, smaller than
Sun's pet store example, but I found this enabled me to have an
easier time following the code. What impressed me here is there
is complete working code for both J2EE 1.3 and 1.2, and the
example uses true container managed entity beans. Even Sun's pet
store never seemed to get these EJBs working right.
If a second edition of this book was to be written, I'd like to
see discussions on more advanced patterns using combinations of
J2EE components, additional performance enhancing techniques,
and a larger case study using some of these advanced patterns.
Overall, this was an excellent buy for me.
