Real World Java EE Night Hacks--Dissecting the Business Tier [Kindle Edition]

If you're considering a purchase of this book, it's important that you understand what this book is, and what it is not.

Java EE 6 includes several exciting features, such as Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI). As of this writing, this book is one of the only results you'll get if you search for books on CDI; and if you purchase it, you'll certainly learn a bit about CDI. But the aim of this book is not to teach you how to use any of the technologies listed on its cover, such as EJB, Hudson, and Arquillian. You can learn quite a bit about those technologies if you're willing to use this book as a starting point, then do further research on your own by reading online documentation and sample code; but if you're looking for a more comprehensive guide to any one of these technologies, this book alone will not suffice.

What this book is, then, is a series of recommendations about how Java EE applications should be developed. The author develops an application over the course of the book, an application which uses several of the newer Java EE features (JAX-RS, CDI) as well as popular third-party solutions such as Maven, Hudson, and Arquillian. It's not a long book, and most of it is code; but all of the code is provided with context, as well as explanations on why the author considers each design decision to be a best practice.

Many programmers believe that the best way to learn is by reading someone else's code, and I agree. To this end, the author does provide his code online, free of charge. However, actually getting a tour of the code from the author himself, along with explanations on why a particular decision was made, is a rare thing. Offhand, I don't know of another programming book that has taken this approach; and after reading the entire book, I find myself wishing there were more books like this one. It's not a reference text, but it's a great source of inspiration, especially if you're unfamiliar with the Java EE 6 stack.

About the author
Independent consultant and author Adam Bien [...] is an Expert Group member for the Java EE 6/7, EJB 3.x, JAX-RS, JMS, and JPA 2.x JSRs. He has worked with Java technology since JDK 1.0 and with Servlets/EJB 1.0, and currently, he is as an independent architect and developer on Java SE, Java EE, and JavaFX projects. Adam has edited several books about JavaFX, J2EE, and Java EE. Adam is also a Java Champion, Oracle ACE Director and JavaOne 2009 Rock Star.

The content
Short five pages after you opened the book you have to jump in. Chapters one and two sets the stage and introduce you to the problem domain. This is all about missing detailed statistics in Apache Roller which is the blogging software powering Adam's blog. The actual performance probe is developed in chapter 3. Followed by the REST services needed for X-Ray in chapter 4 and the needed client in 5. Chapter six offers some solutions to the overall development process (covering Hudson, Maven, etc). Chapter 7 talks about testing with Java EE 6 and also briefly covers Arquillian. The final chapter eight covers some architectural thoughts about patterns and components.

Writing and style
Adam's writing is clear and easy to read even for non native speakers. The code samples are very extensive and you can follow every important point in seconds. There is not a single point I am unhappy about.

My expectations
High. Probably still an understatement. That's potentially one of the reasons I somehow was a little bit disappointed reading through it. The list of technologies it has on the cover is _impressive_ and I would kill to read a book about an end-to-end story about it. I should have started wondering looking at the total of 167 pages. The aim of the book is obviously NOT to teach you how to use any of the technologies listed on the cover but you can still learn about them. This makes the book a good starting point. But don't think you will get to the end without doing further research on your own.

Conclusion and recommendation
If you are one of those guys working your way through state of the art Java EE projects. Go! Get it! It's probably the only book beside it's predecessor able to provide in-depth insights and real live value to your projects. If you are a beginner. Go! Get it! But keep in mind, that you probably will need much more books before you can follow what Adam has written. It's not a reference text, but it's a source of inspiration.

I find this book a very well structured sample guided. It felt to me like a tutorial with a very undestandable, plain language.