When I first picked up this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I’m usually an Eclipse/JBoss kind of guy, but occasionally I’ll take a look at other App Servers and IDEs just to see where things are going.
It had been a while since I looked at Sun’s application server, so I admit I had preconceived ideas about GlassFish when I started.
Boy, was I in for a surprise.
The book starts out explaining the installation process for GlassFish, then how to deploy and undeploy applications. After that, it goes into administration of domains, database connectivity, and connection pools. Not too shabby for the first chapter, especially since the book makes generous use of screen shots, something I always appreciate when I’m doing administrative work via GUI.
I tore into the next section and was rewarded with a re-introduction to servlets, HTML forms, HTTP redirection, and other useful similar topics. At one time I did a fair amount of work in this domain, so there really wasn’t anything astonishing for me. I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity and brevity of the author’s style, though—not too much detail, just enough to quickly get me back up to speed and feeling like I understood the core mechanisms of the workspace I was working around. This excellent style was repeated throughout the book, another big plus. The third chapter was similar, except it gave this once-through big pieces introduction to JSPs instead of servlets. I made use of much of the sample source code and found it very easy to work with.
The next chapter covered JDBC, JPA, and JPQL. Once again, just the no frills basics, with excellent and clear examples of how to use the tools under examination. By this point I was beginning to understand how the book came to be titled as it was—it really is a book that gives an excellent overview of the JEE 5 stack, as utilized on GlassFish. In my humble opinion, Sun would be well served to study this author’s manner of presentation—the text doesn’t drown you in corner cases and obscure functionality, but shows how to use the meat and potatoes of every important component of the stack. Comparing the JEE tutorial to this book would be like comparing a meandering trail through a forest to an empty 8 lane superhighway. This book takes you exactly where you want to go, pronto.
The next two chapters covered the JSP standard tag libraries and JavaServer Faces. I haven’t done any production UI work since the advent of JSF, but chapter 6 did a more than adequate job of explaining how it works. I left the chapter confident I could whip up a decent UI in little time if I was pressed to do so. This reinforces my impression of the book—there are enough simple examples to lend the reader confidence that they can implement a working example quickly.
Chapter 7 covered JMS, something I’ve been doing some work in lately. No surprises in the core technology here, but plenty of helpful screen shots showing how to establish your environment. There were excellent minimalist code snippets, of course.
Security was up next, demonstrating how to set up various realms, including custom ones. Of course there was sample source code to validate your environment, something that’s not always present in explanations of this type.
Chapter 9 was EJBs. All the types are covered, as well as transactions, security, the bean lifecycle, and authentication of a client. If anyone’s studying for the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect exam, this chapter could be of use.
Web Services were covered next. It was in this chapter that I had the thought “Wow, Sun really gets ease-of-use!” Whipping up web services with GlassFish is so easy it’s laughable, especially when using NetBeans. (By this time I was so wrapped up in running samples of things that I started using NetBeans, something I do from time to time if I’m working on a Swing UI. This time around I was picking it up to make use of the excellent IDE/Application Server integration. The build cycle, complete with free build scripts, are really handy.) After reading this chapter, I realized my only remaining gripe against GlassFish was use of the command-line interface, which I credited to my own lack of practice. This app server is for real, and given the simplicity of use I have to expect it’s going to be gaining marketshare. Back to the chapter review, we were shown how to quickly produce web services and clients to consume them, all very easily.
Next up was a chapter on technologies complimentary to but outside JEE, including Facelets, Ajax4jsf, and Seam. By this time I was anticipating the result-- another chapter that lent me confidence that all of these were within a few hour’s reach if ever I needed to get started. This is no small feat, considering I don’t consider myself a client-UI coder in the least, at least not for now.
The book includes two appendices that tell how to configure GlassFish for email and how to get started using either NetBeans or Eclipse.
My overall impression of this book is extremely favorable. I’m an IT generalist, which means I’m called upon to work all over the JEE stack, but more often in some places than others. With a book like this on the shelf, I’ll never have to worry about getting blindsided by a request to work on some part of JEE that I haven’t visited for a while. Kudos to the author and to Packt publishing—this book has earned a spot on my bookshelf.
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