Review by CHUCK J CAVANESS for Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server
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I’m sorry to say that I was really disappointed with this book. Since I have been using Weblogic 5.1 to build enterprise applications, I was really counting on some insight from a book written by two BEA insiders. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing apparently incorrect about the book, I just was looking for more than I could find in the Weblogic documentation or the BEA newsgroups.If you look at the BEA newsgroups, there are many people asking questions about such things as why the message “Attempt to sendMsg using a closed connection” happens and what can be done about it. More information on issues of how the server attempts to clean up remote clients using the DGC for example, would have made this a better book. I’m sure for people starting out with Weblogic, any book that adds to the documentation for Weblogic is a plus, but to focus so much on the web-tier was disappointing. I was really looking for an in-depth book on how Weblogic implements the EJB/J2EE specification. I do think that the stress-testing chapters were of benefit though.The other thing that I must say is that I’m all for using a constant example through a book to help the reader conceptualize a problem. The problem is that the tone that this book took was really annoying. On page 204 in the “Controversy” section, does this add any real value to the learning process of Weblogic? I understand that there is controversy in almost any decision in a development shop; it’s part of the job. What value does it add here in a Weblogic book? It seems to me to add no value except for adding to the page count. This style of taking an example with a group called the “Wonder Troops” does nothing but annoy me. Readers know it’s a fictitious company and don’t really buy into the problem they are experiencing. This really doesn’t help me understand the technology any better.Having said all of that, I still applaud the two authors for putting a good beginning book out on a subject that needed more information. I was just hoping for so much more. I think that if you having been using Weblogic 5.1 for any length of time, you probably won’t learn a great deal.

Review by Dale Simmons for Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server
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It is unbelievable how irrelevant this book is to BEA WebLogic. If you expect a solid introduction to J2EE and WebLogic, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I see another book on this topic is due out in June…hopefully it will fill the void that this book leaves.

Review by for Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server
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The first reviewer gave this book two stars. I think this was too harsh. There is some good information in the book and as far as technical books go, getting “some good information” is about all you can ask.I’m not a professional reviewer, just a reader of these types of books, so YMMV this review. I thought Chapter 1, “Webifying Applications” was well written and informative. The same is true for Chapters 2 and 3, Setting the Scene – Pizzas to Go & Creating a Web Front End. The middle chapters are good general Java references EJB, JSP, JMI, and the other standard web-buzz of today. One thing I liked was the fact that the web-buzz was illustrated with an application example, Pizza2Go. At least this puts the architectual pieces in context, a lot of books on the same subject have zero practical context.Chapter 9, “The Wireless Pizza” is a good practice guide to WAP and other wireless-buzz which I found helpful. Also, Chapter 10 and 11 devote a lot of pages to stress testing and grinding the servers for optimizing the configuration of the servers. This is good tutorial information that I’ve not found in other books.The security chapter was a little too weak and covered only SSL and other first-generation web security methods. I’ve heard from others that this is a common weakness in the BEA architecture but do not have first hand knowledge of this buzz.Overall the book is useful and the two stars by the first reviewer was too harsh. My four stars may be to kind, but I tend to buy a lot of technical books and if I can get a few good nuggets from each one, I’m happy. There are plenty of nuggets here and having a practical BEA Weblogic perspective is useful….

Review by Ryan Patterson for Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server
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There seems to be quite a bit of variance in the opinions of this book, so let me see if I can clear things up. The term “professional” in the title may mislead those of you who are already developing with J2EE and want to enhance your skills or gain some knowledge of Weblogic Server. If this is the case, I would suggest the wealth of excellent documentation on the BEA site instead of this book.I am a “professional” Java developer who is migrating into the world of enterprise applications. If you are in my situation, this book is a MUST HAVE. I was able to blow through it in a weekend and gained a solid foundation while doing so. Plus, I was able to do it with Weblogic (most other books use Tomcat or some other inferior product). In short, if you are experienced with J2EE, this book is not for you. However, if you are an advanced Java developer who has not yet written enterprise web apps, get this book before you start!

Review by dale carr for Professional J2EE Programming with BEA WebLogic Server
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please don’t waste your money on this one. it is poorly written. it is outdated with the release of weblogic 6.0. the worst about this book is that all the examples are badly designed and implemented. it tells you the wrong way of program web applications.