Enterprise JavaBeans

Amazon.com
As many Java developers and IS managers already know, Sun's powerful Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) technology offers an attractive option for developing server-side components. A suitable read for both managers and Java programmers, Enterprise JavaBeans provides a surprisingly clear and engaging introduction to designing and programming with EJBs.

The tour of the EJB component model presented here centers on several beans created and tested for a travel reservation system in a fictitious cruise ship company. The samples are just right in scale, large enough to test out key concepts in design and deployment, but small enough to be comprehensible, even to those who are not Java experts. The author pays close attention to the real-world issues of deployment with EJBs (as well as the differences among the vendor application servers that run them).

While there are enough details in Java syntax for designing both entity and session beans for the developer, sections on design here will please those who manage projects without delving much into code. Later, the author shows various ways to design entity and session beans. (For instance, entity beans can allow their bean containers to handle the details of connecting to a database, or they can do it themselves. This book demonstrates both approaches.) When it comes to session beans (which "wire" together entity beans to do real work), the author's introduction to managing state and transactions is also a standout. Tips for performance and reusability close out the book.

In all, Enterprise JavaBeans provides an engaging tour of one of the most promising component technologies. It's technically astute, but thoroughly approachable too, and can serve the needs of any manager or Java developer considering EJBs for future projects. --Richard Dragan

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
With the new EJB 2.0 spec, Enterprise JavaBeans becomes an even powerful platform for enterprise and web development. Richard Monson-Haefel has just updated his #1 EJB guide to reflect the new spec. But whether you're on the bleeding edge or involved in projects based on EJB 1.1, this book is just your ticket.

Monson-Haefel offers expert insight into EJB architecture, design, and coding. You'll find detailed coverage of EJB primary services, entity relationships, queries, session beans, transactions, and more. Wherever possible, Monson-Haefel provides code that's downward compatible, and he carefully explains the key differences between 1.1 and 2.0.

Sun has thoroughly overhauled container-managed persistence, simplifying the development of portable, database-independent applications. Monson-Haefel covers the 2.0 model in detail, while also covering EJB 1.1's approach. EJB 2.0 thoroughly integrates Java Message Service (JMS), helping EJBs participate more fully in loosely-connected web apps. Monson-Haefel, who coauthored O'Reilly's recent JMS guide, offers a full chapter on EJB 2.0's JMS support.

No EJB book has been honored as widely as Enterprise JavaBeans. The new edition is as indispensable as its predecessors. (Bill Camarda)

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer with nearly 20 years' experience in helping technology companies deploy and market advanced software, computing, and networking products and services. He served for nearly ten years as vice president of a New Jersey–based marketing company, where he supervised a wide range of graphics and web design projects. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Enterprise JavaBeans, Fourth Edition, is the definitive guide to EJB 2.1. It shows you how to build complex, mission-critical systems using snap-together software components that model business objects and processes. EJB 2.1 makes several important steps forward in EJB technology: message-driven beans are much more flexible, a time service has been added, and EJBs have been integrated with web services. Enterprise JavaBeans delivers on a promise that was astonishing a few years ago: not only can EJBs run without modification on any operating system, they can run on any J2EE application server. However, after writing EJBs, you have to deploy them in an application server, and deploying EJBs can be a painful task. This edition includes the JBoss Workbook, which shows you how to deploy the examples on the open source JBoss Application Server. If you've done any enterprise software development in the past few years, you already know the extent to which EJB has changed the field. Use this book to catch up on the latest developments. If you're new to enterprise software development, or if you haven't been working with EJB, this book will bring you up to speed on this exciting technology for building business systems.

SYNOPSIS

Enterprise JavaBeans 3rd edition has been thoroughly revised to include complete coverage of three major changes in the EJB 2.0 specification: A new version of container-managed persistence; local interfaces; and a totally new kind of bean called the "message driven bean." The 3rd edition also contains an architecture overview, information on resource management and primary services, design strategies, and XML deployment descriptors.

FROM THE CRITICS

Gregory V. Wilson - Electronic Review of Computer Books

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) may be the clumsiest name that our industry has come up with recently -- but the technology is anything but. Enterprise JavaBeans combines distributed components with transaction monitors to produce an infrastructure that can manage database-style transactions, security, object persistence, and resource management in a standardized way. Enterprise JavaBeans has nothing in common with plain ol' JavaBeans except its name, and it is much more similar to the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS).

Richard Monson-Haefel's Enterprise JavaBeans starts by describing the historical and technological background to EJB, including the development of transaction monitors over the last 30 years, and the underpinnings of distributed-object technology. Chapter 2 then looks at the EJB architecture, while Chapter 3 discusses resource management. As part of this discussion, Monson-Haefel looks at how EJB handles the six primary services defined by the OMG: concurrency, transactions, persistence, distributed objects, naming, and security. This discussion is informative, but noncritical -- the book never suggests that EJB has weaknesses, or that a different approach to some technical problem (or more rigorous standardization) might have been more flexible or easier to implement.

Chapter 4 describes how to implement some simple EJBs. As with other examples in the book, most of this material is taken from a system to manage bookings for a holiday cruise line. Chapters 5 through 8 then discuss how EJBs are used by client-size applications, the development of entity beans (that is, components that describe real-world objects such as cruise ships), session beans (which describe business logic such as the booking of a cruise) and EJB's support for transaction management. The last chapter, "Design Strategies," then gives some tips on how to go about developing EJB-based applications. The book closes with three appendices: One on the EJB API, one (which I found very helpful) that gives UML state and sequence diagrams for various operations, and one (which is already out of date) that provides information about EJB vendors.