Head First EJB: Passing the Sun Certified Business Component Developer Exam FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
You will have more fun learning Enterprise JavaBeans programming with Head First EJB than you will anywhere else. And, because youﾽre having fun, what you learn will stick. Canﾽt hurt, right? Especially if youﾽre studying for Sunﾽs Certified Business Component Developer Exam.
This book is a wild ride: new ideas, new connections, attitude all over the place. Text thatﾽs actually funny (not the ﾽallegedﾽ funny youﾽve seen in computer books before). And all these goodies werenﾽt bolted on at the end to enliven a deadly narrative. Theyﾽre here to make the ideas come alive. It works.
Here are Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates introducing two types of session beans: ﾽIf youﾽre lucky, youﾽre a stateless bean. Because the life of a stateful bean is tied to the whims of a heartless client. Stateful beans are created at the clientﾽs insistence, and live and die only to serve that one client. But ahhhh, the life of a stateless bean is fabulous! Pools, those little umbrella drinks, and no boredom, since you get to meet so many different clients.ﾽ Think youﾽll ever forget the difference?
Or how about the great ﾽ40s and ﾽ50s photos throughout, captioned to speak for the beans themselves? ﾽ...and then I said, ﾽYou want a piece of me? Go ahead -- take your best shot buddy!ﾽ He didnﾽt know he was messing with an entity bean. So he threw an exception, then he crashed the server, but Iﾽm still here! I wonﾽt go down that easy, no siree. As long as Iﾽm in the database, Iﾽll just keep coming back, so do your worst!ﾽ Ever hear a more riveting explanation of persistence?
The authors figure that people learn best when theyﾽre fully engaged. When theyﾽre being tickled. (And the latest research in cognitive science, neurobiology, and educational psychology backs them up.)
So they keep you rolling on the floor laughing, as they walk you through every EJB fundamental -- and every exam objective on Sunﾽs exam. Youﾽll find chapters on EJB architecture; the client view of beans; entity bean relationships; transactions, exceptions, security, deployment, and more. All with the same wit, the same vivid analogies.
Why do you need message-driven beans? Imagine: ﾽYou have to ask someone to do a very important job. You have no idea how long itﾽs going to take them. You have to wait right where you are until they finish. You canﾽt do anything else while youﾽre waiting.ﾽ Get the drift?
Thereﾽs a treat on every spread. Our favorite: a full-page argument between beans at the Tikibean Lounge. (If youﾽve never watched bean-managed and container-managed transaction beans trade Shakespearean-class insults, youﾽre in for a treat.)
Throughout Head First EJB, youﾽll also find answers to the so-called ﾽdumb questionsﾽ other books donﾽt bother answering. (Why donﾽt stateful session beans have a pool? Why not just go straight to the database from a session bean?)
Thereﾽs only thing the authors play straight: the sample questions at the end of each chapter, and the complete sample exam at the back of the book. Even while youﾽre studying, though, this book breaks convention. For example, each chapter lists the relevant exam objectives and then tells you what they really mean. In English.
Head First EJB is a pleasure to learn from, and it was an absolute joy to review. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.
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