While some titles on EJBs are long on theory and short on the nuts-and-bolts of actually deploying and running beans on real platforms, this book distinguishes itself with plenty of practical code, as well as the XML descriptors needed to deploy each sample. (More than with most programming topics, with EJBs the genius is in the details, and the authors supply the necessary deployment specifics here.) Weighing in at over 1,200 pages, this text is massive, but exceptionally well paced. The Wrox team of authors have assembled a simply excellent tutorial for building and using EJBs, beginning with the version 1.0 standard. The authors start with session and then entity beans, exploring features built in to today's J2EE-compliant application servers. Coverage of the EJB 2.0 standard along with new topics such as messaging beans and the Java Message Service (JMS) comes later.

Besides actual source code and an excellent case study for an online movie-ticket booking application, several chapters explore design issues with EJBs in detail. At this point in the book, there is an excellent section on a half-dozen reusable EJB design patterns. There's also plenty of advice for squeezing more performance and scalability out of today's J2EE application servers.

Later chapters turn toward newer technologies, such as wireless and Web services, and how to integrate EJBs with two older distributing computing standards (COM and CORBA). There's coverage on installing and running some of today's most popular J2EE application servers, from BEA WebLogic, to IBM WebSphere Application Server, to the free, open-source JBoss alternative. (In theory, any properly designed EJB will run on any server, but it helps to get some help with each J2EE application server platform.)

In all, the focus on running EJBs in real application servers helps makes this book a success. Professional EJB will be a good refresher for those transitioning to EJB 2.0, as well as those developers who are new to Sun's powerful component standard and want to get it right in a hurry. --Richard Dragan

Book Description
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) are a container-based component architecture that allow you to easily create secure, scalable and transactional enterprise applications. Developed as session beans, entity beans, or message-driven beans, EJBs are the critical business objects in any J2EE application.

Professional EJB shows how to develop and deploy EJB applications using both the 1.1 and the new 2.0 specification. The addition of container-provided services, such as container-managed persistence, and security and transaction management, are covered in detail. As well as implementation details, the book also provides a number of strategies and patterns that can be applied when designing your EJB applications. Subsequently, it also suggests steps for taking existing EJBs and improving their performance.

Finally, the book recognizes that one of the most difficult areas of EJB development is the deployment process. Thus it demonstrates how to deploy your EJB applications to some of the leading EJB containers including BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere and Sybase EAServer.

This book covers:

The fundamentals of EJB development, including session beans, entity beans (BMP and CMP), and message-driven beans

EJB services such as resource management, transactions, and security

Designing EJB applications using patterns, strategies, and UML

Improving EJB design through testing and performance

Integrating EJBs with J2EE, COM, and CORBA

Deployment instructions for leading application servers


See all Product Description