Review - Oracle JDeveloper 10g

Oracle JDeveloper 10g: Empowering J2EE Development
by Harshad Oak

Sometimes you just get lucky. You write a book about a fairly obscure and expensive Java IDE and then, without any warning, the company that makes the IDE releases it to the general public for free. The book is mostly a summary of the features of JDeveloper and doesn't go in deep into any area. If you are interested in a book to get you started with JDeveloper then this might fill your need. If you are looking for a book to show you the power of JDeveloper and help you get deep into its capabilities then this isn't the book for you.

The book has some major shortcomings; first and foremost that it was written using the preview version of 10g. Because of this there are some screen differences and the flow isn't always exactly as described. It would have been better if the author had waited until the final release version. Also, because JDeveloper was formerly a purchased product, there is quite a bit of information available free from the Oracle web site. You can find tutorials, demos, product tours, etc on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). Finally, the book doesn't cover writing your own custom extensions and instead points the reader to OTN.

So what does the book offer? It is a fairly basic overview of the features available in JDeveloper. The author looks at servlet/jsp development, UML, web services, EJB, database interaction, Swing, and a few other features including the Application Development Framework (ADF). It covers everything at a fairly high level so at the end of the book you might not know how to do a lot in JDeveloper but you will know what JDeveloper is capable of doing. There really isn't a better JDeveloper book on the market however. A book about JDeveloper with the detail available in the many Eclipse books is still waiting to be published.

This earned 2 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Apress.

This review and all my other reviews can be seen on My Amazon Reviews page.

Review - JavaServer Faces in Action

JavaServer Faces in Action
by Kito Mann

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is one of the newest technologies in the Java toolbox and is designed to make developing web applications as easy in Java as it is in .Net. JSF is designed mainly to be used inside of an IDE by dropping JSF components onto a screen from a palette. This book is an introduction to JSF and although it is far from perfect, it is still a worthwhile read.

The book starts with an introduction to JSF with a good overview of the component technology and how it works as well as a brief discussion of some of the IDEs that support JSF. The next few chapters discuss the components in depth and the book bogs down. There is too much detail with very little in the way of code samples. To some extent this might make sense since the components are meant to be dropped from a palette, but at the same time it makes it very difficult to follow along without some understanding of how the components would be used in an application. Starting with chapter 8, the author tries to put it all together with a sample application. Unfortunately, it is presented as a development case study instead of a JSF case study. We get three chapters of screens with no code behind it that includes prototype versions and final versions. This seemed very unnecessary and helped to inflate the page count. It isn't until chapters 12 and 13 that we finally get to see some detail code but by then I had forgotten what the screens introduced four chapters earlier were supposed to be doing. The book ends with a chapter on Struts integration and a chapter on developing your own custom components.

There are bonus chapters available on the Manning web site, but since some of the bonus chapters are important to understanding the material in the book, unless you are reading the book while sitting at your computer, this isn't very helpful. The book would have been much better with some serious editing and rearranging of topics. The sample application should have been simplified and combined with the component reference material presented earlier. Code and screens should have been discussed together. The bonus chapters should have been incorporated into the printed version of the book.

I don’t want you to get the impression that this is a poorly written or useless book. In fact, there is a lot of good material here and after reading this book you will have a thorough understanding of JSF. The author gives very clear (if not concise) explanations but the book is too long and parts are difficult to wade through.

This earned 3 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Manning.

This review and all my other reviews can be seen on My Amazon Reviews page.