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.
2 comments:
I agree, this book is pretty bad. Actually, i wouldn't have given it 3 stars, maybe 2. But there is a better book: Oracle Jdeveloper 10g handbook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0072255838). It has a more examples and code. The book is not perfect though, it only talks about mainstream oracle technology, mostly jsp's, bc4j, struts. It lacks in contents about toplink, and not so commonly used functions of bc4j.
I thought about it and I agree with you; three stars was too much especially considering I gave three stars to JSF in Action. I'm not sure if I can change it on Amazon.
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