Gomez P., Zadrozny P., Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition with BEA Weblogic Server

John Wiley & Sons, 2000. — 509 p.The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification is one of Java's success stories; a standard for enterprise web application development that has wide industry support.
J2EE is basically a collection of specifications for web services, business objects, data access, and messaging. They define the way in which web applications communicate with the servers that host them. J2EE focuses on two things - creating a standard that allows web applications to be portable between servers, and giving the server control of component lifecycle and other resources, in order that it can handle issues of scaling, concurrency, transaction management, and security.
This book is based around one of the most popular J2EE and EJB implementations, BEA WebLogic Server. The authors work for BEA in Europe, providing technical support for customer's implementations of Weblogic-based solutions. They have first-hand knowledge of the practical difficulties developers face in applying J2EE and WebLogic to their projects, and in debugging and testing these applications. This book is a distillation of their real-world expertise.
Despite its wordy title, Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition with BEA WebLogic Server actually is one of the better books that you can get for learning JSP-based programming with Java and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). By highlighting practical matters-including setting up and running the popular BEA WebLogic Server, and benchmarking performance-the authors manage to cover the essentials of EJB-based development in a friendly and intelligent style that's ideal for any aspiring Java EJB developer.
The focus on hands-on matters begins with installation and configuration of BEA WebLogic Server, one of the more widely used platforms for running EJB applications. Most books cover EJBs more theoretically and leave deployment by the wayside. By focusing on an actual EJB product, the authors can talk about what works and what doesn't work in real applications. For examples, a single case study for a chain of pizza shops gets enhanced in stages, first with a Web front end for ordering pizzas, then with other features-including call-center support, e-mail, and XML. A section on converting an ASP version of a front end for this sample application into a JSP version is a highlight.The latter half of this text turns into a primer on benchmarking. A benchmark (called the Grinder) measures performance, with a wide range of choices for EJBs that run on WebLogic. Different Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) and choices for implementing the applications (for example, stateful vs. stateless EJBs) are tested, and the numbers of concurrent users (up to 400) are varied. The result is a solid glimpse into the choices that give the best performance on WebLogic.Besides covering the basics of building e-commerce applications with JSPs and EJBs, this book has a genuinely practical side. The case study is very useful, as is the plentiful performance advice. Smart, friendly, and well organized, this title strikes an excellent balance between presenting information on some of the latest Java technology and APIs, and showing just how to do it on a real EJB platform and with real code.