From Book News, Inc.
Appropriate for technical writers, managers, and Java programmers, this book overviews the J2EE standard for creating applications servers and explains what exactly web containers, JavaServer pages (JSPs), servlets, and enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) are. Later chapters provide advice on web services, resource management, data integrity, J2EE security, choosing the optimal architecture, and design patterns.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Book Description
A thorough introduction to the complexities of J2EE that explains the big picture without getting bogged down in the details or hype. Written for managers and techies alike J2EE helps enterprises extend their reach, reduce their costs, and lower their response times by providing easy-to-access services to customers, partners, employees, and suppliers Tightly focused on J2EE, a great first stop for anyone seeking to learn about the potential and promises of the technology In short, J2EE is a powerful, but complex technology. J2EE is many things, but essentially it is a standard for application servers. In this innovative new book, the authors provide a concise and entertaining introduction to the J2EE platform for professionals who need to understand the big picture, and may or may not be technically savvy. The book provides an overview of the four key tiers in J2EE and how they work, at a level anyone can understand. This book is tightly focused on J2EE and will not address competing technologies or extended implementation or specific development or deployment details.

From the Back Cover

"Need to learn J2EE? J2EE 1.4: The Big Picture is a must-have guide that is both enjoyable and educational. I highly recommend it."
--Peter van der Linden, software consultant and author of Expert C Programming, Not Just Java, and Just Java

"Anyone working with J2EE needs this book. You can get the details and the code examples from a lot of other places, but this book provides the essential under-standing of all the parts and how they work together."
--Simon Roberts, author of the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology Certification Exam and Study Guide

"I've ordered copies of J2EE 1.4: The Big Picture for everyone in my department. Not only because it's the most understandable technical book I've ever read, but because my review copy keeps disappearing from my office."
--Larissa Carroll, manager, BEA Systems

"If you're tired of technical books that are all about the details and don't tell you how the whole thing works, you want this book. There's absolutely nothing else like it."
--Patricia Parkhill, managing editor, Sun Microsystems

"I like it very much. It definitely paints a clear picture of the whole J2EE thing. It's a book I'd recommend to J2EE developers of any skill level."
--Dirk Schreckmann, JavaRanch Journal Editor and Sheriff in the JavaRanch Big Moose Saloon

"This book gives me a headache, because on just about every page I'd slap myself in the head and say 'That's it?!? That's what all the mystery is about?!' Now I feel like I'm in the know. I might not be able to code this stuff yet, but I sure get what's going on now."
--Floyd Jones, senior technical writer, BEA Systems

"This book makes J2EE seem so easy. The informal, friendly tone of the book is extremely helpful. It made me understand the beans stuff, CMP and BMP, with-out any effort at all. In fact, it is frighteningly perfect and uncomplicated. I think the book is also just the right one for managers, project managers, and other non-techies who interact with J2EE developers."
--Manish Hatwalne, Software Consultant, Circus Software LLC

"I love J2EE 1.4: The Big Picture. I love how it breaks down a big thing, like J2EE services and architecture, into smaller digestible chunks. And once in the micro topic, the explanations are so easy to absorb. The explanations do build on top of each other, making--dare I say it--a big picture. And I FINALLY GET TRANSACTIONS!"
--Jeannie Saur, documentation specialist, Trimble Navigation Limited

"I would recommend this as a good beginner's reference for J2EE, or for anyone looking for a supplement for an advanced J2EE course."
--College Java instructor

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About the Author

Solveig Haugland is a technical writer and instructor. She knows what it's like to sit through hours of tech gibberish that make absolutely no sense. She would sooner drink a vial of really vile poison than put stuff into this book like "session beans reify the enduring business processes of your enterprise." Without a suitable explanation, at least.

Mark Cade is a member of Sun Professional Services. This is the same group that brought you John Crupi, Deepak Alur, and Dan Malks of Core J2EE Patterns fame. Mark's been with Java since the beginning and works on big J2EE projects for a living. He's also the coauthor of the Sun J2EE architect exam and the architect exam study guide.

Anthony Orapallo is a technical instructor and has taught a variety of Java topics, including Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans course. He knows what it's like to be up there in front of a class explaining just what the Home interface is, so he knows how to teach.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Different Kind of Technical Book

Here's a little information on what the book's about, who it's for, how the book came to be, and who we are. We're doing this because The Big Picture isn't like most books out there. We want to make sure you know what you're getting. What This Book Is and Isn't

This book is a big picture look at J2EE. What it's made of, how the parts work together, what the heck a container is, what entity beans are for. Occasionally we'll also touch on things like when J2EE and its parts might or might not be the right choice for a particular project.

This book will help you understand how things work so that not only do you know but you can explain the J2EE big picture to others. It will help you feel comfortable asking questions in meetings, and give you a great foundation if you're going on to learn how to do J2EE programming or system administration. You'll also learn the point of the technologies. Not just what message-driven beans are, not just what an EJB container is, not just what Web services are, but why they're around.

This book is the paperback version of getting that J2EE wizard down the hall from you to sit down over lunch or a few beers and explain things to you. Reading this book is like sitting in a bar with your coworkers after work, not falling asleep in your fourth session of the day at JavaOne.

This book is not going to teach you how to do J2EE. Don't look for a lot of painstakingly annotated code examples. There are a few bits of code but they're not the focus. We believe in using a relaxed, casual approach to teaching and to just how we write. For instance, the three main categories of J2EE services are analogous to Brain, Courage, and Heart from The Wizard of Oz, so we use that analogy. And we sometimes say things like "clearly, that would suck" or "stateless session beans are flaky but good at heart."

We do take accuracy seriously. Very seriously. We're just not concerned with writing this book in a way that will get us to the finals of the "Pompous Technical People" competition. Absolute Technical Completeness Versus Being Easy to Understand

When was the last time you read a big book with lots of information that went into painful detail about exactly what the topic was about? And was this book also easy to understand, easy to read, and a good way for a beginner to get acquainted with the topic?

Probably not. We've never come across a book like that, and we're going to bet that very few of you have, either. Absolute completeness and technical accuracy, and being easy to understand, rarely coexist. When we wrote this book, we knew we were going for being easy to understand.

The way we provide the understanding is to leave out a lot of technical details, and blur some of the details to make the concepts understandable. And we use analogies, which are great for the initial "aha!" moment, but break down eventually if you take them too far. The rmi registry does not have all the same attributes as a post office or a phone book. We know this. But the analogy is a good way to get the gist of the concept.

This does not mean we're not concerned with accuracy. Learning something easily but wrong doesn't do anyone any good. We're just emphasizing that this is a different kind of book you've got here, so you'll need a different set of expectations.

Gus the Ultra-Detail-Oriented Programmer Who Loves to Read Specifications is not going to be happy reading this. People who blanch at the idea of contractions or conversational tone in a book aren't going to like it, either. However, if you want something that will quickly and clearly give you the big picture, though, we're pretty sure you're holding the right book. Who This Book Is For

This book is for anyone who doesn't fully understand how the whole J2EE thing works. Whether you're a tech writer, a new member of the marketing team trying not to be intimidated by the engineers, a straight-up Java programmer switching to the enterprise stuff, or a senior architect who wants to review a few things, we think you'll find this book useful.

This is also a book for anyone who was turned off reading J2EE in 36 Months of Intense Boredom.

That sounds like a fairly wide audience, and it is. The breadth is based on what we found out in reviews, though, not just conceited authors thinking that anything that falls from our lips is valuable to the whole darned world. Here's what happened. Just to be thorough, we asked a wide variety of people to read through the book, and found that pretty much everyone, from an entry level technical marketing person through programmers and architects, found value in it.

A Web component developer told us he loved the clear explanations of Enterprise JavaBeans, which he hadn't worked with yet. A scripter who had worked primarily writing macros liked the book's 10,000-foot approach. (More detailed than the 30,000-foot view but not deep into the code.) A technical reviewer took it on vacation (yes, on vacation) and read parts aloud to her nontechnical friend, who claimed that she actually understood portions of it. A college-level Java instructor said he would recommend it as an introductory text or as a supplement to an advanced J2EE course. An architect for a consulting firm told us he would recommend it to all the architects on his staff. Several technical writers appreciated that it provided important information that helped them do their jobs better, but without being overwhelming and confusing. The Big Picture Came About

It's not often that dancing leads to J2EE books, but that's kind of what happened with this one. Two dance lessons in particular.

Solveig Haugland, one of the coauthors on this book, took a merengue dance lesson a couple of years ago. She came away dazed and confused, feeling like the clumsiest, stupidest person alive, and convinced she'd never be able to do it.

She somehow found the courage to go back to dance lessons recently where she discovered that, in fact, merengue is the simplest dance there is. You just step around the floor on the beat and occasionally twirl. OK, there's some fancy hip stuff that's hard to do but it's not essential.

A lot of technical stuff is like merengue. If you don't know the point, and you've got some expert at the front of the room waving their hands and talking about how to move your hips just right when you don't even know where to put your feet yet, you're doomed. Even on something as simple as stepping around the floor in time to the music. And certainly on something like Java, patterns, J2EE, and, well, pretty much any other technical topic.

You might be a godlike J2EE genius in the rough, but you won't know it if you're reading J2EE: We Aim to Confuse.

Here's the second dance anecdote. At a Lindy for Beginners class in Boulder, Solveig found that there were a lot of expert dancers there. When queried, they said that they were there just to brush up on their basic steps. These people had been dancing for years, but they came back to the beginner lessons periodically to focus on the basic steps. Without a good basic steps, you tend to screw up the more complicated moves, plus nobody wants to dance with you. Polishing and reviewing the basics is valuable in dance, and valuable in any profession, especially software. Book Web Site

The Web site for the book is http://www.bigpicture-books.com. About the Authors

We've put together a triumvirate of different types of experience on our author team, all heavily dosed with real world experience.

Solveig Haugland is a technical writer and instructor. She knows what it's like to sit through hours of tech gibberish that make absolutely no sense. She would sooner drink a vial of really vile poison than put stuff into this book like "session beans reify the enduring business processes of your enterprise." Without a suitable explanation, at least.

Mark Cade is a member of Sun Professional Services. This is the same group that brought you John Crupi, Deepak Alur, and Dan Malks of Core J2EE Patterns fame. Mark's been with Java since the beginning and works on big J2EE projects for a living. He's also the coauthor of the Sun J2EE architect exam and the architect exam study guide.

Anthony Orapallo is a technical instructor and has taught a variety of Java topics, including Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans course. He knows what it's like to be up there in front of a class explaining just what the Home interface is, so he knows how to teach.

We check and balance each other to make sure that the book is clear, accurate, and applicable. We've created a book that's accurate and to the point, but simple and clear, that you can actually enjoy reading.

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

New to J2EE? Experienced with J2EE, but not sure how it all fits together? Get this book. It's the clearest, simplest high-level guide to J2EE ever published. It's concise, practical, and (dare we say it) fun. No incomprehensible jargon. No endless pages of painfully annotated code. Not in this book. Look here for the big picture. What J2EE is. What the J2EE components are. What they're for and what they're not for. How they work together in distributed applications. And more specifically...

SYNOPSIS