This book succeeds in two notable ways. First, it presents a fine high-level overview describing EJBs and how they fit into today's multitiered, server-side enterprise architectures. The author makes connections between EJBs and other component architectures (such as Microsoft DNA and CORBA). Illustrated with numerous diagrams, these chapters will be useful to anyone seeking to understand the basics of Sun's powerful component model.
This title also serves as a programming primer for serious EJB development. In later sections, the author introduces practical advice for creating both session and entity beans, with plenty of nuts-and-bolts advice, including how to work with actual EJB products. (This book also shows you what to look for when purchasing an EJB application server to deploy your bean components.)
Later chapters delve into transaction management and show how to use Java with CORBA and IIOP. The text culminates in an impressive case study using EJBs and Java servlets to power an e-commerce Web site (complete with an online catalog and a shopping cart). This example is a standout, and it's all you will likely need to get started with EJBs in custom projects. Final appendices cover several APIs and standards in more detail, including RMI, JNDI, and XML.
In all, this title succeeds at bringing the EJB standard home to the practical reader. It demystifies EJBs and gives both managers and developers what they need to start solving business problems using this powerful new component model. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Overview of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) component model and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), the EJB 1.1 standard, multitiered server-side architectures, J2EE technology primer: RMI, JNDI, JDBC, JTS/JTA, servlets and JSPs, Java IDL, JavaMail, Connectors, XML, EJB Container and Server products and responsibilities, session beans: stateless and stateful beans, EJB security and component life cycle, entity beans and persistence: bean-managed persistent entity beans and container-managed persistent entity beans, flat and nested transactions, ACID properties, two-phase commits, CORBA and RMI-IIOP and EJBs, e-commerce case study using EJBs and servlets.