Joaquín Carré Seras said
The book covers all the J2EE 1.4 technologies. The authors don't assume you have a background in J2EE and they explain the concepts in a very plain language.
It has a lot of interesting information about JDBC, JSP and EJBs. Moreover, some J2EE design patterns are present in the book. The drawbacks are the poor JMS and WS content.
If you have to maintain a J2EE 1.4 project this book is a good starting point.
If you have to start a new JEE project you should upgrade to JEE 5 because it is easier, more powerful and more productive. "Java EE 5 Development using Glassfish" is a good choice to have an overview of JEE 5.

David A. Landes said
Being a beginner I was frustrated by other books before I happened upon
Beginning J2EE 1.4. I'm only 1/4 way through the book but all the examples
work and I feel I've already got my money's worth. I think after studying
this book I will be able to go back to other beginning books and fix the
reasons why their examples did not work for me.

Scott P. Stewart said
I've had this book for a week now and I would love to be able to give a knowledgeable review but I can't get past the second chapter.

Why? The second chapter details setting up the SDK but after many hours of searching I can't find anyplace to download it. It uses the first (November 2003) release of the J2EE SDK and there have been 3 updates since then. The current release uses an entirely different database with an extensively updated web server.

I'm looking to familiarize myself with J2EE 1.4 and this appears to be a very good book for that, but it's going to be a major pain when I'm forced to use different software.

A. Radu said
The book is a very well-balanced introduction to many J2EE topics such as JSP, Servlets, JDBC, and EJB. Examples are "as simple as possible, but no simpler", and are quite useful for understanding the various topics.
Obviously this book is now out in the newer edition that covers the much-changed and simplified (yey!) Java EE 5, but for anyone who would need to work with legacy J2EE 1.4 applications this book certainly provides good value.

David Emmith said
Overall a very good book except for the errors. ;-) I would've given this book a higher rating if it were not for the editing.

I read the book from cover to cover. The explanations are good but there are problems with the examples. It really is difficult to find a programming book that is not rife with poor instructions and/or examples that will not compile. This book is better than most but I am a rather unforgiving sort when it comes to code examples in a book. There is nothing more frustrating than spending hours on a problem that could've been solved at the outset with just a little more attention to detail by the editors.

My setup is a Windows XP Pro notebook, jdk1.5.0_06 installed on C:\ (the root directory) and J2EE 1.4 also stored on the root. I am using Eclipse 3.1 for an IDE (Integrated Devlopment Environment). If you can avoid it, do not put any of your Java software in directories that have spaces in their directory/folder names. This will prevent problems you will encounter when entering commands on the command-line that involve using environment variables in path names (there may be other problems avoided as well).

Here is a summary of some of the trouble I ran into. I would like to say at the outset that I DO recommend this book. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an error-less computer book especially when you are dealing with a technology that has not yet matured.

The problems begin in Chapter 3 on page 54, #5. Compiling the FaqCategories.java resulted in the following message...
Note: FaqCategories.java uses unchecked or unsafe operations.
Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.
To solve this problem I changed the following line of code...
private Vector categories = new Vector();
to...
private Vector categories = new Vector();

This problem occurred because JDK 1.5 uses generics. I guess I can't blame this one on the publishers because I am probably using a later JDK than they were. This problem comes up again in Chapter 4, page 108, Questions.java. You will need to compensate for the use of generics in JDK 1.5. So here is the source you should use for that example...
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.HashMap;

public class Questions {
private String topic;
private int numTopics;
private Map questions = new HashMap();

public String getTopic() { return topic; }
public void setTopic(String t) { topic = t; }

public int getNumTopics() { return numTopics; }
public void setNumTopics(int n) { numTopics = n; }

public Map getQuestions() { return questions; }
public void setQuestions(Map m) { questions = m; }

public Questions() {
questions.put("1", "How do I use implicit objects?");
questions.put("2", "How do I use the JSTL?");
questions.put("3", "How do I use the 'empty' operator?");
setNumTopics(questions.size());
}
}


I remember having trouble with the JSTL (Java Standard Tag Library) examples in Chapter 4 but unfortunately I did not make any notes for those problems.

In Chapter 5, page 161, #3 I had a problem with the login.html page. I changed the following line...