BEA WebLogic Server Bible, Second Edition

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 1104 pages
• Published by: Wiley
• Edition: 2nd Edition May 15, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0764526022
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0764526022
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
• Weighs: 3.2 pounds

Book Description
* A comprehensive, hands-on guide to the nuts and bolts of installing, administering, and troubleshooting the latest version of WebLogic Server
* Extensive coverage of building enterprise applications with this popular J2EE application server
* Updated edition includes new coverage of BEA's WebLogic Workshop tool with WebLogic Server, expanded coverage of security and clustering, WebLogic Integration, and WebLogic Portal
* BEA leads the J2EE application server market, and its market share continues to grow
* Companion Web site features additional code, examples, and updates

Book Info
Guide to installing and administering BEA WebLogic Server Version 7.0, the newest version of the J2EE application server. Covers new features, including Web services and WebLogic Workshop. For beginning to advanced users. Previous edition: c2002. Softcover.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: BEA Weblogic(R) Server Bible (Paperback) I learn best by doing. When I buy technical books, I prefer those that include a lot of working examples. I have recently had an immense quantity of J2EE architecture poured into my somewhat leaky old brain, and I was looking for something that could get everything to gel together when I happened on this book. Since Weblogic Server 6.1 is the server in use on my current assignment, I bought this book with the intention of cobbling together a test environment and working through its many examples. At first the going was pretty good. Zuffoletto has an easily readable style and, with his guidance, I got the server up and running without too many traumas. I was OK until I started to work through the RMI examples in the book. They didn't work. After some fumbling, I went to the website and downloaded the updates examples. They were quite a bit different, but still didn't work. Fortunately, I have knowledgeable friends, and we eventually filled in the gaps and got everything up and running. My first issue with the book is that this pattern repeated itself frequently. The text itself is great, but from a practical viewpoint, the supporting examples have many gaps in them. Sometimes the errors are glaring - failure to qualify the class name when running it in the JVM. Sometimes they are quite subtle. I frequently got the feeling that the book was really written for Weblogic 6.0 and then given a slight makeover to adapt it to 6.1. In addition, the book often fails to provide the kind of detailed practical explanations of how to compile and where to place code that are vital to beginners. I also think Zuffoletto should have spent more time working through the intricacies of managing the Weblogic Server. As it is, the book is more focused on being a general introduction to using the technologies that WLS 6.1 supports. This isn't necessarily bad, but I found myself struggling to figure out whether I had set up the parameters correctly a few too many times. In addition, I had some problems because I use MS SQL Server for persistence rather than Oracle, and so was left out in the cold a bit. On the good side, this is a very well written book that covered an immense amount of material without getting bogged down anywhere. It starts from scratch and takes you from setting up the environment and the development team, to the various API's (JNDI, RMI, JDBC, JMS, JTA, and JavaMail), and then through the major development patters (JSP, EJB, etc.). The final third of the book focuses on Weblogic administration and support and then some time is spent on what I think of as more emergent technologies (such as SOAP). If coverage isn't always as deep as it could be, one has to keep in mind that this is a 900-page book as it is. I guess my real problem is that the book doesn't quite live up to its hype. Which is, perhaps more the fault of the publisher than Zuffoletto and his team. It is Hungry Minds, after all, that put the '100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, and What You Need' on the books cover. Well, it's a bit more like 70%, but that isn't all bad. Had the examples been a bit more workable (perhaps by expanding on the books website) I would have been very happy with it. As it is, I don't regret reading it at all, Comment | | (Report this)