What is Websphere?: Java, J2EE, Portal and Beyond! (demystifying IBM's Middle Tier Technology)

This book is an excellent introduction for a manager or developer willing to understand WebSphere and the J2EE specification from a very high perspective. It's not a deep introduction, the book just covers the most important topics but it does in a funny but yet illustrative form. I read the book in a couple of days, it's short and fast-paced.My only complain is the price you have to pay for the book. I don't think it worths all the bucks you pay even when you may find it is a great book. But if you have the money and you don't mind the book is short and the presentation quite simple, then go for this book, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

What is WebSphere? Das Buch enthält genau das, was der Titel verspricht.In sehr einfachen, verständlichen Sätzen werden die Themen "Application Server" und dafür notwendigerweise auch "JEE" erläutert. Dabei werden die wichtigsten Begriffe in sinnvoller Reihenfolge erläutert.Das Buch hat nicht all zuviele Seiten, kann ich wenigen Stunden gelesen werden. Aber dafür lernt man durch das Buch sehr viel, und weiss nachher auch noch das Meiste. Es gibt viele Bücher mit 1000+ Seiten, wo man bei Seite 500 nicht mehr weiss, was in den ersten zwei Kapiteln stand.Achtung: Das Buch ist wirklich nur für den Einstieg geeignet, egal ob für WebSphere oder andere Application Server. Es werden keine Details erläutert, aber man lernt die Aufgaben von Application Servern und JEE.Kritikpunkte gibt es nur folgende Zwei:- Der Preis ist unverschämt hoch.- Das Buch basiert auf JEE 1.4 und ist daher nicht mehr ganz aktuell. Dies fällt aber ausschließlich bei dem Kapitel "Enterprise Java Beans" ein bißchen auf (Stichwort Entity-Beans vs. JPA).Fazit: Das Buch ist für den Einstieg in das Thema sehr gut geeignet - nicht nur für Entwickler, sondern auch für Manager, Projektleiter und Architekten.

My motivation behind buying this book was its space efficiency. I consider that as the core strength of this book. In days when people race neck-to-neck in turning out voluminous books, it is great to see someone, who values the reader's time and takes pains to provide the essence of topics in brevity. In that respect, I rate this book next only to the C Programming Book from K&R. For someone from the Unix/C/3GL world who wants a jump start in the Java world and J2EE, there can be no better book than this one. I learnt so much in the past four days that I spent reading this book than in the past several months googling for information and reading IBM redbooks. Prior to buying this book, I read in another review a note that the book is over-priced for its size. To some extent I was disappointed when saw how small the book was (mainly because we are all used to books with at least 1000 pages). But, on careful introspection, I am convinced that this book is worth the money I paid. If we go by the size of a book to determine its worth, the Yellow Pages or a Phone Book should cost more than most other books in the world. This book, in my opinion, is justifiably expensive.Now for the downside, this is a badly written book. There are several unnecessary sarcastic comments, which are not needed to hold reader's attention given the wealth of information in the book. There are repetitions that annoyed me. There are several spelling and some grammatical errors. Pagination could have been better. There are special icons used to highlight information, but there is no guide to the icons and special notations. Perhaps the publishing was done in a hurry. The problem is that one does not know if the haste was in just checking typographic and gramamtical errors alone or it extended into the review of the technical contents. Since I used it for gaining an overall understanding of the topics, I did not focus on verifying technical correctness of the contents. They look correct to me, and I hope that the author did not compromise in that area.If the author brings out a revised edition with the presentation defects addressed appropriately, I will buy a second copy of this book.

This author is amaizing, the book does what it claims. Good brief intro to almost all aspects of Websphere that I being a Java developer need to start with. Good book for a Websphere starter/come-backer ;)

Great book, by an author that knows what he's talking about.Enjoyed the reading, as it's funny and entertaining.Do not buy this book if you want an exhaustive look "under the hood".Do buy this book if you like to get familiar with websphere, and like to understand what it's about.