?I did toy with the idea of doing a cookbook.? I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.?
?Groucho Marx
As the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) gains acceptance among increasing numbers of developers, the resources, tutorials, books, and experts covering Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) also grows in numbers. A search at a popular online bookstore using the phrase ?Enterprise JavaBeans? turns up 24 books, and these results include only those with the phrase in the title. Using the Google Internet search engine (www.google.com) with the same phrase results in approximately 744 (Google actually listed a potential for 123,000 pages, but cuts off the result after 744 for relevancy.) pages with a strong relation to EJBs. While the multitude of material is certainly a wealth of knowledge, explanation, and discussion, it often forces EJB developers into lengthy searches for quick solutions. How many times have you needed to answer a specific question and had to search through many pages in a book?or a few books?to find your answer?
Having experienced this problem firsthand, we decided to do something about it. Our goal with this book is to provide an essential problem-solving resource. Just as cookbooks for meals contain step-by-step directions for creating various dishes, this book provides recipes for solving problems involving Enterprise JavaBeans. Here you will find recipes for many types of problems, ranging from simple, everyday quick-reference issues to complex design challenges using EJB patterns.
This book is intended for developers with at least some EJB development experience. With that in mind, you will not find recipes describing the basic construction rules of session and entity beans. We assume that you understand the concepts of enterprise development and the basics of EJB programming. The format used here specifically references problems and issues, avoiding the use of EJB keywords (a look through the table of contents will verify this). For example, rather than looking up ?design patterns,? look up the actual problem you are trying to solve (for example, ?improving network performance?). To maximize the usefulness of the book, the index includes both EJB keywords and problem-area keywords.
The recipes we?ve concocted are self-contained, referencing other recipes that are related to the solution. We wanted to create a book that you could pick up and start reading at any point. The recipes are short and concise so that you can read them on the subway, in your favorite coffee house, or whenever you find yourself with five minutes to spare.
A useful companion to this book is Bitter EJB, also from Manning, which details many antipatterns specific to EJB development. It offers a practical approach to design: how to become a better programmer by studying problems and solutions to the most important problems surrounding the technology.
Now that we have described and set this book up for you, we invite you to partake in our buffet of solutions. You may pick and choose from our nine chapters, or sample them all. Enjoy!