This 900-page book is designed to take the plain Java developer to the next level of developing Web applications, using the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform. The authors make good use of their knowledge, and years of experience in developing industrial-strength software, to give readers an insightful look at this important and nontrivial topic. While the book introduces many of the technologies at a fairly simple level, many of the topics are fairly advanced, and are meant to give the reader a serious look at the development complexity of enterprise-level software. In addition to its introductory purpose, the book serves as a good reference for advanced programmers seeking to develop software on the Java platform. The topics covered include the advanced use of servlets (version 2.4), Java Server Pages (JSP) (version 2.0), the JSP standard tag library (JSTL), the entity and session forms of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Web services, all in the context of J2EE.

The book is divided into several major sections. The first section, consisting of the first two chapters, introduces many of the topics discussed in the book. The next section, chapters 3 through 7, is devoted to technologies dealing with the presentation layer of Web applications. Chapters 10 through 13 present a section on component development technology, including messaging and container management services. Chapters 14 and 15 cover XML processing and Web services. Finally, chapters 16 and 17 address the topics of packaging, deployment, and the management of applications.

The authors walk us through the installation of the J2EE software development kit. In chapter 1, they show us the steps for setting up the environment, and writing a simple application. The second chapter introduces several important elements of Web applications, including JSP, servlets, containers, and packaging Web applications. This chapter also examines various architectural issues that are encountered during the development of Web applications.

The authors devote five chapters, accounting for one-third of the book, to covering JSP and servlet related technologies. The topics are discussed in depth, covering many recent JSP and advanced servlet features, such as the SimpleTag interface and filters. The authors use design patterns, such as model/view/controller (MVC), to demonstrate many of the examples. Chapters 10 through 14, focused on EJB, are concise, but the coverage is not as extensive as for the previous topic. The authors do, however, provide examples of the use of entity and session beans, and messaging and container services. The chapters on processing XML documents and Java Web services provide a good introduction to two emerging and interesting technologies.

Overall, I found this book to be useful, readable, and enjoyable. It gives the novice programmer, as well as the advanced developer, an in-depth look at the J2EE platform. Readers at all levels will be able to relate to different parts of the book. The authors use a software architectural perspective throughout the book to present the major development issues in the design of enterprise software.