In his book, Neward provides a comprehensive set of tips that will help Java developers focus on several aspects of Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development, at the system and architectural level. This is not a typical Java book, in the sense that its goal is not to teach Java development practices, but to propose solutions to challenging programming problems. As a result, the targeted audience is expected to have a minimum knowledge of Java programming.

Neward identifies areas that developers often come across when starting to code enterprise Java applications, and provides ways to get around them, in the form of patterns. Topics covered include architecture, communication, processing, state management, presentation, security, and system. The author proposes ways to build rich, complex systems without sacrificing performance or implementing common algorithms or data structures from scratch. Of particular interest are the sections referring to state management, security, and object serialization issues.

Overall, this book, although well structured and written, is not the kind of book that someone reads from cover to cover. It serves better as a reference book, providing workarounds to common problems faced during enterprise application design and development.