‘Javascript and DOM Scripting’ Book Review

Review of JavaScript and DOM Scripting by Edward Young

I’m an experienced software developer but unfamiliar with Javascript, and this book was an excellent way to learn through example. It’s also a pretty good reference for javascript and DOM scripting, plus has some good introductory info on XHTML and CSS. I’m also a software engineer who appreciates and relies on good software tooling to help make code projects comprehensible, and manageable. The chapter on how to test and debug Javascript, showed how to install and set up firebug, and then how to use it to examine, execute and debug javascript applications. That chapter alone is worth the price.

This book is both a good how to manual (Nearly all the chapters start with “How to”), but is a great reference, with a 1 page brief contents and then a 10 page detailed table of contents.

This book is also not only a book on learning Javascript and DOM scripting, but also ensures that the reader learns the vital peripheral technologies alike XTHML and CSS, by taking the reader through the development of several interesting and useful applications over it’s 20 chapters.

This is my second Murach book and is also excellent. I highly recommend it.

‘Java Servlets & JSP’ Book Review

Review of Java Servlets and JSP by David Madouros

I’m torn after reading Murach’s Java Servlets & JSP book, 2nd Ed. I read the first version when I was making the transition from mainframe programming to Java programming and found the information to be extremely helpful for getting up and running very quickly. With the authors’ assistance I had a database server, a servlet container, and a ‘hello world’ web app running within a couple of hours. On the other hand, reading the second edition as an experienced Java developer made me cringe. Ultimately, I have to side with the my experienced side. Especially when I consider how well the format of Murach books tends to make them canonical references and how easy it would have been for the authors to teach better practices.

The cover of the book makes at least three claims:

• Get off to a quick start
• Build professional web sites
• Handle databases like a pro

Get Off to a Quick Start
The authors get off to a great start by helping the reader to download, install, some basic tools including a servlet container, a database server, and an IDE. They guide the reader with step by step instructions for installing both Tomcat and MySQL — bonus points for recommending the latest versions of each. However, I’m stumped by their choice of IDE — NetBeans — and their claims that it is a top notch IDE. Technically, I suppose it is third, but in my experience it’s a distant third well behind Eclipse and IntelliJ.
Build Professional Web Sites
I take issue with much of the material presented in the book and how it lends itself to creating ‘professional’ web sites. For starters, the authors provide an excellent introduction to HTML. Too bad XHTML is the current standard. The authors state that they’d rather discuss HTML than XHTML because they feel that XHTML is too difficult to teach in a single chapter. I thought this was ridiculous, but assumed they would at least promote well-formed HTML — boy, was I wrong. They consistently use of malformed HTML in their examples and go as far as mentioning the lack of unquoted attributes as a good thing! This is bad, but it gets worse because a couple of chapters later they have to discuss well-formed HTML before they can teach the reader how to use JSTL.
The authors discuss both JSP and Servlet technologies in separate chapters and demonstrate how to create ‘complete’ websites with each technology. I suppose this is necessary to teach the underlying technologies, but I wish that the authors had down played their use a little more. They do eventually discuss MVC (model 2) and state that it is a better solution, but they take the easy way out by saying that sometimes straight JSP and straight Servlet implementations are except- able.
My final grumble about creating professional websites has to do with the chapter on custom tags. While using the classic tag mechanism was a pleasure (not!), the simple tag mechanism is exactly what it claims to be — simpler — and much more straight forward. However, the authors only mention the classic mechanism — no mention of SimpleTagSupport and no mention of tag files. Long live SKIP_BODY!
Now for the good stuff… My favorite chapter in the entire book has to be chapter 9 because they give a high-level summary of JavaBeans and JSP tags stating that they are outdated and rarely used anymore — replaced by JSTL. The only reason the authors even mention them is that the reader may need to know about them to support legacy applications. I wish the rest of the book gave more of these disclaimers.
Finally, the authors really do a good job of describing the technologies. I just wish that they’d promote best practices and shun bad ones more often.

Handle Databases Like a Pro
The authors give a good overview of SQL and then move on to coding straight JDBC code. However, they choose to close the connection inside of the try block rather than follow the best practice of closing the connection in the finally block. Also, they mention the differences between Statement and PreparedStatement and seem to lean towards Statement unless there is a need to execute the same statement repeatedly, but throughout the entire discussion there is no mention of cross site scripting prevention as one of the benefits of the PreparedStatement (not that PreparedStatement completely eliminates the threat of XSS, but it greatly reduces it).

Summary
In summary, this book is a disappointment. The subject of web development involves many technologies: CSS, HTML/XHTML, Java, Servlets, JSP, JSTL, EL, SQL, Http, and Javascript; and this doesn’t include the various frameworks (Struts, JSF, Spring, Hibernate, GWT, etc.) The authors make a valiant effort to cover all the base technologies, but there’s just too much to cover in a single book and be able to make the claim that the reader will have all the skills necessary to create professional websites. This book barely manages to cover the basics. I give the authors an A for effort, but a D for execution. Having said that, if you don’t understand any of the technologies (other than Java) and read the book with the understanding that this is just the beginning, this might be the book for you.

‘Modular Java’ Book Review

Review of Modular Java by Johnny Wey

“Modular Java: Creating Flexible Applications with OSGi and Spring” provides a great introduction to those either curious about OSGi or wanting to get more out of their existing OSGi workflow using the Spring Framework. Craig Walls, author of “Spring in Action, 2nd Edition”, opens the book explaining why OSGi matters and how it can be used to enhance the modularity and maintainability of those application stacks containing multiple and complex moving parts. He not only serves up a great introduction to the technology, but also directs the reader to several tools that make OSGi development significantly easier.

In the second portion of the book, Craig throws Spring into the mix and demonstrates how the power of Spring Dependency Injection, autowiring, and the Spring MVC web framework can not only run seamlessly in an OSGi container, but also remove a large portion of the burden that OSGi’s API can put on application development.

Finally, Craig spends some time describing how an actual deployment might look in a production environment using both Tomcat and Jetty and provides optimization tips that make the process as painless as possible.

The book itself is logically organized and Craig’s writing style is approachable and easy to follow. All the example source code is available online, and Craig demonstrates how to install OSGi packages using both Eclipse Equinox and Apache Felix, leaving the final OSGi container decision up to the preference and requirements of the project. The sample application Craig uses to demonstrate the concepts in the book is surprisingly fun and useful, and the book contains some wonderful appendices that function as a great reference for current and future development projects. The book is a relatively quick read but surprisingly complete.

For someone looking to get the most out of OSGi or wanting to find out what all the “buzz” is about, Craig Walls’ book is an outstanding choice.