The Awesome Power of Java Beans

In the book, Rodrigues does a decent job of explaining Bean technology, detailing the code that makes a Bean a Bean, and explaining how to create Beans using several popular development environments. His example programs include a progress indicator, a file selector, and several more academic examples. The book includes a chapter by a guest author about ActiveX controls and the various means of making Beans interrelate with them.

This book's supporting Web site has a great deal of potential. On the Manning site, Rodrigues participates in the Beanie forum, in which he answers questions about Beans and his book. While not heavily visited, the site does feature some questions and answers that are intelligent and useful, if elementary. In addition to the forum, the site contains example files, errata, and an Adobe Acrobat copy of the book--everything you would expect to find on a companion CD-ROM, with the addition of author interactivity. --David Wall

There are numerous examples and Source code! Its kind of fun to assemble some of these beans but it can be hard if you don't have the now defunct program "Visual Age Web Runner" ..used by the author.. There are two ways to assemble beans: 1) manual and 2) cut and paste. BeanBox (Sun) and WebRunner use the easier cut and paste method while in JBuilder I had to do things manually.. but this is in a way good..since you really need to understands events and adapters to do this.

I was able to get most of the beans supplied in the book going and when I had problems the author was not far away..in his "Author Online Forum".. where he takes questions and comments and helps you work things out.

I have only been working in Java for about 1 year now, but I think this book and the sample programs/beans have moved me into the intermediate-level area.

I hope Rodrigues will update this book and perhaps write one on Enterprise Java Beans and server technology.


Absolutely, purely, 100% skippable   June 19, 2000
I wonder why I am editing this review after 2 years because the sales records of this book must have already spoken volumes by now, but I guess I dont want others to spend money on such absolutely disappointing 'material'. Which is what it is, it is certainly not a book. If you are looking for light-years worth of textual reading fodder on the exalted subject of Java Beans and Servlets technology (which are both presumably well established by now), this may be good bed-side reading. If on the other hand you want hands-on code samples with explanations of J2EE oriented concepts, forget this and get yourself a decent book like "Mastering Java Beans" or any of the Wrox titles on the subject. This was one of those useless quick-to-market type books that usually come out in a flurry to cash in on a new technology's hype. Hope this helps you spend your penny wisely.


Decent Book   May 11, 2000
 0 out of 14 found this review helpful

This book has lotsa stuff...