Component Development for the Java? Platform

I had already been teaching some of this book's material, from notes I had put together. Then I found this book - it covers more material, and does it beautifully. I give the book my highest recommendation.This covers component software from the standpoint that I prefer: the underlying technology that make components work. This book is not for the cut & paste programmer. It's for someone who wants to understand what really happens when a program (or component) starts execution. It's for someone who wants real control over code activation, or someone who just wants to execute every test() method in every class, without having to type in the ever-changing list of class names.This book also has a place in any library on code security. For example, reflection exposes a lot more of your program than you may have thought, and serialization creates a whole new family of possible data exposures. Security is not an explicit topic, but lots of the material has security implications.The only major topic this book misses is long-term (XML)serialization. Well, that's new at Java 1.4, and the book seems to predate that API. Maybe the second edition will cover it better. The book doesn't mention EJB styles of serialization or the Java Activcation Framework either, but those are just applications of the basic technologies described here.There was good reason for this book to be written about Java. I look forward to a .NET companion volume, when (if!) .NET provides the same capabilities. In the mean time, I'd recommend this to any advanced programmer, since analogies to Java will help readers understand environments other than Java, too.

It heleps to have a problem to solve in order to recognize an elegant solution. Stu Halloway's book is exceptionally well-wriiten and an informative read. His examples clearly support the issue at hand. Three such issues of importance to me include Dynamic Proxies (Section 3.4); Custom Metadata (Section 3.7) and Generative Programming (Chapter 7).In the Dynamic Proxies section, he writes: "The strength of dynamic proxies is method call forwarding." [p. 87] Such succinct expression brings clarity to the discussion at hand, exemplifying the author's firm grasp of the subject.His Custom Metadata section illustrates pragmatic guidelines for implemenation of new-found insight: "Standard java compilers will not emit your custom attributes, and the Reflection API provides no support for accessing them. If you want to define and use custom attributes, a custom class loader that tracks the attributes as classes are loaded, and extensions to reflection that can access these attributes at runtime." [p. 101]Chapter 7 (GP), has been my focus. I appreciated his thorough comparison of parametric and inheritance issues in light of Czarnecki et al., Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications (p.176) wrt their emphasis on parametric polymorphism.Indispensable stuff.

I bought this book for my department (well, my company bought it - I ordered it ;) ) to help us with the deployment problems we'd been having. These were normal issues, of making sure all files are in the right place, that environment variables were set correctly, etc. We always solved them, but it usually took a whole day to install something and make sure it was all working correctly. Enter Mr. Halloway's book.While most Java books tell you how to write "this" or make an algorithm to do "that", Mr. Halloway's book tells you how to take almost no extra time and make those programs garaunteed to work in any installation environment. It's more than just changing your mindset, the book gives you very clear examples of how to make your application easily deployed and dynamic. For example, in chapter 2 you learn how to easily create an application that can continue running and update its classes to your new version.The best section in the book, I think, is the section on ClassLoaders - which I garauntee will be your best friend after reading this book. Before reading the book, I almost never dealt with the ClassLoader. Now I use it all the time to: 1. Create dynamically updated classes 2. Manage security features not built in 3. Allow for easy deployment without needing knowledge of the file system structurePerhaps most valuable of all is Mr. Halloway himself. ..., he has been more than willing to help me understand any parts of his book that were confusing to me. To me, that was the most valuable return on my purchase. Other resources to check out after reading this book:1. AVALON FRAMEWORK This is from Apache.org and it's a good framework for easy configuration which continues in the same vein as this book. http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/2. Stuart Halloway's Ideas for a Configuration API ... Definitely worth checking out, it will give you some great ideas.

This book is invaluable to EJB container developers, and to Java architects who pay attention to various issues of software deployment. For example, what are the alternatives of object serialization when a class was not designed with serialization in mind? The book provides some hints.The level of details that the author provides is admirable. The author not only introduces the ideal models, but also faithfully presents the reality of using these models.I certainly lookforward to the second edition of the book.

This is a great book for any intermediate to advanced Java developers who wishes to go beyond rudimentary Java techniques present in so many Java books on the market. This is the "THE" book that give such an excellent details about Java classloaders besides Bill Venners's "Inside Java 2 VM" book. I should know from writing a paper on classloaders and find that most books deal very "cursory" with the subject matter. I suspect that most authors probably have little knowledge or experience about classloaders. Since Classloaders is so fundamental to locating and loading bytecode by the JVM at runtime and it's important for key technologies like RMI, hot EJB delpoyment, security of mobile network code and most importantly server side programming, this book is indispensable. The other thing I find useful with this book is object serialization and bytecode generation which is important for dynamic proxies.Any Advanced Java developers must be conversant with classloaders,class search rules,serialization, bytecodes, JNI and more.This is the book to get to go beyond rudimentary Java development and deployment.