Java 6 Platform Revealed

This is a good high level look at the new features in Java 6. The page count is low enough at 220 to read through from beginning to end and get a good feel for what is new. This is not a deep bible type book though. You will need other references or dig in code experiments yourself. The JDBC 4.0 material for example is only 11 pages. The low page count is made that much the odder by the inclusion of some truly useless material: each chapter starts with two tables detailing the differences in number of classes, interfaces, enums, etc between Java 5 and 6. Really? Who cares that there was 8 interfaces in lang 5.0 and... 8 interfaces in lang 6.0? Still, this book should be read by developers wanting to take advantage of what Java 6 has to offer.

You'll love this book if you are already a pro up through the current Java release and don't want to - once again - wade through Gary Cornell's excellent but complete treatise on the Java language just to figure out what is new to the language in Java 6. You'll hate this book if you want to learn Java for the first time, starting with Java 6, and decide to start with this book. Zukowski assumes you know the current state of all of the APIs he is talking about and just want to know what is new. He does an excellent job explaining what has changed and shores up his explanations with non-trivial examples. I highly recommend it to current Java programmers. If you are not already a Java programmer, wait for Horstmann and Cornell's "Core Java, Volume I-Fundamentals (8th Edition)" to be released in September and learn Java 6 and Java programming the right way and from scratch.

O'Reilly has a a "Developer's Notebook" series that I love. This book is very similar however, the writing style, examples, and editing is much cleaner. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a book that describes the new features and changes to the Java language version 6. The author writes in a why that I was able to read the book cover/cover without falling asleep. I learned a lot about he new version, what libraries to look for changes, and how major the changes are. My plan is to look for other titles by John Zukowski.

This is a very first introduction to the upcoming Java 6 Standard Edition (Mustang). The book is based on the Java 6 Drop 84/85 as of May 2006 (see page xvi) and is somewhat aware of drop 88 (see page 114). Reading it saves you the work of wading yourself through the new API and make your own comparisons. John Zukowski's Java 6 is well organized and written in a very comprehensible style. The author's long track record of Java books clearly shows. Each chapter summarizes the changes/additions to the api by counting the relevant interfaces, classes, enums and throwables on a per package basis. Seven out of the ten chapters treat the new features in a self contained and sufficiently complete introduction. The three exceptions are XML related technologies and here especially web services. They moved into the standard Java distribution. These are technologies that need a many hundred pages introduction - so be prepared to find here only hints and not a complete treatment. This is perfectly fined since such books exist already. On the other hand Java annotations are around since Java 5 SE. Here John Zukowski explicity repeats the achievements of the previous version and contrasts the new additions to it. In summary I can wholeheartedly recommend this book as a quick start into the upcoming standard Java edition.

The book is very well written and is laid out in an intuitive fashion. The organization and presentation of the new and expanded features of Java SE 6 made the information very easy to absorb and work with.