Websphere Application Server Bible

This book is an excellent resource for WebSphere administrators and WebSphere developers. In fact, I have attended instructor-led courses by several major system providers and this book taught me more about J2EE programming than either provider. Examples and a complete application are available for download and they're in .jar .ear format which makes importing and running in WSAD much easier than generic texts. The target audience is somewhere between beginner and intermediate student. The language and detail level is effective for Java students. You won't need a dictionary of OO terms to follow the author's explanation and purpose of components.

Complete, detailed, easy to read and understand, this book should be shipped with every copy of Websphere Server. The best money I've spent on a technical book in years. If you are developing applications with Websphere, you should own a copy of this book. It clearly explains how to exploit J2EE technologies in your application architecture, as well as how to take advantage of the features of Websphere Server. Invaluable as a learning guide or as a reference.

I liked this book because it was what you needed to know - nothing more. It had practical examples and "how-to's" to get you from the development/coding to deployment. The most useful part (to me anyways) was the gotcha's that I normally spend hours trying to figure out - particularly with IBM products ;) Good book if you want to know the entire lifecycle if WebSphere.

Our company has just purchased WAS to replace our existing application server. We have grown to the point where we want to get an application server that will scale well(and be supported well). I found that this book covers the install and administration tasks quite well. That's really what I needed from this book. I have also gone through some of the development sections and like the code examples that are supplied. This book does have a lot of information about using the IBM Toolset in conjuction with WAS(which we have not purchased), but I was able to follow the examples just the same. It does seem like the WebSphere Studio(WSAD) tool would work well with WAS(I guess they should), but I was able to use my UltraEdit and javac just fine. I would recommend this book to people who need to learn WAS 4 administration or learn how to develop and implement software on it for the real world. I have found it to fulfill all my WAS needs.

I enjoyed learning from this book. It explained things to me in a concise and easy to follow manner. I was able to gain an understanding of how WebSphere works - the big picture, and my application server was up and running relatively quickly. The sharing of tips and tricks is something you just can't gain from a manual!