Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework

Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework Paperback: 672 pages Publisher: Wrox (July 8, 2005) Language: English ISBN-10: 0764574833 ISBN-13: 978-0764574832 Reviewed by Jonatan Alava

Spring good, J2EE bad.

Before I got my slow hands on this book I had already read about the advantages of Spring on the springframework.org site; I had also worked with it a little.  Still it seems that I had missed point.  Spring is better than J2EE alone, seriously better.  At least that seems to be the main message the authors try to get across when introducing Spring in chapter 1.

Aside from my complaints from the first chapter, this book provides you with all you need to know about Spring 1.2 and how to apply it in your projects.  Not only does the book show you how to apply Spring, it explains what the idea behind it is as well as provides opinions on approaches and practices (e.g. Setter injection vs. Constructor Injection in chapter 3) Chapters on specifics such as AOP, Lightweight Containers, Spring MVC and JDBC/Persistence provide an instructive read.

This book works well as a reference since information is straightforward and clearly presented.  Just consider that having another big textbook on your desk can never be a bad thing.

Overall I would recommend this book to anyone that’s looking for a comprehensive Spring guide and a useful reference guide.  In fact, I think anyone who is currently working with J2EE should get this book (or log on to springframework.org) and see all the fun that they might be missing.