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	Saturday, August 16, 2003

Mini-Review of Bitter EJB This post (and this weblog) has a new home. Thanks to CrazyBob, I received my copy of Bitter EJB before it hit the bookstore shelves. (As far as I can tell, I'm the Paul Brown who got a thank-you in the introduction, since I assume that it's neither the hair care products nor the football coach; now I just have to figure out why...) Thanks to my schedule, I just got around to finishing it, so I can write a review. (I acquired a fondness for How-Not-To exposition from my PhD advisor, e.g., a classic paper on the PoincarÈ Conjecture.) How-Not-To books serve as an analog to the communal knowledgebase that early cultures must have maintained of the local berries that were poisonous or emetic, bad-tempered animals, and medicinal herbs. (Nonetheless, it's usually a nasty case of indigestion that is the best teacher.) Living off the land also requires knowing what to eat, since starvation is equally deadly, and this is the pitfall that presents itself to authors of anti-pattern or Bitter X books. Fortunately for all involved, Bitter EJB does a good job of balancing warnings with advice. The perception that J2EE and EJB are synonymous is damaging to both, as is the related belief that using EJB is a required piece of using an application server. The biggest service that Bitter EJB performs is providing concrete criteria for would-be EJB users as to when the technology is appropriate and when it is inappropriate, how to use it and how not to use it. Bitter EJB is definitely a worthwhile read for current and potential EJB users. 3:01:19 PM