Rating:  - too heavy to carry around
"The Java EE 5 Tutorial" is the official tutorial covering all the Java EE technologies.
"As part of Sun's 'The Java Series' this book has the same content as you can find online. Why buy a book you can get for free? Convenience!! You can take it anywhere and read it anytime." - Dave Vick - JavaRanch Review of the J2EE 1.4 version of this book. They eliminated the best part of a hardcopy! At 1300 pages, The Java EE 5 book is too heavy to carry around conveniently. (the 1.4 edition was less than 600 pages) I think it is time to split this book into two volumes. Maybe right after the 500 pages on the front end.
Other things I disliked:
It wasn't clear what was new in Java EE 5.
As in past editions, it reads better online than printed.
There are extensive forward references and lots of repetition. For example, chapter 16 repeats the six steps to open a NetBeans project 12 times!
Many examples didn't explain how/why to do something - like whether to call a web service directly from a JSP.
Most examples used Java 5 syntax inconsistently. It looked like Sun recommends using generics for collections, but precious little else from Java 5.
There were good diagrams and charts and good case studies along with several excellent chapters. Overall, I would say to read the pieces you are interested in online and spend your money on a different book.
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