Rating:  - Good content... but a-whole-lotta-"shoulds"
The book provides a good, basic foundation for working with Jakarta Struts from 1.1 and on. From beginner to advanced developer you'll get a good overview of what Struts is, does and some little details about the inner workings that you will benefit from knowing. Clear, concise examples make it a wonderful intro and reference.
However... the downside to the book is that the author constantly talks about and goes too in-depth into the "shoulds" of development (i.e. separating business layer from presentation, MVC etc. etc. etc.). This is not a topic for the book and results in a lot of things that could have trimmed the book down (and the cost). There's just a whole lot that he didn't need to get into that made reading it a bit of a bore at times (since it's all standard stuff everyone already knows).
Great book... just be ready to skip a bunch of sections in it.
Rating:  - Not very good
i've just joined a new company using struts. i am a java programmer of more than 5 years but completely new to struts, this is the book i was given by my boss but i cant understand it. My main problem is that there are no good examples to follow as if the writter assumes you know struts already. In one word, disjointed.
Rating: - Not a tutorial - Don't buy if you want to learn struts
This book should not be viewed as a tutorial. If you know nothing about struts and you want to learn, do not buy this book. You will only confuse yourself.
It makes a great reference once you already know how to use struts, but you cannot learn struts from this book - at least how to code an app.
Simply put, the author does not write this as a tutorial. It does have a running example but it is not a learning book.
Rating:  - Thorough Review
The previous book I had on Struts did a poor job of... well, everything. It is called "The Struts Framework" and the main reason I bought it was because it was a manageable 150 pages long. (Am I the only one tired of several hundred page tech books?)
This bably logs in at around 400 pages and does a far better job of explaining what Struts is all about - both fundamentally and specifically. I read the first few introductory chapters and then just checked out the areas I was intrested in. The concepts were presented clearly and the corresponding examples weren't overly complex.
Probably the biggest downside to this book is that it covers Struts 1.1, and today Struts is at 1.2.9, which means 1.3 can't be far away. (Man, writing tech books and then keeping them up-to-date has got to be one tough job!)
Rating: - Convoluted and difficult to understand
Usually I consult Amazon for a book reference. This time I decided to buy this book simply because it's O'REILLY.
Well...I was wrong. While the author writes well and clear, I believe it was address to the wrong audience (for struts experts.) I found the examples to be very convoluted, and difficult to understand.
It also appears as if deadline pressures influenced the construction of this book. (but that's my assumption)
2 stars is best to reflect this book.
Guzman, Dror
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