Rating:  - Could have been better
The workbook is great and what can I say, JBoss is great. I've never implemented Entity Beans in any project so after performing the exercises on how to integrate them into JBoss, I see what a piece of crap this is, but this is not the authors fault. O/R has them by you know what and specifications need to change to include them. Wait, its coming in EJB 3.0. Can't Wait to see it.
I dont understand one thing, and thats my ding for this book, and that it took the author 4 chapters to explain Entity Beans, to be re-implemented (Make your life and our lives easier - look at Hibernate) out in next release of EJB 3.0 specifications. And do a rush job on explaining J2EE Services ( Sessions as Endpoints ). To me, it should have been reversed.
Also, as indicated by the author, what a piece of crap the Timer Service is. Its like as if we needed another reason to crash the server.
Chapt. 16 Transactions was very interesting and I was intrigued by it. I would have dinged this book to 3 star rating, but his coverage on JMS ( Hurray to the Unified API ) and Transactions earned him the 4 star rating.
Also, it would have been nice to see versions of this book along with workbooks for other servers such as Weblogic or Websphere. That way, one can choose which version to pick up. As you know, just because you know how to do it in one server, means nothing to a stupid hiring firm, if you have not used the same in their server.
Rating:  - Excellent book!
I spent a few weeks trying to find something to use to improve my EJB knowledge. The books I found usually spent too much time on using the J2EE reference implementation and spent too little time on EJBs, or else were for the wrong EJB specification. This book was exactly what I was looking for.
O'Reilly again hits the nail right on the head!
Rating: - Check out the JBoss workbook
[A REVIEW OF THE FOURTH EDITION]
Each edition of this book seems to grow visibly thicker. Perhaps indicative of the still increasing functionality being put into EJBs. The book covers what is currently the latest version, EJB 2.1. Plus also EJB 2.0.
Comprehensive. Detailed explanations of Container Managed Persistence and Bean Managed Persistence. Plus how to use Message-Driven Beans and JMS to help put together a loosely coupled distributed system. MDBs and JMS did not exist in the original EJBs. But a clear sense of the need for such emerged soon after, and MDB and JMS were the results.
With the flurry of interest on Web Services, we see how EJB 2.1 is compatible with these proposed standards. In future editions, this section may well be heavily expanded. Right now, Web Services are still nascent and more experience is needed with fleshing out optimal standards.
Kudos to the authors for including a lengthy section showing how to use JBoss. It is a free application server that supports most EJB 2.1 features. Its zero cost and advanced functionality will appeal to many programmers on a tight budget. This section walks you through combining JBoss with EJBs.
Rating:  - Horribly Writen, useless information
I buy discount software books whenever I can, and I picked this up for 8 or 9 bucks somewhere. Man, what a waste. I learned more about EJB from SUN's website and from reading on the internet. The examples were useless, and the chapters were disjointed.
Rating: - great!!!
This book was my first exposure to EJB/J2EE and I have found it to be very helpfull. I have read it from cover to cover and I am about to use the knowledge I obtained to rewrite our existing thick client to a JBoss client/server.
I strongly recommend this book.
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