Review of Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) (Paperback)

Portals are becoming more popular as companies are looking for a single web-based entry point into their various applications.Java provides a standard portal model with JSR 168.This book is a thorough introduction into JSR 168 that will help get portal developers up to speed into this relatively new specification.

The book starts with an excellent introduction into developing portlets.The first seven chapters cover all the details of developing portlets.Response and request objects are covered in detail.The portlet life cycle is clearly explained.Deployment descriptors are discussed. Integrating with Servlets and JSPs is described.The remainder of the book covers more advanced topics.Anyone working with a portal knows the problems with providing single sign-on to multiple applications.The authors discuss this issue giving several examples.The authors cover syndication, searching, personalization, web services, content management, and more.

My only complaint with the book is that it uses the Apache Pluto portal, which is not in final release yet.Pluto is an open source portal but it is complicated to distribute content to it (you are forced to use Maven).When the book explains how to distribute portlets to Pluto it gets a little confusing because the authors need to explain multiple configuration files, some of which are exclusive to Pluto.Other than this one problem, the book gives a solid introduction to developing a portal providing detailed information of both the basics and many advanced concepts.Clearly the authors understand portal development and know how to pass that information on to their readers.

Product Description
This book is a thorough introduction into JSR 168 that will help get portal developers up to speed into this relatively new specification.</a></p></blockquote><p id="quoteAuthor">- Thomas Paul, JavaRanch Sheriff</p></div>

<p>How do developers bring existing applications into a portal? How do developers integrate content management systems and search engines with a portal? And how do developers get started with the Portlet API? Jeff Linwood and Dave Minter show you how to solve these real problems in <i>Building Portals with the Java Portlet API</i>. </p>

<p>This book describes the new Java portlet API, including security, portlet life cycles, and portlet interaction with servlets and JSP. The examples will work on any portal that complies with the JSR-168 portlet API. Several example portlets are developed to give you hands-on portlet experience. You'll even learn how to port existing servlet and JSP applications into a new portal environment.</p>

<p>The authors also discuss Single Sign-On (SSO) using Kerberos and the GSS-API, syndicating content with RSS, and integrating a charting solution with JFreeChart. Other topics covered are the open-source Apache Jakarta Lucene search engine, personalization, portlet configuration, portlet preferences, and Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP). XDoclet is also used throughout portions of this book.</p>

About the Author
Jeff Linwood has been involved in software programming since he had a 286 in high school. He got caught up with the Internet when he got access to a UNIX shell account, and it has been downhill ever since. Jeff has published articles on several Jakarta Apache open source projects in <i>Dr. Dobb's Journal</i>, CNET's Builder.com, and <i>JavaWorld</i>. Jeff has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He currently works for the Gossamer Group in Austin, Texas, on content management and web application syndication systems. He gets to play with all the latest open source projects there.Dave Minter has adored computers since he was small enough to play in the boxes they came in. He built his first PC from discarded, faulty, and obsolete components, and considers that to be the foundation of his career as an integration consultant. Dave is based in London, where he helps large and small companies build systems that "just work.

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Review of Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) (Paperback)

Portals are becoming more popular as companies are looking for a single web-based entry point into their various applications.Java provides a standard portal model with JSR 168.This book is a thorough introduction into JSR 168 that will help get portal developers up to speed into this relatively new specification.

The book starts with an excellent introduction into developing portlets.The first seven chapters cover all the details of developing portlets.Response and request objects are covered in detail.The portlet life cycle is clearly explained.Deployment descriptors are discussed. Integrating with Servlets and JSPs is described.The remainder of the book covers more advanced topics.Anyone working with a portal knows the problems with providing single sign-on to multiple applications.The authors discuss this issue giving several examples.The authors cover syndication, searching, personalization, web services, content management, and more.

My only complaint with the book is that it uses the Apache Pluto portal, which is not in final release yet.Pluto is an open source portal but it is complicated to distribute content to it (you are forced to use Maven).When the book explains how to distribute portlets to Pluto it gets a little confusing because the authors need to explain multiple configuration files, some of which are exclusive to Pluto.Other than this one problem, the book gives a solid introduction to developing a portal providing detailed information of both the basics and many advanced concepts.Clearly the authors understand portal development and know how to pass that information on to their readers.

Product Description
This book is a thorough introduction into JSR 168 that will help get portal developers up to speed into this relatively new specification.</a></p></blockquote><p id="quoteAuthor">- Thomas Paul, JavaRanch Sheriff</p></div>

<p>How do developers bring existing applications into a portal? How do developers integrate content management systems and search engines with a portal? And how do developers get started with the Portlet API? Jeff Linwood and Dave Minter show you how to solve these real problems in <i>Building Portals with the Java Portlet API</i>. </p>

<p>This book describes the new Java portlet API, including security, portlet life cycles, and portlet interaction with servlets and JSP. The examples will work on any portal that complies with the JSR-168 portlet API. Several example portlets are developed to give you hands-on portlet experience. You'll even learn how to port existing servlet and JSP applications into a new portal environment.</p>

<p>The authors also discuss Single Sign-On (SSO) using Kerberos and the GSS-API, syndicating content with RSS, and integrating a charting solution with JFreeChart. Other topics covered are the open-source Apache Jakarta Lucene search engine, personalization, portlet configuration, portlet preferences, and Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP). XDoclet is also used throughout portions of this book.</p>

About the Author
Jeff Linwood has been involved in software programming since he had a 286 in high school. He got caught up with the Internet when he got access to a UNIX shell account, and it has been downhill ever since. Jeff has published articles on several Jakarta Apache open source projects in <i>Dr. Dobb's Journal</i>, CNET's Builder.com, and <i>JavaWorld</i>. Jeff has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He currently works for the Gossamer Group in Austin, Texas, on content management and web application syndication systems. He gets to play with all the latest open source projects there.Dave Minter has adored computers since he was small enough to play in the boxes they came in. He built his first PC from discarded, faulty, and obsolete components, and considers that to be the foundation of his career as an integration consultant. Dave is based in London, where he helps large and small companies build systems that "just work.

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Review of Power SAS: A Survival Guide (Hardcover)

This is without a doubt the lousiest, laziest, most poorly-written book I have ever tried to use on SAS. It only left me more confused.

The approach is a "survey" approach, ie, presented as a summary of the possible commands you can use, without an explanation of syntax, structure or programming ideas. This is clearly meant for computer programmers looking to pick up a little bit of info on SAS. Serious analysts will find nothing but chapter after chapter of mutant schlock-dribble.

Product Description
<p><i>Power SAS: A Survival Guide</i> is designed to provide the millions of SAS users with the largest and most comprehensive collection of SAS tips and techniques ever offered. Kirk Lafler is an Internet and software consultant with 25 years of experience providing clients around the world with innovative technical solutions and training. Kirk's tips will help you leverage features of SAS that even the most experienced SAS users may not know. </p><p>Whether you read it cover to cover, browse through it in your free time, or use it as a reference by looking up pertinent tips, this book is an invaluable self-help resource for working smarter, and for troubleshooting and resolving SAS problems and errors. The book's organization makes it easy for SAS users of all experience levels&emdash;programmers, statisticians, database programmers and administrators, technical managers, technical support staff, and students&emdash;to find what they need. The nine chapters cover SAS basics, data access, data step programming, data manipulation, data management, data presentation, efficiency and performance, configuration and support, and SAS 9.</p>

About the Author
Kirk Paul Lafler has worked as a software consultant for the last 25 years. As founder of Software Intelligence Corporation in 1983, Kirk provides IT services provider to Fortune 1000 companies and government installations by designing and developing application software solutions, and providing comprehensive training and custom-programming services. Since 1983, Kirk has provided consulting services and training to Fortune 1000 companies and government installations, lending his expertise in application design and development, training, and custom programming services. Kirk has written four books and more than one hundred articles on technology and software. He's also a frequent speaker at SAS and Oracle user group conferences and events. Kirk graduated from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in management science systems analysis. He can be reached at <a href = "mailto:KirkLafler@cs.com">KirkLafler@cs.

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Review of COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET: A Guide for the Reformed Mainframe Programmer (Paperback)

I bought "COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET" in order to learn VB.NET, but ended up receiving formal training through my employer before completing this 1,000 page book.Nevertheless, I constantly find myself referring to various chapters whenever my old COBOL brain has trouble understanding .NET and object oriented concepts.
Mr. Richardson's clear writing (despite his well-intentioned attempts at humor) and numerous examples make me very glad that I made the purchase.As long as COBOL and .NET exist, this book is a must-have for programmers like me. Speaking of existence, I bet that COBOL will be with us long after Mr. Gates pulls the plug on .NET.
If you are or have been a mainframe programmer and whether or not you know anything about .NET, you will be hard pressed to find a book as useful as this or one that is so well written.

Product Description
<p><i>COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET</i> is a comprehensive guide to help mainframe programmers successfully complete a .NET retraining effort. This book is intended for the COBOL/CICS mainframe community of programmers making the transition from the mainframe to .NET, and also for those who simply wish to broaden their .NET knowledge base.

<p>Starting with a complete set of .NET retraining prerequisites and a full chapter answering the question "What is .NET?" Richardson skillfully takes you through such essential topics as the .NET Framework, database access, Windows, the Web, and web services. Additional topics include printing with Crystal Reports, using XML and HTML, .NET configuration, and security for Web services.

<p>Richardson also includes information to help the mainframe programmer with infrastructure setup issues, often faced when deploying modules using Internet Information Server and COM+. He provides you with the tools to learn both COBOL.NET and Visual Basic .NET, illustrated by extensive code samples in the book.

<p>Drawing upon many legacy mainframe analogies, Richardson's conversational writing style makes this book both informative and an enjoyable read.<i>COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET: A Guide for the Reformed Mainframe Programmer</i> is a complete and definitive .NET guide for the mainframe programmer.

About the Author
Chris L. Richardson is a senior software engineer on a .NET web development project at a Fortune 500 company. Before making the transition to Windows and web programming, he held senior programmer/analyst positions on the mainframe platform. For the majority of his 20+ years in the information technology field, he has developed using COBOL, CICS, and DB2. Chris proudly reminds people of his mainframe background and jokingly refers to himself as a "reformed mainframe programmer." He divides his leisure time between entrepreneurial endeavors (such as his recent startup, California-based eClectic Software Solutions) and studying for his next Microsoft Certification exam.

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Review of Software Development on a Leash (Expert's Voice) (Paperback)

I have mixed feelings about this book. The main idea of it (as far as I understand) is achieving high degree of reuse by separating the software from its concrete application and expressing this application in "structural and behavioral metadata". Moreover, in your application, you must get rid of any dependecties on things that you do not control by wrapping it in your software layer and exposing it to the application as very abstract ("metamorphic") object model. The author provides some interesting examples for this and presents the basic building blocks of a software framework built around these ideas. As much as it might sound compelling this concept is not really new. What is worse is that methods and advice presented in the book are sometimes simply wrong or often have serious drawbacks which the author doesn't talk about.

For example the author really hates strong typing and recommends reducing the interface of _all_ your classes to just 3 members: "Item", "Ref" and "Action". This is bizarre. The view of strong typing as an enemy of the programmer is completely wrong; it was actually introduced to help control side-effects of changes to class interfaces. Another example is the virtual database layer the author proposes: while it is true that it lets the programmer switch the underlying database engine very easily it is based on relatively low-level SQL concepts and suffers from the least common denominator syndrome. I would say that for many, if not most, application a better way is to design a higher-level database abstraction layer that takes advantage of the engine capabilities. Usually it is not much more code and the performance difference might be enormous.

Finally there is the cost aspect. You cannot really adopt the method partially; either you are in or out. And you must really have almost unlimited resources to develop this kind of framework yourself. Which makes you think that it would be reasonable to get the framework developed by the author already. Which is just what the author wants and which is strongly reinforced with the last chapter of the book that literally sounds like a Ginzu knife sales pitch. Is it worth it? You have to decide yourself. For me the extreme programming advice: "Always build the simplest thing that works" has worked very well so far...

Product Description
<p><i>Software Development on a Leash</i> is designed as a roadmap for experienced developers and architects who are interested in implementing a turbocharged software development process that encourages reuse and innovation. Author David Birmingham's products have been successfully deployed in a variety of venues, including highly complex desktop environments, with rapid turnaround and high-intensity delivery deadlines.</p><p>This book contrasts the application-centric development approach to the architecture-centric development approach, introducing the concept of the <i>metamorphic superpattern</i>&emdash;the capability of a software program to dynamically adapt to changing application requirements without rebuilding the binary executable.</p><p>Birmingham invites the reader to deploy reusable structural and behavioral building blocks, along with some powerful frameworks to gain immediate traction in any setting. He includes a high-speed multidimensional toolkit to organize and deploy the building blocks, essentially weaving the application together at run-time rather than being hard-wired in program code.</p><p>Birmingham then ties the building blocks together with structural and behavioral metadata, allowing simple, interpreted macros to drive everything from database access, screen layouts, and many aspects of software development normally embedded directly into the software program&emdash;and reused! The rapid deployment effect this creates allows developers to perform simple surgical application changes or rapid, sweeping rework/enhancement&emdash;without changing compiled software.</p>

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Review of Software Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code (Expert's Voice) (Hardcover)

Software Exorcism is a mind-dump by an experienced maintenance programmer. Bill Blunden lists all the horrendous coding techniques he's come across in commercial software, while offering detailed tips on debugging and optimizing code. The very useful code examples are written in C++, C or assembly language, mostly on an Intel platform.

The aim of the book is to help computer science and engineering students jump the chasm to corporate life by giving them the real-life vocabulary and practices that they can expect to meet over the first few years of their professional life. Much of what they will learn is to forget most of what they've been taught in college -- from terse variable names to an infatuation with recursive routines.

Amongst the challenges that Blunden expands upon are the realities of corporate and office politics. Here are all the gory details of the name-and-blame game, information hiding and "Sysyphean" tasks aimed at pressuring people to quit.

Ultimately, Blunden concludes, software engineering, as a career path, has become a "quaint anachronism" and programming is "strictly a short-term occupation". If he's right, then it's a pity that this book probably won't be seen by most CS students until they're ready to graduate after paying all that tuition.

Also recommended: Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass

Product Description
<b>YOU HAVE TO OWN THIS BOOK!</b><p><p><i>Software Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code</i> takes an unflinching, no bulls$&# look at behavioral problems in the software engineering industry, shedding much-needed light on the social forces that make it difficult for programmers to do their job. Do you have a co-worker who perpetually writes bad code that <i>you</i> are forced to clean up? This is your book. While there are plenty of books on the market that cover debugging and short-term workarounds for bad code, Reverend Bill Blunden takes a revolutionary step beyond them by bringing our attention to the underlying illnesses that plague the software industry as a whole.<p>Further, <i>Software Exorcism</i> discusses tools and techniques for effective and aggressive debugging, gives optimization strategies that appeal to all levels of programmers, and presents in-depth treatments of technical issues with honest assessments that are not biased toward proprietary solutions. <p><b>Slashdot says . . .</b><p>"Leave it to a SubGenius preacher to take normally mundane subjects, like software maintenance, and expose the unholy conspiracy behind them. I think the following quote from the introduction sums up the tone of the book nicely: 'Rather than shield your eyes from the sordid realities of the software industry, I am going to dust off my old 8mm films and let you take a good look at the uncensored truth for yourself. You may want to keep a paper bag handy in case you get sick.<p><b>Readers are saying . . .</b><p><i>"Okay, I've worked with every moron in the book . . . was this [book] written about the guy who sits in the cube next to me?"</i><br>&emdash;Dan, VSLive 2003 Orlando attendee<p><i>"And I thought that I was the only person to ever actually throw my laptop across the room at a fellow coder."</i><br>&emdash;Anonymous, Microsoft PDC, Los Angeles<p>

About the Author
Reverend Bill Blunden is an alumnus of Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in physics. He also holds a master of science degree in operations research from Case Western Reserve. Reverend Blunden is an ordained SubGenius minister, and is currently at large in California's Bay Area.

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