Customer comments on this selection.
 poorly editted, lacks depth
As another reviewer commented, this book seriously needs editting. Bad grammar, and odd/confusing turns of phrase. It also doesn't dig deep enough into the details of how Seam gets things done, leaving the reader to assume things were hooked together via magic.
It's also already out of date with the current Seam release.
 High hopes unfulfilled
I had high hopes for this book as I like Apress publications, but I was disappointed in this offering. For the record, I am an experienced programmer with years of J2EE (now Java EE) work under my belt. I had not previously used Ejb3 or Jsf when I started reading this book so I did have some catch up to do to fully utilize Seam. I have used hibernate (2 and 3) on several projects and have a pretty decent knowledge of it as well as Ejb, Struts, Tiles, and the Commons Validator. I have witnessed projects using good technology fail and projects using poor technology succeed based on the application of said technology so please direct all flames on these choices to /dev/null.
I found the intro chapters on Jsf and Ejb3 decent and not out of place. The author does qualify those chapters as 'just the basics' so that is not a problem. I did have to use other sources to supplement that info as I had questions not addressed but then again, I was okay with that.
What I did not like was that reading the actual seam content was tedious, laborious, and left me with an empty feeling, but not because the material was that difficult. I felt that some topics were glossed over with the intent of 'covering' without really providing anything useful. Chapters 5,6, and 8 are roughly 105 pages long and constitute the meat of the seam content that I was interested in and it was not enough in my mind to carry it over the finish line.
As some of the other reviewers noted, there are mistakes in this book that could have and should have been caught during the editing phase. Overall, it was lackluster. I recommend that if you are interested in learning about Seam, just check out the online docs. They are organized in a more linear fashion and I found them much better. I have not read the Yuan and Heute book but I would certainly compare that TOC with this book before purchasing 'Beginning JBoss Seam'.
I would welcome a second (and larger) edition with some of the holes filled in that could work in tandem with the online docs. For example, use the booking example (or another example) and explain some aspect of it better than the docs do.
 plenty of false starts - confusing layout
You wont know if the author is really talking about Seam and EJBs until at least chapter 5.
Low quality writing
I have to admit that I do not write reviews, but this book compelled me to do so. I have read a fair share of computer books in the last fifteen or so years, I'd have to say that this book is one of the worst. Luckily for me, I was familiar with most of the concepts described in it, otherwise, I would be quite lost. This book is on Seam, but the first 100 or so pages are on other technologies. This might be good for some, but I expected to get a Seam book. The number of errors, typos and omissions in this book are innumerable. English is horrible too (has an editor actually read it?). Good percentage of sentences start with "So....". Code examples sometimes list imported classes, and sometimes don't. This makes it very hard to understand where these classes/interfaces/annotations come from. The book is full of statements without a logical path to them. The title says: "From Novice to Professional". Well, this is a bold statement and the the book does not hold up to it. I certainly would not recommend it to a novice, as Seam concepts are not explained well, and would not recommend it to a professional, because it just does not provide answers and does not go deep enough for those trying to dig the Seam. The explanation of a SLSB life cycle and other EJB3 concepts are unintelligible. The only positive thing about this book was time on the market, but as I have read the Michael Yuan's "JBoss Seam" book, online documentation and EJB 3 specification, I'd say that this book was completely useless for me.
Look elsewhere...
Don't let this jobfactor happen to you...
1) the HelloWorld example doesn't work. It's very poor and is missing much detail (WAR or EAR? no ant build script? why is the code for interface file missing? why is this entire example not in the code download? no xml file discussion whatsoever like web.xml or faces-config.xml? seam.properties file is required but no discussion in the HelloWorld example) Off to a poor start.
2) The author uses "but I'll cover this later on in the chapter" way too many times. Hard to follow.
3) Not enough details in SEAM and covers JSF and EJB3 too much. The book needed to be a LOT longer to cover the details necessary. There was no coverage on seam-gen. No coverage on best practices.
Save your money and purchase Yuan and Heute's JBOSS SEAM book.
Why didn't Gavin King write a SEAM book? There is a chapter on SEAM in the new Java Persistence with Hibernate book, it's pretty good.
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