Good J2EE book needed

lukin

Just finished my exams and have a bit of spare time over the summer so I was thinking of reading up on J2EE (I was going to do my project on it but chickened out at the last minute).
I've been doing java for 3 years now but am only an average programmer by my own admission. From what I hear it's pretty easy to learn and there seems to be a lot of demand from employers for knowledge in this area.
There are loads of good tutorials on the web I am sure but a good reference book would be a help too.
I am a little confused about this though:
J2EE,servlets,Java Server Pages=all the same thing?
Thank you.

damnyanks

J2EE has lots of components. JSP is one of them. Read up on EJB. It's a large framework there are lots and lots of things you can do. Can't remember the major components off the top of my head. Something like JMS, JDBC, erm yeah...

There are lots more and lots of things you can do with it . Start your project now and start reading up on how J2EE could benefit you. Usually Wrox books are reasonable for this sort of thing. They cover lots of topics.

Pretty sure they don't cover it in NCI so it will stand out Look for web services as well... they are great

damnyanks

Also check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J2EE

Lists the stuff I didn't stick in during my little ramble

lukin

Thanks, I'll get right on it.

TabulaRasa

The Sun Tutorials are very good http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/J2EE/Intro2/j2ee.html

but also bear in mind that the EJB 3.0 spec is in an early draft review and that the way EJBs are written will change considerably when this spec is adopted.

Also if you have loads of time on your hands you could do worse than look at some of the Java alternatives to J2EE for example Spring and Hibernate.

Mike

damnyanks

Yeah Spring is far easier. EJB 2 seems retarded compared to 3. Spring on the other hand doesn't have the same amount of hassle to set up something basic.