Product Description
A mother's radiant account of the faith that sustained her during the sorrow-filled days after her daughter's tragic death.A blowout--and a bus loaded with children careened into oncoming traffic. Dead: Debbie In Ai Lee Rogers--twelve years old; an orphan of the Korean War; adopted daughter of Dale and Roy Rogers--charming, vivacious and promising... ... Read more

Product Description
Dear Reader: The Lord has laid it on my heart to share my story as help to others when tragedy strikes, to show how God's love heals wounds, also to reveal the reality of a living God in our daily lives, how He proved himself throughout the disappearance of my daughter, the seemingly interminable search and the agony of her death. ... Read more

Product Description
Autographed by author Ben Song.Out of the Korean conflict comes this captivating story of a grateful orphan. ... Read more

Product Description
Written for application component developers who are building Connector architecture applications, explaining how to connect applications not only to one another but also to a multitude of EISs and legacy systems. Softcover. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

horrible
The quality of this book varies but most of it is outright horrible. The problem is that it seems to be written not by engineers but by techincal writers. People who don't really understand what is important, what is not, and how the things are connected. There are many details but the text goes on and on and on blandly through lots of useless details while paying no attention to the important things.

Example agita
The book relies on examples to make their point, but few examples are illustrated in the book.It relies rely on the included CD for source code.If you don't see the source, you won't understand the book.

If that wasn't bad enough, the examples require the Sun Application server to see the code and behavior. I've been muscling the examples into Eclipse and Tomcat to view, which works, but it has been a big hassle when I really want to learn the concepts.It is a barrier to learning and frustrating when the book depends on the examples to communicate the concepts.It takes too long this way.

You won't like this book if you need the code samples for comprehension (you will).
You won't like this book unless you are already familiar with the Sun App Server.
You won't like this book if you are looking for a reference source when you are through.
You won't like this book unless you want a high level overview of EVERY J2EE technology in 1500 pages, including XML, DOM, XSLT, JAX-RPC, SOAP, Servlets, JSP pages, JSP documents, tag libraries, JSF, Internationaliztion, Beans, Connections, and JMS.

JCA is here to stay - Stay Connected
J2EE Connector Architecture (controversially abbreviated as JCA) is arguably one among the best JSRs created at JCP. This JSR defines a standard plug ability architecture using which various Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) can be integrated into a J2EE server. An EIS can be thought of as any resource that is outside a J2EE app, and that begs to be integrated into the larger architecture of the platform. Example: Legacy apps, SAP, mainframe apps etc...

There could be various ways to achieve this feat. Some are given below...
1. Use an EAI product; (think TIBCO) - Do u really want to enter the proprietary world of integration; my best wishes...
2. Use Messaging Servers; (think MQ Series) - Again proprietary. Ok, JMS might make it portable, but that again is just JCA in disguise. If you are wondering what I mean by that, trust me this book will clarify it.
3. Use ad-hoc integration - Use RMI, JNI, CORBA, FTP or other techniques to use the EIS API directly from your application

There are the 4th and 5th techniques too, 4th being the second best and 5th being the best up until today.
4. Use JCA
5. Use Web Services

Web Services, is an open standard that can be used by any platform for integrating other systems. But, it is still in its early phases, though it is going to be the best way to integrate enterprises going forward.

Today, JCA remains to be the most elegant architecture to solve this problem, very similar to web services, difference being that JCA is very mature, easy but only for the java platform.

During the time, I am writing this review, JCA is in version 1.5. But, when this book was written JCA was in 1.0 final and version 1.5 was proposed. So, this book is by-and-large about 1.0 version of JCA, but the author also adds some salient features that are planned for 1.5 (he calls it version 2.0, for some odd reason).

The 1.5 version of JCA has a lot of additions and improvement over 1.0 version. So, either this book needs an update for version 1.5, or you are better off typing in "112" in the "jcp.org" site and downloading the latest 1.5 specification. Trust me, this specification is well written, so you might not find it a daunting task to read it, at least not as daunting as the SOAP Note from W3C.

Or, if you are like me, read this book first, then get into the 1.5 version immediately after the basics are clear. It will be far easier to read the spec then. Choice is yours. But, do yourself a favor and keep yourself updated on JCA. It is arguably the most elegant and mature way to solve integration problems at present in the J2EE platform.

A J2EE Tutorial for those who already know J2ee
J2EE is such a mess that it's not surprising it's hard
to describe, but this book is full of forward references,
vague terminology, and non-definitive definitions.
For example, one page 491,

"The Web container evaluates a variable that appears in an
expression by looking up its value according to the behavior
of PageContext.findAttribute(String)".


This sentence leaves open the following questions:

1.Are you telling me to examine the source code of findAttribute to see what it does?

2.What, precisely, is the behavior of PageContext.findAttribute(String)?

3.What's the "String" for?

4.Aha, that's the variable's name!

5.Why is the function called findAttribute and not findVariable?Are the terms "variable" and "attribute" exact synonyms?If so, why confuse the reader.On the previous page, the book refers to a "custom tag attribute".Is that the same kind of attribute (or variable)?

Every page is full of similar minefields.

Imagine if the C Language Reference manual included the sentence:
Expressions in C are parsed according to the behavior of
"parse_expression".

Not a good book for JCA
I was only interested in the first part of the title, J2EE Connector Architecture.It really did not cover J2EE Connector Architecture that well and the coverage was very small.As far as the rest of the book, well, your mileage will vary.This book is probably better for a person that is new to java. ... Read more

Product Description
GREAT BOOK AND A GREAT STORY FOR ANYONE IT WILL MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR LIFE AND THERES THAY ARE JUST LIKE US !! ... Read more