Working as an effective professional Java developer requires you to know Java APIs, tools, and techniques to solve a wide variety of Java problems. Building upon Ivor Horton’s Beginning Java 2, this resource shows you how to use the core features of the latest JDK as well as powerful open source tools such as Ant, JUnit, and Hibernate. It will arm you with a well-rounded understanding of the professional Java development landscape.

The expert author team begins by uncovering the sophisticated Java language features, the methodology for developing solutions, and steps for exploiting patterns. They then provide you with a collection of real-world examples that will become an essential part of your developer’s toolkit. With this approach, you’ll gain the skills to build advanced solutions by utilizing the more complex and nuanced parts of Java JDK 6.

What you will learn from this book

• How to use tools to make your work easier and more productive
• Methods to develop effective user interfaces with Java Foundation Classes (JFC)
• Steps to build web applications using the Model 1 and Model 2 architectures
• Ways to interact with the databases and XML using JDBC and JAXB
• Techniques for developing enterprise applications using EJB 3.0 and web services
• How to package and deploy Java applications

Who this book is for

This book is for Java developers who are looking for an all-purpose resource, are ready for more advanced Java solutions and language features, and need assistance when tackling new Java problems that may be outside their technological experience.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

• Intended as a follow-up to Ivor Horton’s classic Beginning Java (0764568744), this comprehensive resource shows developers how to master advanced language features, plus when to use Java open source tools when core Java isn’t enough
• Begins with an overview of best methods and tools for developing Java applications, then examines the more sophisticated and nuanced parts of the Java SDK and offers a clear understanding of the power methods, tools, and features that can help make developers more productive
• The final and most extensive part of the book shows how to implement the ideas discussed to build real-world applications using Java APIs as well as related Java open source tools
• Fully updated to cover the JDK 6 release, the book also examines new Web services APIs, the next JDBC API, generics, metadata facility enhancements, and scripting (which will be more tightly integrated with the Java language)

• Intended as a follow-up to Ivor Horton’s classic Beginning Java (0764568744), this comprehensive resource shows developers how to master advanced language features, plus when to use Java open source tools when core Java isn’t enough
• Begins with an overview of best methods and tools for developing Java applications, then examines the more sophisticated and nuanced parts of the Java SDK and offers a clear understanding of the power methods, tools, and features that can help make developers more productive
• The final and most extensive part of the book shows how to implement the ideas discussed to build real-world applications using Java APIs as well as related Java open source tools
• Fully updated to cover the JDK 6 release, the book also examines new Web services APIs, the next JDBC API, generics, metadata facility enhancements, and scripting (which will be more tightly integrated with the Java language)

Professional Java Programming builds upon Ivor Horton’s Beginning Java to provide the reader with an understanding of how professionals use Java to develop software solutions.  Pro Java Programming starts with an overview of best methods and tools for developing Java applications.   It then examines the more sophisticated and nuanced parts of the Java SDK.  The final and most extensive part of the book shows how to implement these ideas to build real-world applications, using both Java APIs as well as related Java open source tools.  In short, this book provides a comprehensive treatment of the professional Java development process, without losing focus in exhaustive coverage of isolated features and APIs.

This new edition (about 35ew and revised) is fully updated to cover the JDK 6 release.   Updates cover:

• New web services APIs.
• The next JDBC API.
• Generics
• Metadata facility enhancements
• Scripting, which will be more tightly integrated with the Java language.
• Updates to related tools (e.g., Hibernate), which have added new features for improved functioning with JDK 6. 

What is this book about?

Professional Java builds upon Ivor Horton’s Beginning Java to provide the reader with an understanding of how professionals use Java to develop software solutions. Pro Java starts with an overview of best methods and tools for developing Java applications. It then examines the the more sophisticated and nuanced parts of the Java JDK. The final and most extensive part of the book shows how to implement these ideas to build real-world applications, using both Java APIs as well as related Java open source tools. In short, this book provides a comprehensive treatment of the professional Java development process, without losing focus in exhaustive coverage of isolated features and APIs.

Can’t tell who this book is really for
Professional Java attempts to do something I don’t think any one book can do well, which is to say something useful on just about every topic. This book’s sections include: important additions/changes to JDK 5; a whirlwind tour of project methodologies; design patterns; build tools; persistence tools; UIs; web applications; JNI; EJB 3; SOA; security; and packaging and deployment. The book wants to be a "one-stop shop," and that’s fine. After reading through most of the sections and skimming some, however, I’m not sure what the profile of the target shopper might be.

The topic coverage varies wildly from section to section, in the writing style (and quality) and in the effectiveness of sample code to illustrates a point. Too often the descriptions are both verbose and phrased in the passive voice. Some code samples seem like proof-of-concept sketches of a feature or library facility, rather than a compelling example of its use. Still other samples seem full of boilerplate code that speeds up the page-turning but isn’t illuminating. And sometimes the text changes its diction strangely; the style changes from a general description to a "follow-along" activity without warning. Some sentences sound as if the author left them in as a reminder to complete a task.

The result is a thick book that, for me, is sometimes tedious or exhausting to read. I think it would have been helpful to give author credit by chapter, if only to know the presentation might change significantly. Also, a concerted effort at paring things down, and keeping the diction clear and active, would help make it more readable and something worth referencing.

As mentioned, the topic coverage is quite broad. This book might come in handy to someone who just needs many topics in one book. So long as you don’t need your one reference also for getting started, this book could be a useful collection.

Good book for reference if you have done Java before
The book provide really helpful for you if you are trying to know more about Java after you have done it. It provides a lot of examples for doing one thing in different ways.

Reviews Misleading
Despite what some other reviewers said, I actually really enjoyed this book. It has allot of valuable material for folks making the jump from beginner topics to more advanced topics.

It seems that allot of folks expect the book to be all about JDK 5 when the title clearly says "PROFESSIONAL JAVA" (JDK 5 edition).

Unfocused, riddled with errors
This book is an unfocused collection of reference manuals that seem to have been thrown together with very little forethought. It’s poorly organized, the code examples aren’t all that intructive, and there are plenty of errors throughout the book. It isn’t very useful if you’re learning Java, and it’s a lousy reference if you already know it. I suggest skipping it.

just collection of refference manuals
all I could say is that book is very poorly written , no connection between reader and writer, in may chapets ,they are just composed of a bunch of refference manuls that everyone can read for free from vendor , for example JAAS section is totaly useless ...
JDK 1.5 is covered very very poorly ...
it seems that book was written in a rush to get it out to market ..

Worth buying, but it could be better
I like this book because it brings together in one place a lot of information that is helpful in real-world development tasks. My complaint is that it seems carelessly edited, leaving you with a collection of chapters obviously written by different authors who didn’t communicate much with each other in the formation of the book.

It’s nice to be able to get the new Java 5 features under your belt in just a couple of hours of reading and playing around. In fact, the first chapter is excellent, code samples and all. The next chapter is nice for a quick review of methodologies, or if you are completely new to the frameworks that are often used in conjunction with Agile Programming in Java, such as JUnit and Hibernate and so on. Chapter 3 is a capable introduction to some of the more popular Design Patterns, but it is here that you first notice that the author ignores all the advice in Chapters 1 and 2 about how much easier your development will be if you use the new language features of Java 5 and the tools and methodologies of Agile development.

Things go downhill by Chapter 4, which covers Swing desktop GUI design and coding. The sample apps aren’t all that well designed and don’t don’t demonstrate everything presented in Chapter 3 (such as the MVC application architecture) in a clear, convincing way. And it is here that you encounter the most shocking deficiencies of this book: sloppy, difficult-to-read sample code that compiles and runs--more or less--but which contains numerous lines (and even entire blocks) of extraneous code, poorly-chosen and sometimes even capitalized local and member variable names, and code stucture that defies best coding practices in many places. It is the type of code that you get when you hurry to meet a deadline for a prototype, and which you have not yet gotten around to going back and cleaning up.

Things pick back up a bit in subsequent chapters, with a nice intro to J2EE and J2EE-oriented API’s, messaging, security, and a fine chapter on the much-neglected subject of application deployment.

Overall, I’m glad I bought this book. I’ve learned a lot from it, despite it’s few annoyances. In fact, I made an exercise out of cleaning up the kludgy code samples in chapter 4. No, I’m not being sarcastic--I really did find it far more helpful and educational to patch that code up than to just read it through and then kid myself that I had internalized it. Who knows--maybe all sample code should be written with some defects.

Lacks Focus, not much information about JDK 5
Chpater 1: Key Java Language Features and Libraries - the only chapter that talks about JDK 5.

Waste of time to proceed further.