Jeanne reviewed Software Teamwork: Taking Ownership for Success by Jim Brosseau and gave it 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

I'm always a bit sceptical of books that claim to address everyone involved in the software development process including managers, developers and stakeholders. This book manages the task impressively. ... It was a great read and very informative. I highly recommend this book.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

A rancher is asked to evaluate Maven for a project, and finds it hard to get started with. Seeing that many people swear by it, he wonders what its benefits might be. Other ranchers offer lots of insight and reasoned opinions for and against using Maven in this thread in the Ant, Maven and Other Build Tools forum.

Considering her workplace rules, a rancher wonders which reasons would be OK for unit tests to break a build for any prolonged time (say, more than day). Lots of thoughtful opinions and good advice are offered in response in this thread in the Testing forum.

Jeanne reviewed Next Generation Java Testing by Cedric Beust and Hani Suleiman and gave it 7 out of 10 horseshoes.

"Next Generation Java Testing" has a subtitle: "TestNG and Advanced Concepts." This isn't surprising given the creator of TestNG is an author, but is important to realize. ... I liked the code snippets in the TestNG sections as they focused on relevant pieces. ... If you are using/planning to use TestNG and can ignore the rants, this is a good book.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

Ulf reviewed Scripting in Java - Languages, Frameworks and Patterns by Dejan Bosanac and gave it 6 out of 10 horseshoes.

This book aims to be an introduction to combining Java with scripting by presenting popular Java-based scripting languages, making the case for when and how to use scripting and Java, explaining the prevalent APIs, and showing some useful patterns of how to make it work.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

Jesper reviewed Java EE 5 Development using GlassFish Application Server by David Heffelfinger and gave it 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

The book is aimed at Java developers with some experience who want to learn Java EE using GlassFish. ... [It] does not cover setting up and configuring GlassFish in detail, nor does it cover advanced topics such as clustering and high availability.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

This week we have two promotions, Next Generation Java Testing and Implementation Patterns

This week, we're delighted to have Cedric Beust and Hani Suleiman helping to answer questions about their new book Next Generation Java Testing. They will hang out in the Testing forum.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of the book provided by the publisher, Addison-Wesley.

This week, we're delighted to have Kent Beck helping to answer questions about his new book Implementation Patterns. He will hang out in the Agile & Other Processes forum.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of the book provided by the publisher, Addison-Wesley.

Both promotions start Tuesday, December 18th 2007 and will end on Friday, December 21st 2007.

Please see the book promotions page to ensure your best chances at winning!

This week, we're delighted to have Herb Schildt helping to answer questions about their new book Java Programming Cookbook. They will hang out in the Java in General (intermediate) forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, December 11th 2007 and will end on Friday, December 14th 2007.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of the book provided by the publisher, McGraw-Hill.

Please see the book promotions page to ensure your best chances at winning!

Read more...

This week, we're delighted to have Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene helping to answer questions about their new book Head First PMP. They will hang out in the Agile and Other Processes forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, December 4th 2007 and will end on Friday, December 7th 2007.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of the book provided by the publisher, O'Reilly.

Please see the book promotions page to ensure your best chances at winning!

Since the JavaRanch FAQ is a wiki, it's easy to update by everyone, and it's being improved all the time. Some notable recent additions include the following:

• The Web Services FAQ has substantial new sections on REST and on useful books.
• The OO, Patterns, Refactoring and UML FAQ is completely new, and contains a lot of interesting stuff.
• Also new is the JavaScript Links page, which points to various helpful articles, libraries, books, tutorials and references covering JavaScript and AJAX.
• The Struts FAQ has also seen various additions of late.
• Ever wondered how to deal with an obscure (or not so obscure) file format in Java? The AccessingFileFormats page has information on how to read and write a wide range of formats, including Word, Excel, PDF and many more.
• The Open Source Projects FAQ points to useful 3rd party libraries, as well as articles and tutorials about their use. Amongst the ones covered are JasperReports/iReport, JFreeChart, log4j and Lucene.
• Not really new on the Ranch, but recently migrated to the wiki -and much expanded- is the Code Barn, which has example code on a wide range of subjects, including applets, servlets and XML processing. If you have a piece of code that demonstrates a particular technique or API, let us know, and we'll include it.
• A truly frequently asked question has its own page now: RedirectForward covers the differences between Response.sendRedirect and RequestDispatcher.forward in a web application.
• Last but not least, you can always find the schedule for upcoming promotion at BookPromotionsSchedule.