Christophe reviewed the 2nd edition of Murach's Java Servlets and JSP by Andrea Steelman and Joel Murach and gave it 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

This book is mainly aimed at beginners, but it is still a great refresher for experienced users. It is very practical, and will make Servlets and JSP fun to learn. It is so enjoyable that you'll finish reading it in no time. I wish I had such a book when I started developing web applications. Highly recommended.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

This week, we're delighted to have Arulkumaran Kumaraswamipillai & Sivayini Arulkumaran helping to answer questions about their new book Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion. They will hang out in the Jobs Discussion forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, February 26th 2008 and will end on Friday, February 29th 2008.

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

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

Jeanne reviewed Practical Apache Struts 2 Web 2.0 Projects by Ian Roughley and gave it 7 out of 10 horseshoes.

"Practical Apache Struts2 Web 2.0 Projects" walks you through developing an app in Struts2. It includes use cases, iterations, a build process and some unit tests. [...] this book is not for beginners. You should be familiar with MVC before starting out. ... I found there to be a good balance between how Struts 2.0 works and implementing common things you might actually want to do in practice.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

Marc reviewed Struts 2 Design and Programming by Budi Kurniawan and gave it 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

I've never worked with Struts 2 in the past yet I was able to get a pretty solid understanding of it in a very short amount of time. [...] I think even a beginner could pick this up fairly easily. ... I'm convinced this is and will remain the authoritative book on Struts 2.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

This week, we're delighted to have Scott Davis helping to answer questions about their new book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java. He will hang out in the Object Oriented Scripting forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, February 19th 2008 and will end on Friday, February 22th 2008.

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

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

This week, we're delighted to have Christophe Porteneuve helping to answer questions about their new book Prototype and script.aculo.us. They will hang out in the HTML & JavaScript forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, February 12th 2008 and will end on Friday, February 15th 2008.

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

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

A member's question about how to come up with the architecture for a new system leads to a discussion about what an architect does, whether or not he should be part of the development team, and other related topics in this thread in the OO, Patterns, UML and Refactoring forum. It also includes interesting links to articles and discussion elsewhere.

This week, we're delighted to have David Berube helping to answer questions about their new book Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails. They will hang out in the Object Oriented Scripting forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, February 5th 2008 and will end on Friday, February 8th 2008.

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

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

Ulf reviewed Ajax Security by Billy Hoffman and Bryan Sullivan and gave it 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

This book is billed as "The Hands-On, Practical Guide to Preventing Ajax-Related Security Vulnerabilities", and it delivers admirably on that count. ... It's hard to picture a web worker (be it developer, tester, producer or manager) that doesn't take away something (and more likely quite a bit) from this book.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.

Jeanne reviewed Core Servlets and Javaserver Pages: Advanced Technologies, Vol. 2 by Marty Hall, Larry Brown and Yaakov Chaikin and gave it 7 out of 10 horseshoes.

"Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages, Volume 2: Advanced Technologies" targets developers who already know Java and basic servlets/JSPs. Note this book's second edition does not cover the latest technologies. It uses J2EE 1.3/1.4 and Struts 1.3. ... Overall the book was fine although I would prefer to invest in a different title – either fully on Struts or fully on servlets/JSPs.

You can read the full review and discuss it here.