Building Java Enterprise Applications, Vol. 1: Architecture (O'Reilly Java)

After reading the synopsis I was ready to delve into some planning and best practices reading material. While the book focuses on a core example, it doesn't not provide enough information on WHY certain decisions were made and does not provide enough look into alternatives. The book would be much more valuable if it focused less on one concrete example and took a step upwards into what I mistook the synopsis and title for: "Making Strategic and Technology/Business-Driven Decisions in Your Java Applications". Aside from misinterpreting the content of the book, the general content lacked. Even though providing a path down a single sample, there was far too little focus on how to go about building Java Enterprise applications and too much focus on explaining the code. While the author tried to keep succinct, he did not touch on the core principals and theories enough. I recommend the book only for casual, quick reading as it is out-dated (due to the EJB 2 topics covered) and does not dive into the real core of planning application life cycles.