Your Ideas for the Second Edition of EJB 3 in Action

We are deeply grateful to our readership for making EJB 3 in Action the kind of success that has exceeded all of our expectations. This is especially true considering widespread EJB 2 bashing, the maturity of EJB as a pioneer middleware technology and the authors' relative humble roots.

We are now in the very early stages of planning the second edition and could really use your help. The second edition is slated to cover the emerging EJB 3.1, WebBeans 1.0 and JPA 2.0 specifications. We plan on adding content on testing as well as covering the EJB integration features in Spring 2.5. Beyond this content, what else would you like to see in a second edition EJB 3 book? More best practices? Performance tuning? Product/vendor selection help? Others?

Should we continue to treat EJB 3/Java EE 5 beginners as first-class citizens? Is a real-world example driven format compelling to you? Is there a need for us to become more of a reference book? Should we cover ground that's less traveled or continue to focus on crystallizing key concepts and covering features most likely to be used in realistic EJB 3 projects?

Please do feel welcome in sending me comments at reza_rahman@lycos.com. My co-authors -- Debu Panda (debupanda at gmail dot com) and Rob Di Marco (robdimarco at gmail dot com) would love to hear your ideas as well.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Philadelphia JUG

On September 30th, I gave my Java EE 6 preview talk at the Philly JUG. Run by Dave Fecak of JSync, the Philly JUG is one of the most successful ones in the world. The attendance was very good and so was the level of discussion, specially considering the size of the JUG. There was a lot of excitement around Java EE 6 and I got a lot of positive feedback on the talk itself. I am hoping a number of folks will send their comments directly to the EG by emailing jsr-316-comments@jcp.org. I spoke at the Philly JUG about a year ago on Spring and EJB 3. It was a pleasure giving that talk as well.

It's also always great to work with Dave. He has done an amazing job keeping the community engaged and growing the JUG.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Harrisburg JUG

On September 18, I gave a preview of Java EE 6 at the Harrisburg JUG. The level of participation in this JUG is always great to see, especially since this is my old turf. I spoke about there about a year ago on EJB 3 and Spring. I am speaking there again in January about optimizing relational databases for JPA. It was truly encouraging to receive a lot of good feedback on the Java EE 6 APIs.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Princeton JUG

On September 8, I gave my Java EE 6 preview presentation at the nearby Princeton JUG. The attendance was great and so was the participation levels. Folks were very excited about all the APIs in Java EE 6 and provided a lot of positive feedback. Java champion, JDJ editor and JUG leader Yakov Fain blogged about the presentation here.

I have always enjoyed speaking with Yakov. He is a true Java veteran who always has well balanced insight into what is going on in the Java world. I look forward to speaking at the Princeton JUG again soon.

The Developer Conference, Sao Paulo Brazil

On July 25-26, I spoke at The Developer Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I presented on both Java EE 6 and EJB 3.1. Both talks were very well received and there was a very good level of participation. Burr Sutter from JBoss and Ed Burns from Sun also spoke at the conference. It is one of the largest Java centric conferences in Brazil, run by a great company named GlobalCode.

This was my first time to Brazil. It is truly a very warm, hospitable and lively country. It is clearly also a global IT powerhouse with a strong Java community. I received a lot of positive feedback on EJB 3, Java EE 5 as well as Seam. Not surprisingly, there was also a great deal of excitement around EJB 3.1, WebBeans and Java EE 6. I hope I will continue to hear from the Java EE community in Brazil.

We recently published the Portuguese version of EJB 3 in Action and from all accounts, the translation seems to be doing very well. I signed quite a few copies and talked to readers in person in the conference bookstore.