EJB 3 in Action: A Personal Journey

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
                             - Lao-Tzu
I am very proud to say the second edition of EJB 3 in Action is now published. In addition to covering EJB 3.2, we've also covered JPA 2.1, CDI 1.1, JAX-RS, WebSocket and so on. The goal is to try to cover as much of the Java EE 7 "backend" technologies as possible. As with the first edition, we've tried hard to make the book as approachable as possible and the idea is that an absolute Java EE beginner should be able to readily use the book. You can buy the book directly from Manning. If you are not too worried about Amazon becoming the electronic version of Wal-Mart, you can also buy the book there.

When I decided to take on writing the first edition of the book so many moons ago,  I don't think any of the authors were certain what the success of the book was going to be or where it might take us personally. Today I have the luxury of hindsight in saying the book has been a resounding success and that writing the book was a first step to a whirlwind journey the past few years that I could have never foreseen. Though there are always some nasty bumps on the road, I must confess I continue to enjoy the journey, arduous as it may be. Since finishing the first edition, I've been increasingly more engaged with the Java community, I found myself contributing to various Java EE expert groups including the EJB expert group, I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to write an open source EJB container almost from scratch and I now find myself at the forefront of the Java EE evangelism team at SunOracle.

One casualty of all of this has been my own personal bandwidth, which had been fairly abundant when I wrote the first edition. This is a large part of why we had to skip a Java EE 6 and EJB 3.1 edition of this book. I do think it's all for the best since Java EE 7 is an even stronger and more compelling platform as this edition will demonstrate. I am extremely grateful to Michael and Ryan for taking ownership of the book and being instrumental in producing a worthy second edition. I am also grateful to the many folks like you in the Java EE community I have had the privilege to try my best to serve and work with. Lastly, I am ever thankful to my wife Nicole and daughter Zehra for allowing me to pursue my passion without reservation.

And so the journey continues...

This entry and the book was written entirely on my own personal time. All views voiced here are my own, not necessarily Oracle's.