Jean-Pierre Norguet's Review

Jean-Pierre Norguet's review of Chuck Cavaness's book "Programming Jakarta Struts"

Book reviewed: Chuck Cavaness, Programming Jakarta Struts, O'Reilly, 2002.

This book explains how to program Web applications using the Jakarta Struts framework. Simply put, Jakarta Struts is a Java framework that allows Web developers to reuse convenient objects for HTTP-request handlers, server-side HTML-form proxies, etc. Struts also allows to externalize the application flow into a configuration file. This configuration can then be edited with a Struts-flow editor. The book goes into details on how to integrate Struts into a J2EE Web application, explains the mechanics of the Struts components, describes the Struts-configuration file format, covers the JSP tag libraries, and explains how to extend the framework. The latest sections cover the use of advanced Struts features like exception handling, Struts validator, internationalization, EJB support, Tiles templates, logging with log4j and Java Logging API, deployment, and load-testing for measuring Web application performance. Such a coverage of Struts is extremely broad.

This book targets Java developers willing to learn extensively about the Struts framework. Strong skills in developing Web applications with the Java language are required for reading this book. Explanations throughout the book are sparse; developers looking a Struts tutorial would be very disappointed with this book. A tutorial about the Struts framework would be better found in other books [1, 2]. IT architects are also likely to appreciate the book, as the author gives many explanations on how the Struts framework integrates with other J2EE components likes servlets, JSP, and EJB.

Personnally, I found the book hard to read, because explanations are not always very clear or unsufficient. During my reading, I permanently had the impression that the book had been written too fast. This made my understanding hard, despite the fact that I have myself written book chapters about Struts and J2EE. If I experienced difficulties in understanding this book, less-experimented readers would probably feel even worse about it. Nevertheless, I have seen many positive reviews, so maybe it only the writing style of the book that does not match my own and makes it difficult for me to understand the content.

Finally, the last critics that I will make onto this book is that it covers features that do not relate specifically to Struts. Examples of those features are exception handling, logging, and load-testing. These features are inherent to any Web application. It sounds like fill-up material to pack the book -- but this is only one impression. I think that time and space would have been better invested into covering specific Struts aspects or better explaining critical Struts elements, while linking to books dedicated to Web applications in general. For the rest, I think the book is an interesting reference.

[1] B. Kurniawan, Struts Design and Programming: A Tutorial, BrainySoftware.com, ISBN 0975212818.
[2] U. Wahli et al., WebSphere Version 5 Application Development handbook, IBM Press, ISBN 0738499307.

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