Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

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Review

My personal analysis and appreciation below

• Chapter 1 Inversion of Control and Containers
• Chapter 2 Introduction to Spring
• Chapter 3 Bean Configuration in Spring
• Chapter 4 Advanced Spring IoC Container
• Chapter 5 Dynamic Proxy and Classic Spring AOP
• Chapter 6 Spring 2.x AOP and AspectJ Support

The best book in handle in how to teach you these topics with a very decent material specially for AOP. This Part is almost dedicated for beginners and already Spring developers that want to learn the new features used by Spring.

• Chapter 7 Spring JDBC Support
• Chapter 8 Transaction Management in Spring
• Chapter 9 Spring ORM Support
• Chapter 10 Spring MVC Framework
• Chapter 11 Integrating Spring with Other Web Frameworks
• Chapter 12 Spring Testing Support

For "Spring JDBC Support", it has an excellent explanation and reason of the things. It offers a concrete way to learn sure jdbc with/without Spring support and to see the important differences about code/configuration/features

For "Transaction Management in Spring", it has good theory and clear concrete examples teaching different ways in how handle many options for this important topic (furthermore with AOP for Spring 1.x/2.x). The most important feature that I have seen in this chapter and really I like it, is that, this is the unique book written (among the books I have already read) that offers examples for almost all the options available about configurations for "Propagation Behaviors"(the two most important) and for "Isolation Levels"(for example, all of them, except Serializable), so it gives you really a better idea about the problems related with transactions and its solutions for each approach. Furthermore, it really teaches you the differences between the configurations and its respective behavior for each one. Instead, other books only show a table with the theory of each point, and then a simple example and nothing more.

For "Spring ORM Support ", it teaches you how to make a successful integration with Hibernate/JPA and how to manage a transaction with them and Spring.

For "Spring MVC Framework", it teaches you in a very good way the most important things in this important framework of Spring (I consider this better than Struts) in many ways and showing how to use interfaces and super classes of controller offered by Spring MVC with simple and concrete examples

For "Integrating Spring with Other Web Frameworks", if you are a veteran using Struts 1.x, it shows you in a fast and concrete way how to get a successful integration (not for Struts 2.x), same style for JSF. Something important and very necessary currently in a web application is ajax. The most important solution is DWR and this book teaches you how to get a successful integration (the classic way)

For "Spring Testing Support", important in any phase of development, the chapter is nice, showing how use JUnit(4.4 and 3.8) with Spring, and even with MVC controllers. Furthermore EasyMock is included in this chapter too; a nice approach is that it teaches you how to use JUnit with "Managing Transactions" and "Accessing Databases"

• Chapter 13 Spring Security
• Chapter 14 Spring Portlet MVC Framework
• Chapter 15 Spring Web Flow
• Chapter 16 Spring Remoting and Web Services
• Chapter 17 Spring Support for EJB and JMS
• Chapter 18 Spring Support for JMX, E-mail, and Scheduling
• Chapter 19 Scripting in Spring

For "Spring Security" this is clearly a critical area in any application in real live. This book teaches you in a easy and concrete way the classic "Url Access" and "Method Invocations" even with Pointcuts among other features

For "Spring Portlet MVC Framework", I don’t know anything about Portlet but this chapter is clearly well structured like the other chapters

For "Spring Web Flow" explains in a decent way SWF for 2.0 version. I think that SWF should be explained in a dedicated book

For "Spring Remoting and Web Services" offers a very clear and concrete use of many options related with this topic like RMI, Hessian, Burlap, Web Services; easy material to learn important things in this topic.

For "Spring Support for EJB and JMS", again I don’t know anything about EJB but this chapter is clearly well structured like the other chapters and teaches you how to work with EJB 2.x/3.0 with Spring. It covers in a good way JMS with concrete and detailed examples.

For "Spring Support for JMX, E-mail, and Scheduling", it covers well these three topics. The chapter is decent, and has concrete theory and codes.

For "Scripting in Spring" is the shortest one. I don’t know why, but it’s really very concrete in the way it is taught.