Book Reviews
This book review was submitted by a DenverJUG member as part of the Book Review Program.BOOK DETAILS
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publish Date: September, 2004
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0-13-100852-8
Publisher's Book Description
Review Date: February 2005
REVIEW by Linda Meserve
I have designed business systems in several languages. I began hands-on Java development last year as a neophyte developer on an 8-month development project. I was pleased to find Robust Java: Exception Handling, Testing, and Debugging by Stephen Stelting on the Denver JUG’s book review list.
Robust Java is a great resource for beginning to intermediate level Java professionals with a working knowledge of object-oriented concepts. If you have been introduced to the wide world of Jav and used one or two aspects of the language, you will find Robust Java combines a high-level (macro) view of Java architecture with the close up (micro) view of coding and testing Java classes. Reviewing Robust Java helped me integrate the wide range of topics I encountered during my recent development experience.
Robust Java will appeal to all types of learning styles. The table of contents shows a ‘soup to nuts’ list of Java topics Ð primitives, object types, collections, I/O, threading, RMI, JNDI, JDBC, J2EE, patterns, and others. Each chapter presented a focus on handling exceptions and logging and testing issues specific to the topic at hand. Any effective testing strategy requires the tester to understand how a tested feature works and the potential weaknesses to test for. So each topic was covered three ways Ð first as an abstract concept, then as a practical mechanism, and finally from a best practices point of view.
Normally I don’t consider software testing an interesting topic. But Robust Java provides technical information flavored with humorous footnotes and remarks. Stephen Stelting writes from a developerÕs point of view and incorporates a sense of humor which makes it worthwhile to forage through the footnotes. For example:
To get an idea of how vital it [testing software] is, compare it to testing something like an automobileÉIf you have no testing capabilities, you would have to replace the whole car each time something went wrong! [footnote] I have owned a few cars like this...
In summary, Robust Java was a pleasure to read and study. Its clear, concise chapters covering J2EE and JUNIT are well worth the purchase price. I recommend Robust Java to beginning or intermediate Java developers who want to integrate their current knowledge while taking their coding and testing practices to the next level.