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Book Reviews

This book review was submitted by a DenverJUG member as part of the Book Review Program.

BOOK DETAILS

REVIEWER

Anshuman Purohit

REVIEW

After serving in various capacities in the software industry for more than eight years, I have learned that quantifying software quality is difficult. The complexity of Java technology compounds the challenges associated with web-based applications testing. That's why I was excited when I noticed this book. However, the book disappointed me once I read it.

The Name
The first disappointed was the book's title. The first word of the title is "Java," but the author avoids showing any Java code. The closest he gets to Java is Jython, a scripting language implemented in Java. If you are designing or testing performant Java applications, you will be better off reading Enterprise Java Performance by Steve L. Halter and Steven J. Munroe, also from Prentice Hall. If I were to name this book, I'd call it "Testing Webservices with TestMaker & Jython."

Topic Organization
This book is a collection of very wordy, unclear, and unrelated notes. The diary-like organization of topics, left me wondering, "where is the meat." Repetition of subject matter, unfocused discussion and abrupt transition of topics will bound to make you lose your attention. Examples don't build upon one another. If you are very dedicated and focused, you are left with tons of irrelevant text to skim through to derive any real value. Some ancillary topics could have been better located in an appendix. A list of acronyms or glossary of terms would be nice.

You will notice frequent typo/errors in this book.

Vague Notions
While building the context to promote TestMaker and "intelligent agent" as the be all and end all of Software Engineering (Part I, about 200 pages), the book cared less to define the term itself. TestMaker is a free, open-source tool for unit testing, load testing, and system monitoring developed by the book's author.

Target Audience
Contrary to a few comments about this book, this book provides little value to Java developers. However, Web Rubrics (an objective performance grading matrix), User Archetype (a Prototypical User, modeling user behavior and habit. Is an extension of UML Actor), WAPS (Web-enabled Application Points System - A matrix to measure software quality based on functionality, performance and scalability) and The Micromax Lifecycle (many small improvement to software application and techniques to categorize and prioritize micro-tasks) might be of interest to "QA technicians" and "IT Managers."

Reference/Textbook
I normally look for two qualities to assess a book. First, does the book cover a generic ground in sufficient depth to serve as a reference? Poor organization and shallow coverage of concepts doesn't put this book on my reference bookshelf. Secondly, I look for hands-on examples that can serve as a tutorial for the reader. This book doesn't provide a single line of Java code.

To summarize, I do not recommend this book for Java developers interested in learning more about Java testing and design.