Book review: GlassFish Administration
Z Jacek Laskowski - Wiki Projektanta Java EE
GlassFish Administration by Xuekun Kou (Packt, December 2009)
The book should've been titled "Review of available GlassFish v2 features for administrators"
I've recently been invited to review "GlassFish Administration" from Packt and I happily accepted the offer. Page after page and my happiness was steadily vanishing. I think it's my last book about administration of Java EE application servers from Packt. Their books are very easy to read and I've always been enjoying their reading, but when it comes to their value as a source of information on the real administration they fall short. They simply don't provide the value I expect.
The book "GlassFish Administration" made no difference. This book described very little about advanced administration stuff like scripting or those features that place GlassFish as the solution of choice, and to me it's yet another book for GlassFish newbies. I'd only recommend it for those who haven't yet had a slightest chance to play with GlassFish (or you've got plenty of time and the book's on your shelf ready for a ride). If you're busy and you want to learn the GlassFish intricacies, make no mistake about it - you won't learn much.
The author Xuekun Kou and the book's reviewers had first reassured myself that the book would bring some additional value other than describing the most basic stuff, but it took no more than 4-5 chapters before I scratched my head wondering why I was still reading it. It was boring most of the time. It takes a few chapters and you've no doubts about the author's practical GlassFish administration experience yet he decided to showcase available features without their in-depth explanation. The book should've been titled "Review of available GlassFish v2 features for administrators". Would you buy this book if you hit the title on the shelf with Java EE books? I wouldn't.
Fortunately, I found some hidden gems. I liked the sections "Configuring virtual servers" and "Request processing process" in the chapter 4, the section "Naming references and binding information" in the chapter 5 with its eye-opener - a figure that illustrates the process of resolving resource references, chapter 6. "Configuring JMS Resources" where the author discussed configuration of Open MQ and Apache ActiveMQ with GlassFish, the chapter 8. "Monitoring GlassFish" in which I learned about Call Flow, and read a little bit about JConsole and VisualVM, and the most rewarding chapter 9. "Configuring Clusters and High Availability" in which I discovered that GlassFish is capable of providing HA and failover environment I thought only IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) could. GlassFish and WAS become very close to each other as far as the enterprise configuration goes. I have never considered GlassFish as a viable competitor to WAS, but with the chapter 9. of the book I'm willing to accept contrary opinions. It was hardly the case before. I didn't know about silent installation of GlassFish either. There's a section (solely a page) about it too. It should've been longer.
The book is all about GlassFish 2.1.1 with the last chapter 11. "Working with GlassFish 3" aiming to bring v3 to the masses. That was the idea I guess, but I hardly believe anybody could think of it as such, as it's just a copy of the book's first chapters with only few parts GlassFish v3-related. I wish it'd described a bit more details about GlassFish v3's new OSGi-based architecture, not too mention its Java EE 6 support.
The writing style made the reading very pleasant and the lack of more advanced administration tasks significantly diminished its value. It could've been better with more examples and without sections about features like JACC with only two paragraphs (!) The administration commands executed from within the GlassFish Administration Console as well as from the command line provided exceptional learning experience. I did like it. It was one of the very few technical books where Unix commands were the primary ones executed.
The book wasn't that bad after all, but if you're looking for a book about GlassFish real-life administration, "GlassFish Administration" will not be nearly enough.
