Review by Billy Barron

"Advanced Techniques for Java Developers" (Wiley Computer Publishing; ISBN 0-471-32718-2) by Berg and Fritzinger is the first advanced Java 2 book I have seen on the market. The book covers topics including JFC, Media, Networking, I/O, JavaBeans, Distributed Applicationns, RMI, JDBC, Servlets, EJB, Threading, Security, JNI, NC, and the JavaOS.

This is an odd mix of topics. Some of the materials not really advanced like networking and I/O. Other topics are very technical in nature (e.g. threads). On the other hand, the book has some very non-technical topics like NC and the JavaOS.

Overall though, most of the topics are handled well. The books actually excels in the less technical topics and is in some ways on par with "Not Just Java", an excellent non-technical analysis of Java. The technical topics are still covered pretty well though I saw a couple of technical errors. An example is "All of the Java libraries are thread safe." If it said "Almost all", I would have agreed. However, the collections API is not thread safe by default for performance reasons. From browsing Sun's bug database, it appears that parts of Swing are non-thread safe too.

It definitely is a good book especially when discussing more Java market related issues such as the NC and the JavaOS.