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Book Review: <em>Java for Business</em>

Find out if this book can help convince your company to use Java

By Stephen Pietrowicz, JavaWorld.com, 10/01/97

It's a real battle at many companies to introduce a new technology. I am pretty fortunate: When I first started programming in Java in May 1995, upper management encouraged me to experiment with Java to see how we could use it. Not everyone is so lucky. Even though many companies have started to use Java, many more have not. If your employer has not gotten onto the Java bandwagon, how should you go about convincing upper management that it is the right thing to do? Management wants proof that companies are using Java successfully. Where can you get proof like that?

A new book, Java for Business: Using Java to Win Customers, Cut Costs, and Drive Growth, edited by Thomas Anderson (Van Nostrand Reinhold), may be able to help you. It contains essays from representatives of fourteen different companies that use Java in their businesses. The book provides a good cross-section of companies, including Netscape, Marimba, Reuters, and the National Jewish Hospital.

Java for Business describes these essays as "case studies" on the use of Java within these companies. Projects are described in detail, and the authors talk about why Java was chosen for the project and what its advantages are. Each chapter stands well on its own, so you can skip among chapters to read about the companies you're most interested in without losing any continuity.

"Case studies" or advertisements?

How well does this work? Well, to be honest, I think the term "case study" is being used a bit liberally. Some of the chapters actually come off more as extended advertisements rather than case studies. For example, the chapter on Mitsubishi talks about two microprocessors that are capable of running Java and describes how Java chips can be used in Internet appliances. It's not really a view of how they came to the decision to use Java, other than they saw the opportunity to use it with their chips.

Marimba, the well-known Java start-up, also as a chapter in the book. It describes the Marimba products in detail, even citing companies that use Marimba technology. While not really a case study, it is a very good example of how Java can be used in conjunction with the Castanet tuner and transmitter. As it turns out, subsequent chapters refer to Marimba's software, so it is nice that a detailed explanation of what Castanet is is included in the book.

The writing quality and accuracy of information of the chapters varies from chapter to chapter, as you might expect from a book with so many different authors. Some information in the book is repeated in several chapters. There are several comparisons between Java and C++ and descriptions of Java's attributes. Some information, such as the section in the Reuters chapter that says that JDK 1.1 "will be released soon," is a bit misleading. (As you probably know, JDK 1.1 has been out for some time now.) Some projects, such as the tele-medicine project at National Jewish Hospital, are described in great detail, but make only small references to Java. Since the focus of the book is on Java, I would have liked to have seen more detailed descriptions of how those projects use Java. The best chapters give a balanced view of why Java is a good choice for their products and describe some of the problems companies ran into when using Java.

 

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