Govind holds the illustrious titles of editor-in-chief of Java Report Online and Distributed Computing columnist for the Java Report. This book is another snapshot of the Enterprise Java technologies and as such, it covers JDBC, Servlets, JNI, RMI, CORBA (albeit version 2.0) and EJB. Initially, it appears to cover almost the same ground as Developing Java Enterprise Applications by Asbury and Weiner, but a close comparison shows certain subjects are conspicuous by their absence (JTA/JTS, JSP, JNDI), although this book has an interesting section on Jini that gives a descent level of information. This book also covers the Java Native Interface to a level I haven't seen anywhere else. Whilst the level of detail spent on each section is better than most overview books, some of the code examples are unnecessarily lengthy - it would have been better to leave out the GUI construction code for example. The examples are what make the book, however. Govind has gone to lengths to provide full code examples for each of the enterprise solutions presented.

In my opinion this book falls short of the range covered in Asbury&Weiner and it certainly has dated already, which makes the latter the Enterprise Java overview book of choice. Where this book does win, however, is in the depth of its examples and its material on the Java Native Interface.