Book Review: Beginning J2ME - From Novice to Professional, 3rd Edition
By Sing Li and Jonathan Knudsen
Published by APress
This book is extremely well-written and laid out, with the ordering of the book's 18 short chapters very logically laid out. The title describes how Java 2 Micro Edition can be used to create robust applications across a variety of platforms and vendor devices, and is a great quick read that gets the major points across without dedicating too much of your time.
The MIDP API reference in the book's sole appendix is helpful, although I would have also liked to see a glossary of mobile and embedded development terms. In particular, I found very helpful the chapters on BlueTooth, SMS/MMS (the Wireless Messaging API), persistent data storage by way of the PIM API, and using multimedia.
While the book's obvious primary concern is development with J2ME, the major concepts of wireless development are discussed, which is most appreciated. The chapters themselves are short and to the point, and as such don't exhaustively contain the full APIs or lengthy code. The theoretical examples are brief and aren't examined in great detail, but the code examples are quite helpful, showing a componentized, servlet-based architecture using best-practices object-oriented programming and patterns.
The book isn't a step-by-step guide to aide newbie Java developers through the process of coding, deploying and maintaining an app, so this book is best enjoyed by a sophisticated, experienced Java dev. And since the book is more geared to concepts you put into practice, not a handholding guide, you're still best accompanied by having Sun's official JDocs at your side.
But there's something all of us can learn in this book, so if you're serious about getting into embedded Java programming, check it out.