This summer I red “Spring in Action” by Craig Walls.

The book is well written, easy to read, with lots of code fragments which clarify textual descriptions, and with references to Design Pattern and JSR too.

In the “Part I: Core Spring” Spring Container xml-based configuration is detailed covered. The Java annotation-based configuration is well explained too, as well as how Spring supports AOP.

In the “Part II: Spring application essentials” I’ve appreciated how Spring’s data persistence and transactions management are presented, not focused on a particular technology, but different solutions are compared: JdbcDaoSupport - Hibernate - JPA, and JDBC - Hibernate - JPA - JTA transaction manager. Than Spring MVC, Spring Web Flow and Spring Security are explained with the “In Action” approach which, in my opinion, is focused on demonstrating hands-on how to use the tools in an effective way, avoiding common pitfalls.

In the “Part III: Integrating Spring” I’ve appreciated how Spring makes simple working with WS, JMS and JMX. The last chapters “Odds and ends” covers few small topics extremely useful.

Look at others books I’ve red on my LibraryThing library.