Here's a little information on what the book's about, who it's for, how the book came to be, and who we are. We're doing this because The Big Picture isn't like most books out there. We want to make sure you know what you're getting.

What This Book Is and Isn't

This book is a big picture look at J2EE. What it's made of, how the parts work together, what the heck a container is, what entity beans are for. Occasionally we'll also touch on things like when J2EE and its parts might or might not be the right choice for a particular project.

This book will help you understand how things work so that not only do you know but you can explain the J2EE big picture to others. It will help you feel comfortable asking questions in meetings, and give you a great foundation if you're going on to learn how to do J2EE programming or system administration. You'll also learn the point of the technologies. Not just what message-driven beans are, not just what an EJB container is, not just what Web services are, but why they're around.

This book is the paperback version of getting that J2EE wizard down the hall from you to sit down over lunch or a few beers and explain things to you. Reading this book is like sitting in a bar with your coworkers after work, not falling asleep in your fourth session of the day at JavaOne.

This book is not going to teach you how to do J2EE. Don't look for a lot of painstakingly annotated code examples. There are a few bits of code but they're not the focus. We believe in using a relaxed, casual approach to teaching and to just how we write. For instance, the three main categories of J2EE services are analogous to Brain, Courage, and Heart from The Wizard of Oz, so we use that analogy. And we sometimes say things like "clearly, that would suck" or "stateless session beans are flaky but good at heart." We do take accuracy seriously. Very seriously. We're just not concerned with writing this book in a way that will get us to the finals of the "Pompous Technical People" competition.