I originally picked up this book thinking that it would serve as a design guide. As I started reading it I realized this was not quite the case. This book describes how J2EE in general can be applied to create scalable and reliable web applications. The book introduces the various aspects of J2EE technologies such as JSP, Servlets, EJB's, JMS, JDBC, etc. and explains how those technologies contribute to web application performance. The book does not provide what I would consider OO design patterns or any real pattern related design information. Regardless, I found the book informative, enjoyable and one of the quickest to read books I have encountered regarding Java. It solidified my understanding of the capabilities of the J2EE platform and did so in a concise way. There were just enough code examples in the book to exemplify the various technologies without becoming tedious.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn J2EE technologies, possibly just after reading a first book on the Java language itself. I recommended this book to my manager as it would give someone a clear understanding of the usage of the overall platform without getting into gory API level details.

The only reason I give this book 4 stars instead of 5 is due to the fact that the title, possibly unintentionally, is a bit deceiving. While performance was discussed, I would consider it cursory. A title along the lines of 'An Overview of J2EE, A Scalable and High Performance Application Development Platform.' might have been closer to appropriate than its current title. I believe I am now better prepared to jump into an actual J2EE design pattern book.