Annotations in Tiger -- Annotations in J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) bring a much-needed metadata facility to the core Java language. In Brett McLaughlin's IBM developerWorks columns, he explains why metadata is so useful, delves into Tiger's built-in annotations, and shows how to create custom annotations. Brett is the author of Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook.

Developing Your First Enterprise Beans -- One of the most important features of EJB is that enterprise beans have the ability to work with containers from different vendors, but selecting a server and installing your enterprise beans aren't trivial processes. Learn how to define the remote interface, create a deployment descriptor, deploy, and everything else you need to create and use your first entity bean, in this excerpt from Enterprise JavaBeans, 4th Edition.

Study Shows Safari Saves Time -- A recent study by The Ridge Group of Princeton, New Jersey found that Safari Bookshelf delivers savings of about 24 times its cost. The group found that without the use of an Electronic Reference Library (ERL), the typical technology professional spends an average of 31 hours per month looking for answers, researching issues, and helping colleagues do the same. Safari subscribers, however, report an average of 13.5 hours saved per month--nearly half the amount of time lost by people who don't subscribe. Test it out: get a free trial.

Better, Faster, Lighter Java: Do One Thing, and Do It Well -- There's only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. That's also the best way to code. Each bite of clear, simple Java code must have a single purpose. In Chapter 3 of Better, Faster, Lighter Java, you'll explore how to keep a maniacal focus on a single problem so that you can understand the problem; distill the problem to its essence; build effective, decoupled layers in the architecture; and periodically refine your approach. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

Hardcore Java: Practical Reflection -- Reflection is one of the least understood aspects of Java, but also one of the most powerful. It allows you to build tools rather than panels, which adds complexity to your code but enables you to create systems that are much faster and cheaper to maintain. Learn all about it in this chapter from Hardcore Java. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

Aspect-Oriented Annotations -- Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and attributes are two leading-edge programming concepts, each with typical applications. By combining them, using attributes to indicate where AOP code should execute, you can effectively declare new Java syntax. Here's an introduction to this new technique, from Bill Burke, a coauthor of Enterprise JavaBeans, 4th Edition.

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Keeping Up with the Java Joneses -- Ian Darwin covers a variety of new Java 1.5 features, including generics, J2SE 1.5 threading, the return of printf, and the IDEs NetBeans and Eclipse. Ian wraps up this article with resources to help you keep up with the rest of the Java Joneses. Ian is the author of the recently released Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition.

Criteria Queries in Hibernate -- James Elliot shows you how to use simple criteria and compound criteria, apply criteria to associations, and query by example using Hibernate, in this excerpt (in PDF format) from Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook.

In Better, Faster, Lighter Java authors Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland lay out five basic principles to combat the bloat that has built up over time in modern Java programming. Justin applies these same principles to programming in .NET in this article, Better, Faster, Lighter Programming in .NET and Java.

Java vs .NET Security: Epilogue -- Having surveyed the current state of the art of security in Java and .NET, Denis Pilipchuk continues the story with a look at where the two platforms are headed in the near future. This epilogue is included in one of O'Reilly's new eDocuments: Java vs .NET Security (PDF).

Demonstrating Spring's Finesse -- Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland provide a counter-example to the J2EE Pet Store application to show how using Spring can solve problems with simplicity and finesse rather than muscle, in this excerpt from their book, Better, Faster, Lighter Java.

Nested Classes, Part 2 -- One of the strangest types of inner classes is the limited-scope inner class, and the often confusing anonymous classes associated with it. Get a better idea of how inner classes work in Java, their syntax, and their problems, in this excerpt from O'Reilly's Hardcore Java.

Why Web Developers Need Java Server Faces -- Several good frameworks exist to make the Java server programmer's life easier. Unfortunately, problems still exist. In his inaugural Java Q&A; column, Chuck Cavaness explains why Java Server Faces matters. Chuck is the author of Programming Jakarta Struts and the recently released Jakarta Struts Pocket Reference.

JSTL 1.0: What JSP Applications Need, Part 3 -- In the final installment in this series on JSTL, learn how to leverage the JSTL classes when developing your own custom actions, by Hans Bergsten, author of JavaServer Pages, 2nd Edition.

New Safari Titles--Search, annotate, and read your favorite O'Reilly books on Safari Tech Books Online. New Safari titles include: Java NIO, Perl for Oracle DBAs, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, and Essential Blogging.

Working with Complex Data Types--Learn how to pass custom types as parameters in Java in this excerpt from Java and SOAP.

O'Reilly Wins Best Web Services Book Awards--Web Services Journal announced the winners of its first annual Readers' Choice Awards, and O'Reilly took top honors in the book category. Programming Web Services with SOAP won the first runner-up award, and the winner was Java Web Services.

Working with Complex Data Types--Learn to use an array as the return value of a service method in part two of this excerpt from Java and SOAP.