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Comment Re:Once again 8/10 (Score 1) 45

by RickJWagner (#34622962) Attached to: Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
P.S. Validate my existence at www.rickwagner.blogspot.com. If you're feeling especially generous, click one of my ad-sense links. Though I've never cashed in yet, I think I get something like a dime for every million clicks! Or something like that...

Comment Re:Once again 8/10 (Score 1) 45

by RickJWagner (#34622954) Attached to: Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
Gee, thanks. (I think.) No, seriously, I'm a real-life code slinger and have been doing it for over 20 years. Am I an expert in every topic I write about? Sadly not. But if the topic is in the enterprise arena, there's a good chance I've got some hands-on experience there. I always try to call 'em like I see 'em, whether I've been working with the tech stack 15 years or 15 days. Thanks, Rick

Comment Re:Once again 8/10 (Score 1) 45

by RickJWagner (#34622826) Attached to: Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
You are correct, my personal blog has been heavy on Packt titles. But if you check other sources online, you'll find other reviews for other publishers. The common theme? Tech topics... (Packt has nicely asked if I'd post on my blog, others have not.) If you're really a glutton for research, hop out to Amazon where you can find "Data Engineering: Mining, Information and Intelligence". I actually got to write a few lines in that one! Rick

Comment Re:Once again 8/10 (Score 1) 45

by RickJWagner (#34622764) Attached to: Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
A good checklist, but you're totally wrong on the last point. I have never received a dime from Packt or any other publisher. (I did two reviews for Manning recently, for instance.) My total compensation? Sometimes a print copy of the book, sometimes an e-copy. I just like to keep current on tech topics, so I do a lot of reading. Rick

Comment Re:Once again 8/10 (Score 1) 45

by RickJWagner (#34622734) Attached to: Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning
Well, I guess you're right, I probably am a little heavy on '8's. But there's a reason-- I get to pick the books I review, so I tend to pick ones that I'm going to like. (Why aren't there any 10s? I guess I haven't found the perfect book yet.) I would say that if I do any reviews in the future I'll try to throw in more variety, but I really don't see it happening. (I'm going to pick books that I like....) so I'd say please just read the reviews (they're honest) and make your own numeric rating. Rick
Books

Submission + - Book Review for "Jboss AS 5 Performance Tuning"

Submitted by RickJWagner
RickJWagner writes: 20 percent inert ingredients, 80 percent nitro glycerin. That's how I'd describe "JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning" from Packt. The first 50 pages are nothing to get excited about. This first chapter and a half describes the author's performance tuning life cycle methodology and introduces us to a handful of open source tools that can assist us in our tuning efforts. The tools section seems especially weak-- there are plenty of screenshots showing the tool's menu screens, something you'd normally pick up in about a minute from the tool's distribution website. Honestly, at this point I was beginning to wonder if this book was going to live up to my expectations. Luckily I pressed on for a few more pages, and hit the rich paydirt that makes up the rest of the book. From that point on, every section yielded valuable tuning advice.

The author breaks the environment down into slices: Operating System, Application Server stack components, application code. Starting with the O/S, the book tells us the signs to watch for in various situations (i.e. how to detect and compensate for high or low utilization of the processor, or the disk.) The author explains likely causes for the problem, and what can be done about it.

Java programmers need to understand JVM tuning, and here it is given a whole chapter. This includes a lengthy explanation of how to correctly size your heap, followed by a nicely illustrated section on garbage collection, gc sizing, and choosing the best algorithm for your needs. All well done and very readable.

The book's subject is JBoss AS 5, and it's given a whole chapter, too. Thread pools and Connection pools are explained, as well as proper tuning of prepared statements and logging recommendations. Every programmer knows that logging can really drag performance down, right? Here we learn how to optimize it.

The middle of the book deals with JEE applications and the application server components that enable them. EJBs are given extensive coverage. JMS, a JEE hot-button, is also covered well. (Both JBoss Messaging and the newer HornetMQ are explained.)

The persistence layer is given holistic coverage. Starting with database design recommendations, the author proceeds to indexing, JDBC, connection pooling, and JPA/Hibernate. The Hibernate section is a good example of the kind of detail you'll find-- the author explains caching (first and second level) and the considerations you'll want to make to optimize their usage. Besides tuning the application server parts, there are recommendations for your application code, too. Hopefully you've bought into the recommendation to tune your code all throughout the development life cycle. If not, well, too bad for that one. Ditto for the database design.

One of the things JBoss makes really easy is clustering. Note: I didn't say cluster tuning, I said clustering. To optimize clustering, you'll have to understand all that low-level networky stuff like ethernet flow control and UDP buffer sizing. (I'm guessing this is not something your garden-variety developer thinks about every day, and make specific mention here as a demonstration of the kind of depth you get in this book.) Besides these bottom-layer concerns, the book also covers higher level parts of the stack like JGroups and JCache configuration, replication, and tuning cache storage. Unless you're really, really a bit-head, all that probably sounds a little deep. But the book explains it all in a way that makes it understandable and approachable.

JBoss uses Tomcat for it's web server tasks, so Tomcat is given good coverage as well. Nothing here seems JBoss specific, so most any Tomcat user could benefit from this part of the book. Connector configuration, thread pool sizing, and the Apache Portable Runtime are included. JBoss web server integration with Apache introduces us to mod_jk, mod_proxy, and mod_cluster. As throughout the book, the author uses JMeter to capture metrics to demonstrate to us the kind of performance we might get from each.

The final technical chapter deals with web application frameworks and web services. Web applications seem especially tunable in the development stage, while web services get code construction tips as well as configuration hints. The book ends with one more suggestion to make performance tuning part of your every day life rather than something crammed in after deployment time.

Like many technicians, I respect technical knowledge. This book is crammed full of it, and it's all presented in a readable manner. What's the bottom line? I'd recommend this book to any JBoss user (strongly), any JEE developer (with little reservation, especially Tomcat users), or any Java coder (who has a little extra money to spend.) Anyone else can probably live without this book. But if you're running JBoss (and you're technically minded), spend the money, you'll be glad you did.

The book can be found here: https://www.packtpub.com/jboss-as-5-performance-tuning/book
Books

Submission + - Look out Erlang-- There's a New Book in Town (manning.com)

Submitted by RickJWagner
RickJWagner writes: Look out Erlang-- There's a New Book in Town

Manning has just released a new Erlang title, called 'Erlang and OTP in Action'. For quite some time now, there's been a definitive guide to Erlang-- Joe Armstrong's excellent book 'Programming Erlang'. Well, guess what-- it's time to make a little extra room on the bookshelf, because the Erlang book-o-sphere has just shifted. There are now two must-have resources for an Erlang programmer.

The book is divided into three sections. The first one deals with the basics of Erlang and details about the OTP application framework. Part two shows how to build a production-worthy application in Erlang. The third part of the book is about integration and tuning.

Section 1 has chapters that cover the following: basics of Erlang and OTP, Erlang language fundamentals, writing a TCP-based RPC server, OTP and the supervisor model, and graphical tools to help your development efforts. Language newbies will spend some time here, as Erlang can be a little odd to programmers coming from non-functional environments. (Concepts like recursion are given great coverage, as it should be.) OTP, the Erlang ubber-framework, is explained in detail as well. Section 1 alone would make a decent book on Erlang, but there is much more here.

Section 2 covers building a production application. The example given is a caching application, designed to increase throughput of a web application. In addition to expected topics like logging and an event-framework, the reader is exposed to Erlang's built-in distributed database, Mnesia. Application packaging and deployment considerations are also covered here.

Chapters in section 2 follow a helpful pattern to guide the reader through building an application. First, there is an introduction to some high level concept. Next, it is shown how this new widget can be used to further the needs of our production-worthy caching application. Finally the authors provide code that brings the desired functionality into the ever growing caching application. Erlang code tends to be somewhat dense-- not much code goes a long way-- so much of the latter part of each chapter is explanatory text explaining why you'd want to implement things in the way the authors did. Chapters in this part of the book read like an in-depth tutorial, and that's not a bad thing.

The third section of the book shows how to integrate with external users via HTTP, how to allow programs written in other languages to communicate with your Erlang code, and how to tune your environment. It's notable that Java gets a whole chapter on integration, through JInterface (in comparison, Joe's book offers about 4 lines on this topic. In fairness, that's a much older book, though.)

Throughout the book, simple illustrations are used to demonstrate key concepts. I found these to be extremely helpful, as Erlang in general is quite different than most programming languages. The delta between Erlang application development and other-language development is an order of magnitude different than something like the difference between Java and Ruby or Python and .Net. It's got different characteristics and different concepts. Given these large differences, I really appreciated the illustrations.

The book covers language built-ins like management tools, profilers, etc. (If you've ever used GNU development tools to profile an application, some of these might look a little familiar). The reader is given a lot to think about, and it's scattered over nearly 400 pages. To make a Java analogy, it's like an all-in-one book that teaches the language, the JDK and tools, JEE, and shows how to integrate your enterprise application with external entities. It's ambitious, but the book does a good job in explaining everything. That's why the impressive page-count helps. A skinnier book probably wouldn't be able to pull all that off.

The book is written with easy-to-understand anecdotes that help the reader grasp the finer points of Erlang craftsmanship. You definately get the impression the authors have written 'real' code, and they offer strong direction to guide the reader through constructing application code. There is a big difference between understanding language syntax and understanding best practices in application construction. Section 2 in particular is loaded with best practices, and this alone makes this book a worthwhile read for Erlang coders writing production applications.

Probably the best thing I can say about this book is that the authors seem to put the advancement of Erlang above all else. To bolster that statement, I'd point out that they give the reader a list of other Erlang books they may wish to read, and they also include several mentions of Joe Armstrong. (Joe is the author of what has been the most popular Erlang book.) In my opinion, the authors can afford this indulgence, as this book is strong enough to merit inclusion on the Erlang programmer's bookshelf.

So who is this book good for? I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to program in Erlang. It can get beginners off the ground, and will reveal many best-practices to those who already know their way around Erlang.

"Erlang and OTP in Action" can be found here: http://manning.com/logan/

Comment Re:Packt Publishing? (Score 1) 72

by RickJWagner (#34287564) Attached to: NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook
Thanks for reading my stuff. Especially the blog, please do visit that one often. (I use AdSense, if you visit my blog about a million times I'll make a dollar or so.) ;) But do please note: I review tech books from other publishers, too. A few examples: http://www.javalobby.org/articles/jboss-seam-rick/ (Apress) http://www.javalobby.org/articles/beautiful-code/ (O Reilly) http://rickwagner.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-review-spring-dynamic-modules-in.html (Manning) Full disclosure: I always sign my real name to my reviews, I have never received payment of any kind from anyone, except for sometimes a copy of the book to be reviewed. My reviews tend to be honest but maybe a little on the kind side, as sometimes books appeal to some people but not all. I try to be as technically accurate as possible. Watch for future reviews: Erlang and OTP in Action (Manning) JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning (Packt) Please do keep reading my reviews! Thanks, Rick
Book Reviews

Submission + - Book Review: "NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook"

Submitted by RickJWagner
RickJWagner writes: Are you a .Net developer? Do you have to persist your application objects to a database? If so, I know of a book you might be interested in. The book is Packt Publishing's "NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook", and it's out in print now.

NHibernate is a port of the popular Hibernate object-relational mapper (ORM, for those who like TLAs.) An object-relational mapper is a framework that lets the developer get and retrieve application state from a database, and it does so in an efficient, non-intrusive, and flexible manner. Hibernate is the top of the line ORM implementation, yet it's easy enough to learn that even a newbie will find it easy to get started.

This book is written in Packt's 'Cookbook' style, which means it's really a series of how-to templates that guide the reader through some goal-centric activity. A 'recipe' is a formula for accomplishing something, like setting up a session for a web application, or using a profiler with NHibernate, or creating a validator class. You may not know what some of these things do-- but you will when you read the recipe! Each recipe follows a repeated pattern, with sub-sections "Getting Ready", "How to do it", "How it works", "There's More". At first glance, this can be a little deceptive for readers of technical books-- there's really no lengthy text sections that explain the basics of the tool in the early chapters of the book. You might be lulled into thinking this means there's no explanation for how things work, but that would be wrong! The truth is, there is plenty of good NHibernate theory and explanation, it's just that it's contained within the "How it Works" and "There's More" section of each instructional section, not in a chapter devoted to overview just by itself. For this reason, I'd urge bookshelf browsers to be sure to read one topic through front-to-back thoroughly, to get a feel for how the book presents theory as well as practical hands-on-the-keyboard instruction.

As far as content goes, there is a lot of useful content in this book. The author presents 70 different recipes for activites that range from the basic (i.e. your first class-to-database mappings) to the unusual (i.e. using NHibernate Spatial for solving distance-related problems.) The author offers plenty of good text in most of these, but again-- don't be upset by the placement of the high-level material. It's all there, it's just placed a little differently than what you'd find in most technical books.

The book is easy to read. The text is plain and straight to the point, and the author's writing style is quite readable. The code examples are likewise clean and well-formatted. (By the way, I'd urge you to go to Packt's site to get the source bundle if you buy the book. There's a lot of code referenced, you certainly wouldn't want to type it all by hand if you can get it handed to you.) The book runs a little over 300 pages, and most of the type is generously spaced. This is not a strong theoretical reference, but it is more than adequate as a primer for the vast majority of the tasks you'd want to accomplish with NHibernate.

So who is this book good for? I'd give it high marks for .Net developers who want to use NHibernate, regardless of experience level with the tool. I say that because there are enough use cases presented that there is almost certainly a subset of new material for almost anyone. How about Java Hibernate users? I think it's a decent book for them-- NHibernate is a very close port of the base product, so a Java user can get something out of this book, too. (For that crowd, this would obviously not be a good primary choice, but is worthwhile reading if you already have a Java go-to reference for Hibernate.) For anyone else wanting a good high-level overview of ORM use-- I'd say this book is only of marginal value. This is because the bulk of the explanatory material is presented in the context of 'how to' accomplish some particular task and isn't easily accessible without skipping from recipe to recipe.

By the way, lest you think NHibernate is only for .Net devs, I mostly ran the code samples under MonoDevelop on Ubuntu. This was my first adventure with MonoDevelop (the open source IDE for Mono, which itself is an open source, multi-platform port of .Net.) I was pleasantly surprised by the level of polish in the development environment, it really is a nice environment. Again, if you're a Java developer, I'd consider this book a decent learning supplement but would not recommend it as a primary for Hibernate proper.

There you have it-- your pocket guide to the NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook. I hope your recipes turn out well!

The book can be viewed here: https://www.packtpub.com/nhibernate-3-0-cookbook/book
Book Reviews

Submission + - Book Review for "Spring Dynamic Modules in Action"

Submitted by RickJWagner
RickJWagner writes: Every once in a while a technical book comes out that so exhaustively covers a topic that it becomes the definitive word on the topic. These books are the end-all reference, the final authority, the singular go-to reference that every practitioner falls back to in their hour of need. This book review covers one such book, the newly released "Spring Dynamic Modules in Action" from Manning.

First, a quick word about OSGi. OSGi is a specification meant to make Java more 'modular'. In practice, this means it is an attempt to solve the age-old problem of 'jar hell', including all the class loading issues that go with it. (Users of JEE application servers know what I'm talking about here.) OSGi lets you specify every external library your component needs, to the version. So if you need FooLib v1.2.3, and the application beside yours needs FooLib v10.9.8, that's not a problem at all-- both applications can happily run in the same OSGi container, at the same time.

Should you care about OSGi? The answer is 'maybe'. It's without question a big deal to the makers of Java application containers-- everybody from JBoss to Mule has an opinion on OSGi, and many vendors are busy baking it into their infrastructure. What will differ to you, the user of the container, is how the container developers decided to make OSGi available to their users. This book is about how Spring went about it, and what you need to do to use Spring and OSGi together.

Spring DM (short for 'Dynamic Modules') is a framework that enables you to use the popular Spring framework with OSGi. Spring, of course, comes with a multitude of components for solving all kinds of enterprise application needs. So this book is all about using Spring with OSGi.

It's a big book, over 500 pages, written by 3 authors. In those 500 pages you get lots of valuable content:
- An introduction to OSGi and an explanation of its purpose
- Explanation of how Spring can be used within an OSGi container, review of the currently available containers
- Details about how Spring DM works, and the parts you need to understand
- Details about OSGi services, and how they relate to Spring DM
- In depth best practices for data access, enterprise Java projects, and web applications (includes specific advice for popular web application frameworks)
- Testing practices
- Extended uses of OSGi, including likely future direction

A big part of what makes this book valuable are the many pieces of advice from the authors as they explain best practices for using various tools. So you want to use Eclipse, Ant or Maven? No problem, these are all covered. About to use MyFaces, Wicket, or DWR? All covered. Are you a Tomcat user or Jetty? Check and check. I'm sure you get the picture-- if you use these tools, the path ahead of you is already blazed and you can avoid some headaches by leveraging the author's experience.

Make no mistake about it, there will be some headaches ahead of you. Seldom is an application written today that doesn't use an external framework or library of some sort. Using these pre-packaged bits of functionality (and we need to be thankful for them!) might mean 're-packaging', if the library isn't offered as an OSGi bundle. This re-packaging means pealing apart some .jar files and editing the manifest files inside-- yuck! Luckily, this book offers you two things to help you with this task: tooling and advice. Tooling comes in handy because it can automate a lot of the manual, error-prone drudgery that goes along with such a task. Advice is even more valuable-- these authors have already worked done the hard work and have written down what you need to do to make your efforts successful.

So who is this book appropriate for? I'd say anyone who is going to use Spring DM. If you're convinced this is the right framework for your needs, you need a copy of this book. If you're not sure, or if you're just a casual reader wanting to know more about OSGi-- then I'd say you should look through the book first before you buy it. You might like it, or you might not because a lot of the book is all about hands-on use of Spring DM and the little tricks you need to make it work right the first time. But if you're just interested in an overview of the technology, this book might be too detail-oriented and not enough high-level for your tastes.

The book can be viewed at http://www.manning.com/cogoluegnes/.

Final opinion: If you use Spring DM, you need to buy a copy of this book. It's going to be the definitive resource on the topic for a long time.

Comment Re:Woot! (Score 4, Informative) 55

by RickJWagner (#33889354) Attached to: Drools JBoss Rules 5.0
Yes, it's true I do a few book reviews. But there are a few things you should consider: - I never accept any payment from Packt or any other publisher. My reviews are done purely for the joy of reading and learning. - I always write what I honestly believe to be true. If a friend were to ask me what I thought of a book, I'd tell that friend just what you see in the review. - I always post reviews under my real name. It's part of giving you my honest opinion. So does that make me a shill? I don't think so, but it's in the eye of the beholder. Rick

Comment Re:Doesn't IBM JRules have BRMS... (Score 1) 55

by RickJWagner (#33889306) Attached to: Drools JBoss Rules 5.0
Yes, they do. (I've recently worked with that one a bit, too.) But at it's heart ILog (the IBM product) is still a Rete implementation, which means it conforms to the 'IF/THEN' or 'WHEN/THEN' advantage/disadvantage. Interestingly enough, many vendors of BREs view their BRMS as the 'strategic advantage' that commands a higher price. The basic rule engine doesn't seem to be treated this way.... BR, Rick

Comment Re:Fiendishly difficult (Score 1) 55

by RickJWagner (#33889292) Attached to: Drools JBoss Rules 5.0
Hi PCM2. The point I was making is that IF/THEN questions are very easily answered. (And verified by the reader above who mentioned the ease of using spreadsheets.) But if you have a problem that isn't predicated on the attributes of a single object, things can get much trickier. But don't take my word for it-- go download Drools (especially with the excellent Eclipse plug-in) and give it a shot. You'll soon see that there are questions that are easily answered, and questions that are not.... Best Regards, Rick
Book Reviews

Submission + - Book Review: "Drools JBoss Rules 5.0: Developer's

Submitted by RickJWagner
RickJWagner writes: Book Review for "Drools JBoss Rules 5.0 Developer's Guide"

Drools (sometimes called "JBoss Rules") is a Business Rules Engine and supporting ecosystem. Drools, like other BREs, promises to lower the barriers to entry for application programming. Armed with this book, can a Business Analyst be used to write application logic? I don't believe so, and I'll tell you why.

Business Rules Engines, especially those based on the Rete algorithm, strongly favor rules written in 'if/then' format. (Sometimes the marketers will call this 'when/then' logic.) The basic premise is that you write your rules as a series of rules that individually specify matching logic for some objects you make available to the engine, then you specify what to do if any of the objects match your conditions. Example "IF there is a customer with age > 60, THEN allow senior discount". That's the marketing promise, anyway.

This book does a great job of showing you how to build a banking application, complete with validation, data transormation, and reporting functions. Each of these are implemented using Drools, of course, and workable code is provided at every step. The author takes care to explain nearly every line of code provided and highlights important classes and features as they occur. I think the author did well here.

Writing business rules is quite a bit different than writing logic in a language like Java or C++. I'd compare it more directly to writing SQL-- you're declaratively specifying which objects (out of a group) you want something to happen to, so you're thinking in terms of matching logic rather than ordered steps in an algorithm. You also don't always have complete control over the order in which your rules are fired, so it's not like garden-variety coding where it can be treated like a 5-step recipe. It just takes a different mindset. Once you're used to it, things are easier to understand, and this book can help. (By the way, I've fooled around with BREs for about a decade now, and support a production application that uses Drools, so I'd consider myself moderately skilled in BRE usage.)

In the course of writing the banking application the book is anchored upon, the author occasionally makes design decisions that are specific to doing things "The Rule Engine Way". One example is the use of 'global' facilities for validation reporting. The author might have chosen to implement this another way, but chose what he considered the best path and briefly explained his reasoning in making the choice. That's exactly the kind of thing that I think a BRE-literate reader would find of value-- expert insights into how to use this tool, not mere explanations of syntax, etc. Unfortunately, these insights were relatively few in nature and not highlighted where they were presented, so they might not be apparent to readers that aren't already thinking in the BRE way.

One thing the book glossed over that I wish was given more coverage is Guvnor, the Drools Business Rule Management System. Basically, a BRMS is a web application used to change existing rules, write new rules (provided they have been pre-templated by a rule author, usually), and version the rules. I'm told this is one of the key differentiators between Drools and commercial offerings like IBM's JRules, so it's a little disappointing that it was given virtually no coverage in this book.

As the author fleshes out the banking application, we encounter a little scope bleed as the reader is introduced to iBatis, Spring and Tomcat. While I see how these are necessary for the provided application, I viewed them as distractions and potentially barriers to successful implementation for some readers. To counter that, I offer the author kudos for covering a multitude of Drools facets like Domain Specific Language inclusion, Complex Event Processing, and rule ordering through "Drools Flow". All these are valuable tools in the Drools user's toolbox and they are given adequate coverage.

As I hinted at in the opening paragraph, marketers of BREs love to show demonstrations where rules are written in shocking clear 'if/then' syntax. These rules are purported to control powerful application logic and can be maintained by low-cost business analysts. Is this reality with Drools? No, I'm afraid not. It's also not true with JRules, Blaze, or any other Rete-powered BRE. What marketers will show you is how easy rule maintenance can be-- but they're not showing you how difficult things can be when your logic doesn't neatly fit the 'if/then' paradigm. For example, commercial vendors love to show insurance logic where they offer rules like 'IF the driver's age is over 25, THEN give them a discount'. Next time you see one of those, ask the marketer to show you something along the lines of 'Calculate the average age of the drivers in the household'. Notice how that doesn't say 'IF'? Requests of this type will typically require a skilled rule author, not a business analyst copying from a rule template. This type of logic does not play to the strengths of the engine. Actually, implementing this type of logic can be fiendishly difficult-- that's the reason BRE developers are among the best paid of application developers (Check Dice or Monster.com). I say all this to let you know BRE usage sometimes is easy, sometimes is really hard. In a workspace like that, I like to have advice handy from a multitude of providers, and I'll be happy to add this book to my reference collection. I just wish there were more highlighted best practices in this book to help the user leverage the author's expert experience. (By the way, there are a few more books on rules engines available, but most all of what I've seen is truly awful. I do believe they were written by business analysts, and probably ones who have never actually written an application powered by a BRE. I do not find that fault with this book.)

So, what's the verdict? I'm glad I read this book (twice, to make sure I got everything) and would recommend it to anyone using Drools. If you're not yet a Drools user, I don't think this book offers enough remedial material to effectively help you get on board-- for that I recommend the excellent documentation offered online with the product. (By the way, I hope you like cheese. The Drools doc authors seem to have some sort of cheese fixation, so references to cheese are plentiful.) For a Drools user like me, this book offers a view at parts of the toolkit I hadn't yet used and a view of how an expert user might go about designing an application. I'll call it a keeper.

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