"a bible is meant to target a large audience" claims the author, indeed... but this book targets only the beginners! In my humble oppinion a bible should try to cover all the topics on a subject not only the basic ones. there are a lot of integration topics missing in this so called "bible" like: integrating Flex with a Java Seam based backend, Flex client authentication to a Java backend server, Flex MVC with Cairngorm + Java, how to secure your Flex application (btw any webstore is a secure application).

Short resumé: this book is structured into 3 parts, first part starts provides a lot of "how to" + screen shots on: Java, Eclipse, Ant installation -not so sure if those topics belong to a bible related on Flex-Java Integration, and it ends with an application about Flex.

Second part starts ok, first 3 chapter provide the basics about how to connect flex to java, how to develop a java web application with flex front-end, how to write JUnit and Flex Unit tests which so far is OK, but chapter 8 introduces databases and provides AGAIN a lot of screen shots of how to install MySQL (?!) there is also a screen with the MySQL download website!! - I agree a DB is almost a must for todays applications but wasn't this chapter supposed to belong to the first part where there also the other install procedures, next chapter introduces hibernate but never mentions about the hbm2ddl.auto property which if is set to create or update then hibernate can auto create the DB tables instead of manually creating tables.

Third part promises to teach reader how to build advanced flex-java applications, but it simply fails! The authors continue their "writing with screen shots" style (I think their goal was to provide at least one screen shot per page for e.g. chapter 8 has 28 pages but 32 pictures/ screen shots, even if they repeat the screen shots) despite of what this part claims. For e.g. they provide again screen shots of how to connect to your MySQL server (ch .12 page 310) even if the same screen shots was provided in (ch 8. page 219), figure 8.16 page 220 is the same with figure 12.2 on page 311. I mean if the reader learns from ch. 8 how to login to his MySQL DB, how to define a new schema, how to create tables with MySQL GUI tools why do you repeat the same things in ch. 12?! why don't you modify your hibernate.cfg.xml file and add a line like this:

< property name = " hbm2ddl.auto " > " update < / property >

and say that now hibernate will take care of creating the tables? wasn't this part supposed to be an advanced part?

the good part is that the book provides also ant scripts of how to build the example code besides the eclipse build



Conclusion: The real title should be: "Beggining Java and Flex Integration" or "Java and Flex Integration for non-programmers". If you are an absolute beginner - who never installed ant, eclipse, mysql - then you can buy this book, if you have just a little experience on the above mentioned technologies than my advice is to search another book or google is your best friend (for e.g. you can find better tutorials on Flex + BlazeDS + Spring + hibernate)