From the time this book was first published it seems that not many people appreciated it. That is probably because it is not a Wrox Press-style treatise on how to build full-blown professional Java enterprise programs. Instead it is a sampler of all of the various Java enterprise technologies, complete with small programs that show how to use the various API's. It starts out answering such simple questions as What is enterprise development? and Why use Java for enterprise development? It then devotes a chapter or two each to introducing the reader to the various enterprise API's - JDBC for database control, the JNDI for managing objects in a directory, server-side programming with servlets, JSP, and JavaBeans, managing remote objects with RMI and Corba, the basics of XML, creating and sending email using JavaMail, and much more. None of the chapters is intended to make you an industrial-strength Java enterprise programmer. The intention is just to give you an idea of what all of the individual technologies and packages can do via short programming examples so that you are ready to tackle the Wrox Press J2EE books of the world. The one bad point of the book is that it is in dire need of an update via a 3rd edition that I think will probably never come due to the lack of success this book ultimately had in the realm of total sales. However, if you are comfortable with Java and want to get a taste of what the enterprise API's can do I think it is still a good investment, particularly at the very low used prices at which it is currently available.