James Crume & Kevin Mukhar 
Beginning J2EE 1.4 [PDF ebook] 
From Novice to Professional

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) is an extremely powerful platform for developing enterprise-level Java-based applications, primarily for the server. This book shows you how to harness that power, guiding you through the details of how the pieces of the J2EE platform fit together. This book goes further than just showing you how to code a JSP or an EJB: It explains when and where to use these APIs, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and perhaps most important, how to employ the best practices for using them. This book also contains hands-on tutorials, clear explanations, and working code examples that will take you to the next stepfrom writing client-side desktop applications to writing enterprise applications. You will learn how to use the individual APIs and tools in the J2EE platform, and how to bring these together to create your own enterprise applications.