Who Should Read This Book?

This book is useful to anyone engaged in the development of enterprise-level systems on the J2EE platform. Whether you are an architect, designer, developer, or tester, this book can help you work more effectively and productively.

Primarily, this book targets anyone who considers himself or herself a software engineer. It is also of interest to anyone who works with or manages developers.

The title software engineer is worthy of further elaboration. IT professionals have a propensity for putting all manner of titles on business cards, from systems analyst and enterprise architect to quality specialist and IT consultant. The true software professional, however, is an extremely versatile individual who is fully capable of fulfilling many, but not necessarily all, of the predefined roles on a project. It is to this type of individual that I apply the term software engineer. Putting aside for a moment the technical description of the role and the associated computer scientist tag, a software engineer is someone who not only knows his or her profession but knows it well. He or she can effectively contribute in all project phases, whether analysis, design, implementation, or testing. Moreover, a software engineer continually looks for new ideas to improve what he or she does and how it is done. In short, a software engineer understands that self-improvement and continuous learning are fundamental activities for an IT professional.

If you think this description applies to you, then you are reading the right book.