Don't buy the Beginning J2EE 1.4 book, and if you are unlucky enough to already have then complain to wrox/wiley or whoever owns this book. This book was written with respect to the 1.4 beta release, and now that j2ee 1.4 if finalized, its completely useless. You will run into trouble on the very first page, when they tell you to start the app server with j2ee (the j2ee command no longer exists) and Cloudscape has been replaced too. According to the reviews on amazon.com the author is bringing out an updated version in feb 2004, i hope in the interests of customer relations that whey will allow anyone who got stuck with this version to exchange it for the revised addition. In fairness to the authors, they did mention towards the end of chapter 1 that the book was written with the 1.4 beta, they really got screwed by the extent to which the beta bore no relation to the final j2ee 1.4