Early this month I emailed Jacquie Barker (author Beginning Java Objects and Deploying Java Objects). This was the email and I quote "Yes, your email about the difficulties encountered by legacy programmers in transitioning to J2EE is indeed true. It took me quite sometime to really understand the whole concept, but after a journey (as you call it) distance equivalent to reading 5 different books on J2EE, I finally found one book which is for me, the super book on J2EE. This book is Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans and the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition by Ed Roman. Although this is a 1999 book on J2EE, the explanations are so thorough and graceful in presenting each topic, that I highly recommend this to legacy programmers new to the subject". To Ed Roman, thank you very much indeed.