I am starting a new series discussing various JEE technologies. Feel free to fork me on GitHub, blog posts are to follow.
There is a couple of issues I have always had with the Java EE tutorial. First of all, it ages too fast. JEE covers a broad range of technologies and keeping all the material up-to-date is a challenge. Secondly, I feel there is a shortage of clear and concise examples. The official documentation doesn't read too well in my opinion. Frequent side tracks and tight integration with an IDE (NetBeans) make the tutorial difficult to follow.
While excellent articles and other resources are plentiful, I still believe there is a great value in having a central repository of sample apps showcasing benefits of the JEE stack. NetBeans' learning trail is such a place. Inevitably though it largely relies on proprietary features which creates unnecessary overhead.
In the upcoming blog posts I will review the examples, give them a bit of an edge and try to align them with good coding practices. Bear with me and stay tuned.