Actually, to understand the importance of reading B. V. Raman's texts perhaps it would be best if I introduced those of you who do not know who he is, to who he was. At present, Raman is the most erudite and influential 20th Century Hindu Jyotishi, who was a magazine editor, lecturer and progressive thinker responsible for informing modern Vedic knowledge with the important fundamentals and advanced principles of classical jyotish. Raman is particularly attributed with introducing classical Vedic principles to Western audiences. Western students, especially, have cherished this great accomplishment, since most of Jyotish was, and still is, to some extent today, preserved and learned through the oral tradition. Raman's highly instructive texts are landmark guides for most serious Vedic students and astrologers. He advised many Indian leaders and other notables, and is attributed with having made a host of accurate predications regarding world events.

The Three Hundred Important Combinations are planetary combinations known as Yogas that most Jyotish students should memorize and know. In fact, knowledge of yogas is perhaps one of the most fundamental interpretative components of reading any Vedic horoscope. The only problem you may face in reading this book is that it is randomly presented. That is, the presentation of the yogas are not organized in a quick reference manner, so this text will almost compel you to learn and memorize the various yogas as you read them--perhaps this was intended (?).

All in all, this is one of the most important texts a Jyotishi student or practitioner could own, and should have in his or her collection.

Indispensable practical handbook to the most frequently occurring and useful planetary yoga's (combinations) in Jyotisha. Includes Chandra-Mangala yoga (for wealth) Gajakesari yoga (for character) and Vishnu yoga (for fortune) plus 297 others. All 300 planetary yoga's are discussed by Raman not only with a pious nod to the scriptures but also with comments from his extensive lifelong practice. After seven decades of Jyotisha practice Shri Raman sometimes disagrees with the sages! Sadly, like virtually all books from India, this marvelous manual lacks an index. Nevetheless, Very Highly Recommended for the working Jyotishi.

Bought this book and have been very impressed with the content. There is a LARGE amount of very solid material in this book. Total page count is 1490 pages and the pages I've read so far have been wonderful. There is just about everything in here related to J2EE, alot of material on EJB, new Web Services coverage, JAXR, DSML, you name it and it is there. They havent skimped either (see the page count above). They have alot of examples and some pretty cool diagrams that have helped me understand the J2EE APIs. It is all J2EE 1.4 and some additional material. I dont write reviews but it is clear that they spent a alot of time on this book. Ive also been very very happy so far with the book and it is a permanent addition to my library so I figure that they deserve a good review.

This book takes very enterprise application developer approach. CORBA,RMI, JMS , J2EE and Web Services .......it covers an enterprise approach of these and all the examples ( i had used till now.) works. Negative about this book is it is heavy book to carry on.

In a perfect world, on the day you started working with J2EE you would be handed a book that contained everything you needed to know about the subject. This is very close to being that book. This book is for experienced Java developers who are working with Java enterprise technologies. That does not mean servlets and JSPs, although those topics are covered. This book covers much more than just the basics of J2EE. Naming services, directory services, messaging services, transaction services, DCOM, RMI, CORBA, XML are all covered in some depth. You might think that a book covering so much would need to cover each topic only briefly. In this case, you would be wrong. CORBA has more that 150 pages, JDBC has 120 pages, RMI has 100 pages, XML has 60 pages and so on. Other topics which are often skimmed over in other books (security, cryptography, network communications) are given good coverage here. A case study is covered throughout the book showing how each technology could be used in a single application. The end result is a book that is huge with over 1400 pages. However, the book does have some weaknesses. It is light on the most popular topics of servlets and JSPs. It is also light on helping the developer to determine when to use one technology instead of another. If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to J2EE beyond servlets and JSPs, then this book may be the resource you need.

This book provides a one stop read for J2EE APIs like JMS, JSP, Servlets, JNDI and RMI-IIOP. I found that the authors have spent a great deal of time in putting out well tested examples that explains nitty-gritties of J2EE specification. This book has provided me with lot of expertise for writing mission critical applications. I would highly recommend this book to any serious JAVA developer who wants to get his feet wet with juicy code.

I found that this is the only book which covers all J2EE APIs at great length and with real world working examples. I am impressed by the way the authors explained the various aspects of J2EE APIs Servlets, JSP, JMS, EJB, JNDI, RMI-IIOP and deploying in two different Application Servers (J2EE RI and Weblogic 5.1). The chapters are put together in a very well organized manner. At the end of the book, there is a working version of online Store using all the J2EE technologies, which I found very useful. The material is clear and straight forward. The book covers the interests ranging from novice to expert Java Developer. The books has lot of pages like other java books, the difference is that the book does not waste any page to show api. Overall this book is a very good book for a J2EE Developer.