Recently I obtained a copy of the book Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle Web Center 11g from Packt Publishing, right away I noticed that one of the authors of this book is a good and long time colleague of  mine Plinio Arbizu, whom I have joined for different developer events in Latin America in the past.

In this entry you will find my review of the book.

Chapter 1: What's Oracle WebCenter? Provides you with basic knowledge to understand the pieces of WebCenter and the role that these pieces play in the overall Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy.

Chapter 2 and 3: Will guide you through installation process and set up instructions, required to start developing Web2.0 applications. The screenshots are very helpful.

Chapter 4: The chapter will guide you through a series of steps for creating a basic HelloWorld application that uses ADF/Webservices/WebCenter framework to understand the relevant pieces that are part of the architecture in large Web2.0 solutions for WebCenter. One caveat on this chapter is that the use HTML in combination with ADF Faces is not a recommended practice, because in some cases (not in this one) HTML code generated by the components can conflict with existent HTML code place on the same page... so be careful.

Chapter 5: Describes the basics to understand the usage of ADF Faces Rich Client Components, with templates and ADF Business components.

Chapter 6: This chapter explains how to encapsulate, deploy and consume ADF UIs as JSR 168 portlets in a declarative way

Chapter 7: Explains some of the WebCenter services and the different ways that these services can be integrated within WebCenter applications.

Chapter 8: Goes over how to include a series of  WebCenter services provided out-of-the-box within applications. This chapter presents a simple and clear way of how to include RSS feeds, search capabilities, tagging and discussions using practical samples that are easy to follow.

Chapter 9: Presents an important component of Oracle WebCenter - the composer. Through the composer and Oracle Metadata Services the composer adds all the functionality to perform end-user personalizations, which is a very common user case when working with portals. The concept is self-explanatory when running over the practice developed in this chapter.

Chapter 10: Provides an introduction to WebCenter spaces, explaining common concepts about installation, administration (role creation, group creation, etc) and through a sample, the readers can put everything in practice on their own environments.

Summary: This book would provide the reader with a fast start to work with Oracle WebCenter 11g  and its different components. In my opinion the book targets the developer audience, rather than the Portal type of audience, or content generator. For the readers of this book I recommend that to better understand the concepts discussed, first you need to understand the basics on Oracle Application Development Framework. Believe me you can thank me later!