New book review for Spring Batch in Action, by Arnaud Cogoluegnes, Thierry Templier, Gary Gregory, and Olivier Bazoud, Manning Publications, 2011, reposted here:
Probably one of the best written and edited technical texts ever compiled in the Java space. Well recommended for anyone looking to understand how Spring Batch can be used to effectively standardize how data is processed in a batch manner. What makes this book especially effective is its organization, ample supply of examples, and small diagrams effectively placed throughout which remind me of early O'Reilly texts and far surpass what is provided in most recent entries of the "In Action" series from Manning, although I continue to recommend the "Spring in Action" and "Java Persistence with Hibernate" (renamed from "Hibernate in Action") classics which frequently accompany me at my desk.
Content is broken down into three parts: (1) "Background", (2) "Core Spring Batch", and (3) "Advanced Spring Batch". The first part discusses the concept of batch processes, introduces a case study that will be revisited throughout the book, provides working code examples that illustrate simple concepts (my first proof of concept used this code as a base), and discusses the anatomy of a batch job. The second part comprises the bulk of the material, and covers configuration, execution, and furthers the earlier discussion of job anatomy by walking through all of the different options that Spring Batch provides to read, write, and process data. The third part covers an abundance of more advanced features such as controlling how jobs are executed, integrating with other frameworks such as Spring Integration, and testing.
This book is not only a great aid for an initial exploration of Spring Batch, it also serves as a handy reference guide and first go-to source during construction alongside the excellent online Spring Batch reference material. Although you will likely want to explore some of the examples shared by the community for more complex scenarios, these two sources provide most of what you will need to get the job done effectively. From my experience, be forewarned about what the community has to say about using Spring Batch with JPA and Hibernate, areas that are not covered well in this book. My use of straight Hibernate 4, for example, to write data using Spring Batch 2.2.1.RELEASE, the latest stable version as of July 2013, required a small amount of custom development work. And while JPA capabilities are more complete out of the box, JPA configurability options and implications should be explored before adoption.