I'm going to be honest with you guys. I want to learn Java EE (and its related technologies) because it offers a lot of job opportunities here (the Philippines) and abroad. The problem is I don't know where to start and what to read or where to learn from. I'm almost finished reading Head First Java and I'm liking the language so far. Any tips that would increase my chances of finding a job would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
I would suggest you download JBoss and do all the sample applications shown in the doco.
If you've already done Java, you're very close.
JEE adds containers and naming aspects to what you already know.
Also get a hold of "Professional J2EE" from WROX press, it's old but brilliant in my opinion.
In terms of getting work, make sure you at least know what all the acronyms mean (JEE, EJB, JSP and so on) - that'll at least get you past the clueless management phase of interviews.
You may need a little more than that if you're interviewed by techies, but a more-than-basic grasp of the concepts will help a lot.
The Head First Servlets and JSP book is a great way to learn the web development side of JEE. Personally, I would put a lot more emphasis on this aspect of JEE than EJB because a lot of companies use Spring in preference to EJB.
The Head First EJB book would be a start for understanding EJBs. While I agree with Don that servlets are more important than EJBs, you do need to understand the features provided by EJB containers: namely a message-oriented middleware and transactions. That said, the major kinds of EJBs that are typically used are stateless session beans and message-driven beans. The stateful session beans and pre-JPA entity beans were a mistake.
For further understanding, see the answers here
This free online J2EE tutorial will familiarize you with J2EE http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/. It provides an overview of JSP, Servlet, XML, XSL, WebService, JSF, EJB, etc. I find it very useful as this will make you aware of many technologies to build web application in java.
Of course you need to learn in depth but you may not be able to learn everything quickly so at least on overview will help in interview instead of blank face on few topics.