Jboss at Work: A Practical Guide

J2EE started out as a specification that left the implementation to each container vendor. It's readily apparent that two of the earliest vendors, WebSphere and WebLogic, implemented J2EE in vastly different ways. As a result, early books on J2EE or Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) frequently either avoided or severely limited the discussion of a specific server because the details were better referenced from server vendors' manuals. JBoss changed that picture. It is an open source Java-based application server which is freely downloadable, plus it is a certified J2EE server. "JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide", aims to provide practical examples for using JBoss by showing a practical and complete example of a web application running on JBoss. The "JAW Motors" application supports a fictitious automobile dealership. Each chapter progressively adds a new J2EE technology that solves a specific business problem. Viewing cars on a website involves JSP pages and some form of persistence (JDBC or Hibernate). Performing a credit check sends a JMS message and an email response using JavaMail. Purchasing a car requires the transactional support of Stateless Session Beans. Sharing data from the JAW Motors inventory with other dealerships involves setting up Web Services, and so on. The authors' hope is that a coherent business application in action will hopefully give you a clearer idea of how the various layers interact, as opposed to a series of disjointed "Hello World" examples exercising each layer in isolation, and I think their concept worked out very well. The security portion of the book's example web application makes use of JAAS (Java Authentication & Authorization Service), which enables an application to protect its resources by restricting access to only users with proper credentials and permissions. It is a standard extension in J2SE 1.4, but is not yet widely understood. Thus, one of the appendices is devoted to a tutorial on its use, which I found very helpful. The authors assume that you're experienced in programming with the Java language and are familiar with Open Source tools such as Ant and XDoclet. They show how to download and install them, and they also provide Ant scripts for compiling and deploying the "JAW Motors" application. If you're new to J2EE, this book serves as a gentle introduction, but don't mistake it for a true J2EE reference manual. I found this book immensely helpful and clear and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get to work quickly using JBoss as an application server. The table of contents is as follows: 1. GETTING STARTED WITH JBOSS Why "JBoss at Work"?; Why JBoss?; The Example: JAW Motors; The Tools; Installing JBoss; Deploying Applications to JBoss; Looking Ahead; 2. WEB APPLICATIONS The Servlet Container; Three-Tier Applications; Exploring the Presentation Tier; Building the View Cars Page; Adding a Model and Controller; Looking Ahead; 3. BUILDING AND DEPLOYING AN EAR WARs Versus EARs; Applica

This is probably the most practical book there is out there on the subject of JBoss. Some other books are basically a re-print of on line information. If you are especially a new JBoss user this book is for you. The on line documentation seems to be too advanced for beginners. That doesn't mean that this book only covers the basic. Once you go through this book you'll have a solid foundation for the basics and some of the advanced topics as well. I think the authors did a great job. And it is true that they did their best to respond should you have questions.

The subtitle for this book is "A Practical Guide." That subtitle is perfect. This is one of the most immediately useful and practical books I've read in a long time. I began using JBoss at the same time I started reading this book and I appreciated that the book started out with the relatively simple task of getting JBoss installed. However, while the book starts at an introductory level it doesn't stay there. It progresses through more advanced topics such as JMS, JavaMail, JAAS, and Web Services. The writing is clear and enjoyable throughout. An extended example of a car dealer carries forward throughout the book. This helps the concepts fit together and build upon one another. JBoss at Work is highly informative and, as its subtitle promises, a practical guide. I highly recommend it.

Just wanted to say that if you are looking for a book on J2EE and/or Jboss then this is the book for you. I have bought several books on J2EE and all of them had issues, such as: Not being clean, examples not working, steps skipped, etc.. This book did everything right. It takes one project and runs with it, slowly adding new technologies and showing you how to refactor it (which is a real-world possibility). It explains the technologies used and includes the 'when' and 'why'. It also introduces and uses some of the best 3rd party OpenSource tools (Ant/XDoclet/Hibernate) out there to help simplify the build/deployment process, which I loved! This has been one of the best books I have ever bought, and I own many. As a bonus when I had a question the Authors replied with an answer in a timely manner which is rare.

I saw this book unexpectedly in a bookstore, sat down in the cafe to skim it, and wound up engrossed. It has since jumped to the top of my favorite development book list. I teach software development for a living. I've never encountered a better demonstration of how all the pieces of J2EE fit together in a coherent application, all the while guiding the reader through the relevant architectural issues. I love the way it builds from a simple servlet/JSP app up through Hibernate, EJBs, JMS, JavaMail, and even web services. The book is witty and literate, and, to top it all off, the writers can code. The fact that JBoss is in the title has caused some reviewers to focus on that aspect of the book, but in reality JBoss is just used as the free application server of choice. The book could just as easily have been called J2EE Development with Hibernate, XDoclet, and Ant on JBoss. Rather than worry about the details of all the specifications, the book concentrates on getting them to work together and demonstrate their capabilities. I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it for anyone trying to increase their server-side Java capabilities.