JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide - O'Reilly's Latest Release

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the authors, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com

Building and Deploying J2EE in the Real World
O'Reilly Releases "JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide"

Sebastopol, CA--To say that you are a Java programmer these days is about
as meaningful as saying "I play sports" or "I like food."  Saying that
you're a J2EE programmer provides a few more details, but still doesn't
paint a complete picture. J2EE is a loose collection of server-side
technologies that are related, but are by no means homogenous.  As authors
Tom Marrs and Scott Davis point out in their new book, "JBoss at Work: A
Practical Guide" (O'Reilly, US $34.95), "Asking any one specialist to
describe the J2EE toolkit brings to mind the story of the blind men and
the elephant. Each blind man describes the elephant based on the part he
touches." Their new book takes a different approach, describing the whole
J2EE elephant in the context of JBoss, the popular open source J2EE
container. "Like the technology it implements, JBoss is not a single
monolithic application," Marrs and Davis explain. "Rather it is a family
of interrelated services that correspond to each item in the J2EE
collection."

Both authors are practicing software engineers who have worked together
off an on for years, and both are former presidents of the Denver Java
Users Group. Prior to beginning work on their book, they polled the group
for potential interest, and noted that the same phrase came up over and
over again: "I don't want to be an expert in it, I just want to make it
work."

JBoss suits the "I just want to make it work" gestalt to a T, Marrs and
Davis agreed.  A developer can download, unzip it, and have it running in
less than five minutes. Turning services on and off is as simple as adding
or removing files from a directory. Because it's free, there are no
per-seat or per-CPU licensing costs. JBoss is both a great learning tool
and a production-quality deployment environment. But any tool as powerful
as JBoss also has pitfalls and complexities.

"There was a huge need in the JBoss community for a book that was aimed at
developers who wanted to use JBoss," says Marrs. "We found all kinds of
good reference books that showed JBoss internals, but there was nothing
that showed real working examples on how to deploy all of the core J2EE
technologies, and Hibernate, for a typical application. So, our goal was
to start with a simple example that did nothing (it had only static HTML
pages) and then iteratively add in the rest of the technology stack: JSPs,
Servlets, database access (JDBC and Hibernate), EJBs, JMS, security, web
services, and logging. Instead of bombarding people with everything at
once, we felt that people could learn how to use JBoss faster by adding
one technology at a time."

"There aren't many books out there that take a holistic approach to
software development," adds Davis. "Most books are what we affectionately
call 'an inch wide and a mile deep.' they take a thin slice of an
application--often a single API or library--and cover every possible
aspect of it. While that level of depth is good to have, it can also lead
to tunnel vision."

Davis and Marrs chose instead to write a book that is an "inch deep and a
mile wide." Says Davis, "We wanted to show an entire application,
end-to-end, and discuss all of the technologies that went into making it a
success. Getting a single open source application installed and configured
can be quite a challenge. Getting that same piece of software integrated
with a dozen others can often be overwhelming. 'JBoss at Work' shows you
how to get all of the software synched up and working in unison."

As they work through the book, readers will develop an enterprise
application from start to finish, learning how to:

-Implement a full J2EE application and deploy it on JBoss
-Discover how to use the latest features of JBoss 4 and J2EE 1.4,
 including J2EE-compliant web services
-Master J2EE application deployment on JBoss with EARs, WARs, and EJB
 JARs
-Understand the core J2EE deployment descriptors and how they integrate
 with JBoss-specific descriptors
-Deploy JSPs, Servlets, EJBs, JMS, web services, JavaMail, JDBC, and
 Hibernate on JBoss
-Base a security strategy on JAAS

"A full J2EE application is a complicated beast. There are many moving
parts to it, and it can be tough seeing how each piece interacts with the
others. 'JBoss at Work' breaks down the J2EE stack into a series of
individual chapters," says Davis.  "If you read the book from start to
finish, you'll see an application unfold before your eyes."

Additional Resources:

Chapter 3, "Building and Deploying an EAR," is available online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jboss/chapter/index.html

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bios, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jboss/index.html

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596007...

JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide
Tom Marrs and Scott Davis
ISBN: 0-596-00734-5, 278 pages, $34.95 US, $48.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472

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