In 1999, a couple of guys got together and decided to start an open source EJB container project. Six years later, we have JBoss 4.0, and the difference between that early version and this one is a lot greater than a few version numbers might suggest. While JBoss is still an open source community-driven project, it is much more than just an EJB container. JBoss 4.0 is a full J2EE 1.4-certified application server. It is competitive with proprietary application servers in terms of features and quality, and has risen to be the number one application server in terms of overall market share. There’s definitely something special about it.
JBoss isn’t any ordinary open source project. It’s one of the few open source projects that have found commercial success without betraying their open source roots. JBoss is backed by JBoss, Inc., a successful and rapidly growing company with more than 100 full-time employees fueling the continued development of the project. Although JBoss is freely available for any purpose, it is backed by a real company that provides support and training for those who need the reassurance of having strong vendor backing.
JBoss isn’t any ordinary J2EE application server either. JBoss has been at the forefront of innovation, pioneering the lightweight microkernel and pluggable services style of development that is popular today. While JBoss can’t take sole credit for smart proxies, interceptor stacks, or any of the other technology tracks it is famous for, there’s little doubt that JBoss significantly advanced the state of the art and continues to be on the forefront of J2EE.
JBoss isn’t just a J2EE server. Most people come to JBoss because they want a J2EE application server, but JBoss’s dynamic architecture allows it to go well beyond J2EE. Although JBoss provides a fully certified J2EE container, you are free to alter the services provided to make J2EE work the way you want. You can even throw J2EE away completely, working at a lower services level or at a higher level using technologies such as AOP and Hibernate. You can make JBoss as heavy or as light as you need it to be. You can stick to the J2EE specification for maximum portability, or you can rewrite the rules to obtain maximum agility and performance. With JBoss, the choice is yours!
If you think of JBoss as just an ordinary application server, we hope that in reading this book, you’ll begin to feel the same sense of excitement we feel about it. We hope you’ll see that JBoss isn’t a complex product that you curse at under your breath while wishing for a simpler way to get your work done. It is a flexible platform that you can use to simplify your life, leaving you more time to focus on what is really important: your applications.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
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This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.
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Writing a book such as this is never an easy task, and we couldn’t have done it without help from many, many people. We’d like to thank everyone at O’Reilly who helped get this book out. We’d like to thank Colleen Gorman and Audrey Doyle, for turning edits around so quickly. We’d especially like to thank our editor, Mike Loukides, for believing in the book and giving us the opportunity to write it.
We are particularly grateful to everyone who read early drafts of the book and gave us feedback: Chris Bono, Rhys Ulerich, Alex McCarrier, and Ivelin Ivanov. While we strove to make the book as good as we could from the start, you guys helped us smooth out the rough edges for everyone else. Thanks!
Finally, we’d like to thank the entire JBoss community for producing the finest Java application server on the market. Thank you for making the best application server out there, and for giving us something to write about.
Vincent... Thank you for not complaining when I needed to spend a little more time working on the book. I know I don’t always do a good job balancing work and free time, but I do try.
Sarah... You’ve been an inspiration to me these last few months, and you have given me the energy I needed to keep at it. Good luck with your own book. I really hope to see it in print someday soon. I know you will be a big success!
Chris... Thanks for the help with the review. You done a great jorb!
Pyoung-Gyu... Thanks, because if I didn’t acknowledge you here, I know you’d get mad at me.
Julie... Thanks for still being a friend. Sorry the lottery number didn’t work out last time. I guess I’m not psychic after all.
Sunny... It’s good to have you back in Texas.
Margot... Thanks for finally giving me closure.
JBoss... Working for JBoss has been a dream come true. Some days I can barely believe I’m getting paid to work on open source software, especially something as big as JBoss. I’d like to thank Marc and Andy for giving me my break here. And, I’d like to thank all the guys in the Austin office (Ivelin, Ryan, Steve, Michael, Clebert, and Charles) for making it an office I don’t dread going to.
Note
I’d like to thank O’Reilly for coming up with a great book format that lets me scribble in the margins like this.
Austin... Thanks for being the greatest city in the world to live in. It is truly the Promised Land, a land flowing with burritos and free WiFi. Thanks for being a place that fosters such a vibrant technical community. It has made all the difference.
This is so much like the Academy Awards. Do I only have only one minute? I’ve written this at least three times and, well, it’s always long, so I’m just leaving it this time. Thanks go to...
Norman... I wouldn’t have had the chance to work on this if you hadn’t asked me to participate and given me a chance to try writing. Now I know that for me, public speaking is much easier! I also appreciate you mentoring me in the writing of this book, and the fact that you cleaned up my work to make it flow. Thanks a lot.
Morgan... You’ve been an inspiration since before you were born. Since last fall when Norman and I started this you’ve been patient while I had to write and you played. From time to time, you would ask me what I was doing, and why. The “what” you will be able to see in the physical book itself. The “why” is a bit harder to explain, but it’s all of these reasons, and more: because Norman asked me to, because I wanted to see my name in the Library of Congress, because I wanted to go to the bookstore and see my name on a book instead of in one, but mostly because I wanted you to be able to say one day that your dad wrote a book and for you to be proud of me! I love you, Morgan, and I hope when you’re old enough to read this you understand what a motivator you are to me in my life. I hope you grow up strong and healthy and that I can be as good a father as you are a son. I love you heaps and heaps!
Mom and Dad... For always believing in me, even when you didn’t understand what I was doing or where I was going. I’m glad you invested in my future so long ago with the TI-994A, and then with an original Macintosh. Those investments paid off pretty well! I love you both!
Susan... You have provided and continue to provide inspiration as a friend. Things you’ve said and done were bigger than the moment or the time. Thank you for those times and moments. Thank you for being a friend. You’ll always be with me.
Seeing as this may be the only time I ever get to do this, there are lots of other people that I need to thank as well. These people have contributed to my growth as a mentor, trainer, programmer, friend, and person. I don’t have space to say why, but I want to thank them. So, here they are, in no particular order: Grady Clendenning, Joyce Crocker, Tony Gibson, Christine Kungel, Melba Sanchez, Alex Nghiem, Kevin Wittkopf, Perry Anderson, Laura Whitehead, Blaine Buxton, Rose Wang, Leroy Mattingly, Deb Ayers, David Shelor, Ron Smith, Scott Shattuck, Lance Bledsoe, Ray Garton, William Edney, Wayne Hearn, John Head, Tina Gilbert, Ross Gorde, Dick Norton, Geoff Kaiser, Sunny Adams, Allen Keirn, Andy Littman, Mark Morrison, Kelly Edwards, Tee McNamara, Ron Smith, Scott Boyd, Greg Marriot, Jay Zaback, Andrew Donahoe, Larry Turcotte, Bill Dudney, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, the Mauck family, Rebecca Redwood, and finally, the big guy upstairs. Thanks to all of you. I’m sure I’ve left off someone, and to you I send my thanks as well. I lost my address book a few years ago, so I’m going from memory. Also, if I misspelled your name, I’m sorry ‘bout that, my memory is not what it used to be.
Finally, work on this book was fun, but at the same time it was a hard task for me. I tend to want to write like I talk.
That style of writing leads to run-on sentences. Mike, our editor, would remind me from time to time in his feedback about run-ons, and I’ve slowly gotten better at avoiding them. Although writing is not easy or natural to me yet, working on this book has served as a real motivator for me to try and write more. Some quotes that sum up my feelings about working on this book:
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
—Martin Luther King
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
—Martin Luther King
I hope you, the reader, find this book to be an excellent piece of work, as Norman and I have tried to do our work well. We both found ourselves slammed at work, busy during holiday season and seemingly always short on time. But with all that and a lot of motivation from our editor, I think we’ve created something we can be very proud of.
Last, but not least, remember that the answer is 42!
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