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JBoss isn't an ordinary open source project. It isn't an ordinary J2EE application server, either. In fact, as Norman Richards and Sam Griffith, Jr. point out in their new book, "JBoss: A Developer's Notebook" (O'Reilly, US $29.95), there's something special about JBoss.

For example, JBoss is one of few open source, community-driven projects that have found commercial success without betraying their roots. Although JBoss is freely available for any purpose, it's backed by a real company, JBoss, Inc., whose hundred-plus full-time employees fuel the continued development of the project. They also provide training and support for
those who need the reassurance of having strong vendor backing.  But more extraordinary is the technology itself.

JBoss began as an open source EJB container project back in 1999. Six years later, JBoss 4.0 is a full J2EE 1.4-certified application server. An extremely capable platform, it provides everything needed to quickly develop a complete J2EE application with little, if any, configuration required.  But--as Richards and Griffith remind their readers--it 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," they note.

"Although JBoss provides a fully certified J2EE container, you're free to alter the services provided to make J2EE work the way you want," Richards and Griffith continue. "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!"

Developers who are moving their J2EE projects to JBoss or starting out with JBoss for the first time will find an ideal companion for their task in "JBoss: A Developer's Notebook."  The book is built around practical examples that range from installing JBoss to rolling out an actual production system. The book doesn't explain how to write EJBs or JSPs; its focus is on getting all of the components to work together in a real application. As with other Developer's Notebooks, this guide is weighted towards hands-on lab-style exercises and light on lecture and theory.

"JBoss: A Developer's Notebook" is the ideal introduction to this important platform. It will guide readers through the most common and challenging problems they face as real-world enterprise developers.

Developers working through the exercises will learn how to:

-Install, configure, and monitor JBoss
-Use Ant to generate and deploy WAR and EAR files
-Use Xdoclet to automate the tedious parts of J2EE
-Work with real-world databases--commercial and open source
-Configure security, including stackable login modules and SSSL
-Configure Log4J to log important events from the server and applications
-Generate database schema automatically and keep the schema in sync with EJBs
-Map preexisting schema into objects
-Roll out a full-fledged production application