Some books have alot of pages with little information. This book is short, but every page is rich with facts and insights.

I work with integrating a 3rd party application that uses JBoss, and come from a Microsoft development background, so this whole world of Java/JBoss/EJB was a bit new to me. I needed a good guide which would explain what JBoss is, how it works, and how to set it up.

JBoss at Work was exactly what I needed. It walks through setting up JBoss and using it a practical application of a car sales website. Though the entire system is quite complex, the authors have distilled the essence of how it works and why. The examples are simple, yet reveal the full power of JBoss. And the examples build on each other, with sample code that you can edit, compile and deploy yourself. It was an incredible thrill to me (a java newbie) to actually create and deploy a full EJB application on my low-end laptop in just a few short chapters!

Though I know this is the tip of the iceberg into the JBoss world, Tom Marrs and Scott Davis have written an excellent map, laying down a good foundation for anyone who wants to understand JBoss.

JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide

Great book. It is as the subtitle implies: a practical guide. It was easy to work through the book and the sample code and get a quick yet detailed overview of JBoss and Java web technology. Unlike some huge books, I did not get lost in the complexities. Any technology like this is complex enough as it is. I like to start with an overview, and this book is exactly that: a great introduction and overview. Even so, it's practical enough to put the knowledge to work right away. Hence it's "JBoss at Work."

Aimed at the beginning J2EE developer, this book does a great job of encompassing several exciting technologies and showing how they can all work together (JBoss, Ant, XDoclet, Hibernate, etc.) to achieve the end goal of deploying a robust ear file. XDoclet and ant pair to automate several of the tedious tasks (read deployment descriptor generation) no developer wants to be bogged down with. I am a huge fan of how it introduces all the necessary technologies involved w/o diving into the mundane detail of each and every one. If more depth is required, citations are always provided to other great O'Reilly titles. This book stays true to its title w/o going off on tangents due to other author's personal bias. All decisions are objectively defended (like their decision to illustrate Hibernate as their ORM of choice) and options are always provided. Very practical and a great starting point. Overall, two thumbs up.

Its a great book if you have just started your development with JBOSS 4. It is easy to read from a developer/deployment perspective and also delves into how to automate the deployment descriptors and deploy into JBOSS. Covers most of the common J2ee/Web applications using hibernate and Ant. Probably needs upgrading to JBOSS 5 but is great if your current development is in JBOSS 4.

I am most of the way through this book and so far, it's been extremely helpful and informative. It breaks all the steps down one by one and takes you from a simple Hello-World type app, to a more complicated enterprise application. A great read all-around.

I found JBoss at Work to be a great guide that takes you through the basic JBoss setup and configuration. Its perfect for someone who wants to get an overview of the process and understanding of how JBoss works, but doesnt want to take the time to become an expert. It serves well as a guide on understanding J2EE general development and also highlights the JBoss specifics when appropriate.
The only downside for me was the tedious review of the J2EE XML configs. I would have preferred to see just the XDoclet code and not the additional XML that it generates. Use that time to focus on WHAT config files are necessary opposed to what actually gets generated and goes into them. Its beyond the scope of the book to go into all the XML syntax in the configs so its not worthwhile to try and make the reader understand this. Again, a little extra is not so bad, but it does fill a good portion of the book with something I believe could have been left out or supplemented with a better review of what each config file does and when to use them.

As many O'Reilly publications, this book provides an excellent, easy read for the topic being covered. Examples are simple enough for a "let's just get it working" for the core technologies (as stated as the goal of the book) while still providing a fairly thorough insight into each of the J2EE technologies/concepts covered.

Highly recommended for anyone who has a base understanding of JBoss/J2EE and wants to start exposing themselves to new things as well as beginners just starting out with the JBoss/J2EE world.

I found JBoss at Work to be a great guide that takes you through the basic JBoss setup and configuration. Its perfect for someone who wants to get an overview of the process and understanding of how JBoss works, but doesnt want to take the time to become an expert. It serves well as a guide on understanding J2EE general development and also highlights the JBoss specifics when appropriate.
The only downside for me was the tedious review of the J2EE XML configs. I would have preferred to see just the XDoclet code and not the additional XML that it generates. Use that time to focus on WHAT config files are necessary opposed to what actually gets generated and goes into them. Its beyond the scope of the book to go into all the XML syntax in the configs so its not worthwhile to try and make the reader understand this. Again, a little extra is not so bad, but it does fill a good portion of the book with something I believe could have been left out or supplemented with a better review of what each config file does and when to use them.

"JBoss at Work" is a great overview of a broad spectrum of product technologies. It spends enough time on each to get them working and to provide a feel for their value, customizability, and flexibility. Examples are well-presented and contain discussion about how they work and are configured for multiple populare application environments, where appropriate. It has excellent background and history for each technology, popular alternatives, and a discussion about why the author preferred this particular technology. In other words, the authors provide more than just the bare mention included in many "survey" books. There is enough to get all of them working, and working together as a cohesive set. It does not, however, provide a lot of detail on each one.

This was perfect for my needs -- to provide a strong enough introduction for me to understand into which technologies I wanted to delve deeper, and enough contact with each of them to allow me to evaluate competing technologies in their space.

On Time delivery and was able to update my knowledge in time

Great book with a lot of info. I worked on JBoss contract and found it very useful. It will save you time searching through JBoss Wiki.

Good book. However it is mainly aimed at the beginner crowed. Seasoned J2EE developers will find little use for the examples and material. It does however introduce a beginner to implementing and deploying a end-to-end based J2EE application in Jboss and other Application servers for that matter. For the price it is not bad; on the shelf in the office for those learning.

This book is a well organized introduction to getting started with JBoss and several other key Java technologies. So many books delve into a single topic but do so far beyond the point that normal people need. This one gets you started in several. It's easy to read, practical--download the examples and follow along, and right to the point. I use it for teaching too, as it's highly effective

A must book for a developer. No junk, all necesary examples for a complete application. Great work!

Using this book is like driving without peripheral vision - you can't take the slightest turn off the single path chosen by the authors. Sure, this book will walk you through making a stateless session bean and deploying it on JBoss. But what if you want to make a client? What if you want to use the Eclipse IDE provided by JBoss? Suddenly, you're left on your own. This book may be helpful to someone making a first pass through J2EE, but if you want to use JBoss for any practical purpose, this book is practically worthless.

As an employee of a company that develops web based applications, but not a software engineer in that company, Tom Marrs and Scott Davis's text does a terrific job in putting the disparate pieces that make up a J2EE application together. Their approach of incrementally adding the requisite technologies from each tier, as they carry through a single example, provides remarkable clarity to the discussions of each piece. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the "nuts and bolts" of a J2EE application. My only caveat is to make sure you read the README.txt file when you download the source code. If you've downloaded a JBoss version later than 4.0.1 (current is 4.0.4) then the code examples beginning in Chapter 5 won't work. The needed change, discussed in the README file, is simple, clearly indicated and works throughout the rest of the book.

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; Application.xml; Common JAR; Deploying the EAR; Adding a DAO; Using XDoclet; Looking Ahead;

4. DATABASES AND JBOSS
Persistence Options; JDBC; JNDI; JNDI References in web.xml; JBoss DataSource Descriptors; JDBC Driver JARs; Database Checklist; Accessing the Database Using Ant; Creating JDBCCarDAO; Looking Ahead;

5. HIBERNATE AND JBOSS
The Pros and Cons of ORMs; Hibernate Mapping Files; Hibernate MBean Service Descriptor; Creating a HAR; Adding the HAR to the EAR; Creating a JNDI lookup; Hibernate Checklist; HibernateCarDAO; Adding a Car; Editing a Car; Deleting a Car; Looking Ahead;

6. STATELESS SESSION BEANS
Issues with EJBs; Should I Use EJB or Not?; Business Tier; Enterprise JavaBeans; Our Example; Iteration 1-Introduce a Session Bean; Calling the Session Bean from the Controller Servlet; EJB-Based JNDI References in Web-Based Deployment; Descriptors; Session Bean Types; Session Beans; Remote Versus Local EJB Calls; Local and Remote Interfaces; Home Interfaces; Reviewing Iteration 1; Testing Iteration 1; Iteration 2-Move Business Logic Out of the Controller; Reviewing Iteration 2; Testing Iteration 2; Iteration 3-Buy a Car; The AccountingDTO; Developing the HibernateAccountingDAO; Adding buyCar( ) to the InventoryFacadeBean; Reviewing Iteration 3; Testing Iteration 3; Final Thoughts on Session Beans; Looking Ahead;

7. JAVA MESSAGE SERVICE (JMS) AND MESSAGE-DRIVEN BEANS
Sending Messages with JMS; Upgrade the Site: Running a Credit Check; JMS Architecture Overview; JMS Messaging Models; Creating a Message; Sending the Message; Core JMS API; Sending a JMS Message; JMS-Based JNDI References in Web-Based Deployment; Descriptors; Deploying JMS Destinations on JBoss; JMS Checklist; Message-Driven Beans (MDBs); MDB Checklist; Testing the Credit Check; Looking Ahead;

8. JAVAMAIL
Running a Credit Check; Sending Email Messages with JavaMail; Upgrading the MDB to Send an Email Message; Sending an Email Message; JavaMail-Based JNDI References in EJB Deployment; Descriptors; Automating JavaMail-Based JNDI References with XDoclet; Deploying JavaMail on JBoss; JavaMail Checklist; Testing the Credit Check Notification Email; Looking Ahead;

9. SECURITY
J2EE Security; Web-Based Security; Restricting Access with web.xml; JAAS; Deploying a JAAS-Based Security Realm on JBoss; Testing Secure JSPs; Protecting the Administrative Actions; Web Security Checklist; Integrating Web Tier and EJB Tier Security; EJB Security; EJB Security Checklist; Looking Ahead;

10. WEB SERVICES
Web Services Architecture; JBoss 4.x and Web Services; J2EE 1.4 and Web Services; Implementing J2EE 1.4 Web Services; Service Endpoint Interface (SEI); Modifying ejb-jar.xml; webservices.xml; JAX-RPC Mapping File; WSDL File; Set the Web Service URL; Modifying the InventoryFacadeBean EJB; Web Services Deployment; Automating Web Services Deployment; J2EE Web Services Checklist; Testing Web Services Deployment; Web Services Client; Implementing a Web Service Client; Web Service Client Checklist; Testing the Web Service Client; Final Thoughts on J2EE 1.4 Web Services; Conclusion;

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.

I've built a number of J2EE/Servlet/JSP web applications over the past many years but was never formally trained in OO techiniques nor had any formal Java training. I'm very much a hands on learner and this book fits very well with the way I like to attack things. Some commenters wished for a book more focussed on JBoss particulars but for me the project management stuff and the use of Ant and Xdoclet are a big plus. I "get things" best by looking at code and scripts and this book delivers that.

I think it's a really swell book.

This is the kind of book that you can go through once quickly and get a good overview of things, then dig deeper with further readings and get more and more out of it each time. To me, that's an ideal "get-me-up-to-speed" book. If you're looking to learn about what JBoss is and does and how it does it all, this book is a great way to learn the basics quickly and work up to the more complicated stuff. I skimmed it quickly on a train ride into work one morning and got enough out of perusing the first five chapters to dive in and make use of it all. A lot of books talk about "starting with the basics" and building on acquired knowledge to teach the more advanced topics, but few actually do so in a consistent methodical way. This book achieves that goal by constructing an iteratively enhanced application over the course of the entire book. The JBoss directory structure and services functionality are explained in the context of deploying and configuring this app. The model and presentation components are iteratively built up over the course of the book. The JSP pages start out going against common best practices but evolve employ JSTL to provide iteration and conditional constructs more elegantly, optimize layout formatting with CSS, and finally make use of an MVC approach with controller that removes scriptlet code from the pages. Similarly, the model starts out as an in-core ArrayList, is enhanced to make use of a relational database, and finally uses Hibernate to demonstrate the flexibilities of ORM and EJB technologies. The application is refactored at each stage, and this demonstrates how bad practices evolve with experience into better and hopefully best practices. The chapters on EJB, especially Message Driven Beans with JMS, cover this complicated material very well, and explain it in the context of adding new functionality to this same application. This book covers not only the ins and outs of JBoss but the how's and why's of building a J2EE application in general, using JBoss as a specific example of how J2EE applications are written, configured, and deployed. A very practical guide indeed.

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.

JBoss is an open source application server based in pure Java and it's written for all those Java lovers and users out there in cyberspace. Without many guides and how-to books out on the market, this is a fantastic guide for learning how to use JBoss at your office and use it well!

Covering topics such as:

Developing web applications
Using Hibernate for persistence
Working with Beans
Using JavaMail
Security concerns

This book is an extensive (and as the title says) practical look at this exciting technology. For anyone that wants/needs to learn more, you can't miss with this great O'Reilly book.

**** RECOMMENDED

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.

i needed to get up to speed with jboss and web services.
the "A Practical Guide" subtitle made me try the book.
as promised, the book delivered practical info and guidance on working with jboss from the beginning, progressing all the way through web services.

i particularly like learning by doing, and the book is organized around building an application from basics through web services, covering all tiers of MVC.
how the authors progressed the construction of the application from beginning to end was simply awesome.
i highly recommed this book if you like learning by doing, by the end, you will have a good foundation of jboss and a real MVC application utilizing j2ee.

Are you a Java developer who wants to use JBoss on your project? Well, you're in luck! Authors Tom Marrs and Scott Davis, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that will help you implement a full J2EE application and deploy it on JBoss.

Marrs and Davis, begin by looking at how JBoss works. Then, they walk you through the basics of building and deploying a WAR. The authors continue by expanding the JAW application from a simple WAR file into a full-fledged EAR. In addition, the authors next look at the persistence tier. They also show you how to create a Hibernate DAO that drastically simplifies the object-relational mapping that you would do by hand in the JDBC DAO. Then, the authors discuss reasons for and against the use of EJBs. They continue by showing you how to add an MDB to the JAW Motors Application. In addition, the authors next show you how to upgrade the MDB to use the JavaMail API when sending the user an e-mail notification message. They also show you how to secure an application. In the next and final chapter, they show you how to expose a portion of the application as a Web service.

The good thing about this excellent book is that it will help you use the latest features of JBoss 4 and J2EE 1.4, including J2EE-compliant Web Services. Needless to say, this book is really meant to be a brief survey of each subject aimed at the working professional with limited time.

I have read a couple of J2EE books before, some of them are much much thicker than this book but none of them is as helpful as this one. None of them I read before has full and complete working code, either failed in compile time or deploy time. But the source code from this book is fully working. I compiled and deployed the source code charpter by charpter, everything works well! From the code and the building process I learned a lot. So don't just read the book but work on it, build the code, deploy the project, it will pay off. Besides the high quality of the source code, this book also tells you WHY and WHY NOT when it comes to what technology to use based on real-world experience. For example, it use hibernate instead of Entity Bean as persistent layer and prefer not to use Stateful Session Bean due to its scalability issue. These decisions reflect real-world practice. Highly recommended !

BTW, I would love to see the author to come out with a new edition to cover EJB3.0 when the 3.0 spec is finalized(later this year?).

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.

The book is a great example of an j2ee example using jboss, xdoclet and hibernate. The book keep it simple and explain why they do what they choose it opposed to the alternatives.

Alle the main J2ee part are covered, and the book are very up to date. My hope is that a new book will be on the market withing the next 12-14months when Im going to start off with ejb 3 :-).

If you are just trying to sysadmin a jboss installation and are wondering where to put your jboss logs so that they dont fill up the database partition, this is not your book. For that, go read the documentation.

This is a book of modern thinking on how to write, build and deploy enterprise java apps on JBoss. It uses hibernate for its persistence, layer, and has ant+Xdoclet do all the heavy lifting of creating many of the so-very-many XML descriptors you will need. It shows you how to architect an app using hibernate on jboss for persistence, a web app with delegated JSP pages for display, and other best practises of enterprise app design. Then it looks at the other parts of the system, like messaging, web applications, and security. And, as its readable and only 280 pages long, you can skim through it fairly quickly.

I'm giving it 5* because it is (as of Jan 2006) so up to date with JBoss (4.0) and hibernate. Even so, I fear that the book will become obsolete fast unless a new version ships within 18 months.

Specifically

-There is no use of Java1.5 features (like generics). If they had tried to use them they would have noticed that XDoclet breaks on generics/annotations unless you check out and build your own version.

-XDoclet itself is doomed. View it as something to use until there are more annotation libraries to configure things like servlet mappings, alongside EJB persistence.

-Hibernate 3.1/EJB changes stuff too.

-Jboss itself is evolving at a fair rate.

These are all details for the future: right now it is highly current.

My main other worry is the complete lack of tests. Where are the JSPX pages that test their systems health? Where are the JUnit tests to test the JSPX pages and the rest of the application. How do I test my persistence layer? You can do these things with Ant+httpunit+cactus, but this book doesn't go near those topics.

If you or your team is embarking on a project using the afore mentioned tools in the J2EE space, I would highly recommend that you and your team work through this book. The title of the book is a misnomer and that may offset some people's expectations. This book isn't about JBoss in-depth. It is about J2EE, good developmental practices and a guided course into building a j2ee app from gound-up.

I particularly enjoyed the clear and detailed instructions and explanantions about application packaging and development. The example used throughout the book is an excellent choice and iterative developmental model used is fantastic. I did not use the suggested ant scripts (I use MyEclipseIDE it's XDoclet extensions) but still found the scripts highly useful reference points.

Overall a well written book and a good buy. The title can be changed in the next print to something more appropriate (as the first reviewer has suggested).

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.

Normally, I would have waited until I had worked through all the examples in the book. However, I am somewhat concerned with the two very negative reviews published recently by persons who have totally misjudged the value proposition of this book.
This book never promises to be a reference manual type book listing ins and outs of JBoss configuration. It is stated in the preface and the opening chapter in black and white. Using JBoss as a vehicle, it is teaching very subtle but all-important J2EE concepts. After all, JBoss IS a J2EE server. Without J2EE applications, it has no use. I do agree that some of the deployment tasks are missing from the Ant build files in the downloads from the book's web site (specifically colddeploy). It should not matter though. Bring the server down, copy the EAR file to the deploy directory, and bring it back up. It does the same thing. You DO need some previous knowledge and experience with some J2EE containers, e.g., WebLogic, WebSphere etc. to benifit from this book though. It is NOT book for rand beginners. If you do have some prior experience with J2EE containers and are NOT specifically looking for comprehensive reference material on JBoss configuration/tuning etc. then this book begins to be very useful. It may have to do with how people learn however. I personally like the presentation style and the material presented in this book very much.

If you need a tutorial review of how to put together a web application using J2EE technologies including JSP, servlets, JDBC, Hiberate, EJB, JNDI, JAAS, and web services then you may find this book moderately useful (and if this is what I had bought the book for, I might have given it a slightly higher rating). As for JBoss, yes, it is the application server used in the book to deploy these technologies, but once you have finished the book you will be left with the feeling that you barely learned anything about JBoss itself.

Also note that the companion files and scripts you download need a few minor updates to make them work as described in the book (as of December 28, 2005). There is nothing more frustrating than being asked to run an Ant script that is missing the option you are being asked to execute. While this wasn't a showstopper, it is sloppy work and not something one expects from an O'Riley book.

This book is a very nice intro to JBoss and also to J2EE development at the same time. Its a clearly written tutorial which puts together a single app using sevelets, hibernate, session beans, message-driven beans, and more. It introduces the reader these technologies, when to use them, and how to use them with JBoss. Ive also read JBoss: A Dev. Notebook -- also well done -- but this book I found even more informative and complete.