JBoss in Action : A Sneak Peek

Since this is my first post for 2009, WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!.

I started reading the book "JBoss in Action" in October 2007 just before I did the interview with the authors of this book for Javalobby titled "An Interview with JBoss in Action authors Javid Jamae and Peter Johnson. I kept asking the authors and also the publishers every few months if the PDF I was regularly getting the final version. It took almost 1 and 1/2 years from the day I started reading this book. Anyway, the book is finally out.

The book is just amazing. The authors have packed so much detail in this book. JBoss in Action is the first book I have read to focus in detail on how to use the JBoss 5 application server from installation to configuration to production development. The topics on security are also very well covered.

This book is divided into four parts, containing 15 chapters and two appendices. This books covers 5.0.0.GA version of JBoss AS, the chapters on the portal are based on the 2.6.4.GA release running on JBoss AS 4.2.2, and were later verified with JBoss AS 4.2.3 and Portal 2.7.0.

Part 1 covers JBoss AS basics like configuring the server, deploying and undeploying applications and a brief overview of security.

Part 2 shows how to configure, deploy Java EE technologies. There is a complete chapter messaging and web services as well. Very interesting chapters.

I wasn't sure why the authors decided to dedicate Part 3 entirely to JBoss Portal. I did evaluate JBoss Portal long time ago, no real experience here. I would have loved to see this part replaced with two chapters on JBoss Seam. The earlier version of PDF I read had JBoss Seam, I guess the authors had their reasons to remove those chapters.

Part 4 : Going into Production was very interesting. Especially the topics which cover Clustering and tunning the JBoss AS are very well written.

I was a big fan of JBoss until 2007. Once we switched to Java 6, I had big trouble using JBoss and EJB3 with Java 6. So, I haven't used JBoss since than. But, I have seen many of my clients using JBoss.

It is very simple to rate this book: everyone who uses JBoss AS should own and read a copy.

Stay tuned for a detailed chapter wise review and the rating on Javalobby.