Customer Reviews

JBoss AS 5 Development

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Before reading this book, I already knew the author, Francesco Marchioni, because of his web site which is dedicated to JBoss. So it was with enthusiasm that I wished to get a copy of the book and I was not disappointed. Indeed the book is like the web site : practical, rich in samples and useful information.

The book uses JBoss 5. It was published in december 2009, when the first version of JBoss 6 was becoming available and starting to implement Java EE 6. But the book is still up to date since it describes functionalities of JBoss that are more or less independant of the versions of Java EE.

The book is made of 14 chapters. As usual with the books from the Packt Publishing collection, there is a resume at the end of each chapter which recapitulates the main subjects.

The first 3 chapters describe the installation of JBoss, the new features and the configuration of services (logs, database connection, transactions, use of the JMX console and the administration console based on Jopr).

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the EJB container in JBoss since the session beans (EJB 3) are being developed. There is coding, theoretical explanations (for instance the session beans life cycle) and practical explanations (for instance how to configure the size of the pool of stateless session beans in JBoss).

Chapter 5 is about the persistence and a project is developed in Eclipse, using entity beans and the Java Persistence API (JPA).

Chapter 6 uses JSF 1.2 for the creation of a web application. The author describes the Web server inside JBoss and which uses Apache Tomcat.

Chapter 7 uses JMS with Message-Driven Beans and JBoss Messaging which replaces JBoss MQ. Again, there are nice explanations : theoretical and practical.

Chapter 8 shows the use of Hibernate with JBoss Tools / Hibernate Tools.

Chapters 9 to 12 go into the heart of JBoss AS with explanations of JMX, the MBeans and the management of resources from the administration console. Web Services are developed and deployed in JBoss WS.

Clustering of JBoss AS servers is not forgotten : there are explanations on the configuration needed for load balancing and the use of JBoss Cache to synchronise data in a cluster, among many other explanations.

Finally I found chapters 13 and 14 on security very complete. The author writes about everything : JAAS, JBossSX, certificates, securing EJB, Web Services encryption ...

What I liked the most : The many illustrations (of the console, the file system structure in JBoss, the screenshots of Eclipse ...), the concrete samples, the simple explanations.

What I liked the least : one might have liked to read more details about certains subjects but that is not a negative thing because the author gives the basic explanations needed to investigate further if necessary.

Book Review for "JBoss AS 5 Development" by Packt Publishing

This review is for "JBoss AS 5 Development", which has the subtitle "Develop, deploy, and secure Java applications on this robust open source application server". Having gone through the book with IDE in hand, I would have to say I find the subtitle more indicative of the content than the first part of the title. Later I'll try to explain why I feel so.

The book promises to cover a great amount of territory. Roughly, the 14 chapters cover these topics:

- Installation of the application server and Eclipse-based IDE toolkit

- Major differences between JBoss AS 5 and previous versions

- Customizing your JBoss installation

- Developing EJB 3 Session beans

- Working with JPA

- Writing a web application (JSF)

- The new JBoss messaging subsystem (JMS)

- Writing Hibernate applications on JBoss

- JMX and MBeans

- JBoss Web Services

- Clustering JBoss servers

- Writing Clustered Applications

- JBoss AS Security

- Securing applications under JBoss

If that seems like quite a list to digest, I would agree. The last 4 chapters give a hint to the depth of content the reader will encounter. In those cases, the author first presents an overview chapter about how the application server handles the topic (clustering, security), then follows it up with a whole chapter about applying the implementation details. I thought this struck the right balance between being too high-level (as many books might be) versus being overly detailed (as the old JBoss 4 AS doc book could be in places.)

I think this book will be an excellent acquisition for anyone who is certain they will be working with JBoss AS 5. The author has a deep understanding of the application server and writes in an easy to understand style. The book covers a great amount of 'real world' territory that is sure to be of interest for anyone tasked with moving an application to production under JBoss AS 5. Subjects like security and clustering (must-haves in a production environment) are given enough coverage that they can be of immediate practical use. (Note: these topics are not of vital importance in a pure development effort. A great amount of development can be done without paying attention to either security or clustering.) This is one reason I consider this book to be an interesting blend of development material and administrative material-- it is clearly not a pure development book.

For those that are interested in learning JEE but are not certain they'll be using JBoss, I'd suggest they should consider this book but also compare it to other titles, perhaps one of Packt's excellent NetBeans/GlassFish titles. This is not the fault of the book-- the author does a good job of walking the reader through various exercises in building EJBs, a JSF front-end application, a web service application, etc. The reason I don't suggest this book for new students of JEE is that the raw toolkit is just not at the same level some other open source development stacks are at. (Notably, NetBeans 6.8 and GlassFish). Putting it plainly, there are more than a few things that can go wrong in putting together a JEE application with JBoss Tools-- if the user isn't seasoned in problem analysis and debugging, it could easily lead to frustrations and an unsatisfactory experience.

If you're already confident in your ability to write and deploy JEE apps, you should find this book to your liking. Intermediate to advanced JEE developers ought to find plenty of material to keep them interested. Performance tips, JBoss specific extensions, and expert usage tips for enterprise Java development all get good coverage. The author knows the ins and outs of using JBoss AS 5, and is generous in providing tips in effective usage of facets the reader is likely to encounter. The author also provides good high-level overview material (which usually precedes the detail), which helps keep the reader grounded in the larger context of what's being conveyed.

The book provides a reasonable number of illustrations, including screen shots of JBoss Tools wizard screens. I found these of reasonable value, but have to admit I'm of mixed emotions on the toolset itself. It does a great job of some things (I love the packaging wizard that let's you declaratively roll up .jars, .ears, etc.). On the negative side, it makes some actions much more difficult than they have to be. I thought the author did a good job of providing meaningful illustrations where an abstract idea was being presented, especially in the security and clustering chapters. I once made a presentation at JBoss World about studying for the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect exam using JBoss-- I wish I'd had those illustrations then! I guess my SCEA is now a depreciated asset-- maybe we'll have to study for 'Oracle' architectural credentials in the future.

All things considered, this book will be an excellent source of information and reference for anyone using JBoss AS 5. I'm sure it will prove value time and again as the reader delves into the various corners of enterprise Java. This book offers expert insites on many topics and does it in an easy to read manner.

Author biography

Rick Wagner is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect, Sun Certified Java Programmer, and member of the International Association of Software Architects. Rick lives in Arkansas with his wife and 3 kids.

This book is really excellent! I have bought it because we need to migrate an existing WLS application to JBoss in a short window of time. I'm pretty satisfied by it. The book covers a lot of aspects of jBoss application server and any programmers with decent java skills can learn a lot.

1- the book is very easy to read. The Author put great effort in using good examples which everyone can understand. Also the way concepts are illustrated (with the help of lots of images) make you easy to understand every concept as soon as you finish reading the chapter.

2- the book is very well structured and flows in a natural way. For example, the basic Java Enterprise application is enriched at every step, much the same way you would do in a real time project, adding a piece every time you have mastered one new topic.

I'm really grateful to the author since I could finally run all the Web Services stuff(including security) after many many hours spent trying it by myself. Definitely a must buy book!

I've done a lot of searches around the web for tutorials, guides, about developing Enterprise applications with JBoss AS. This book is one of the best resource I've found.

By following the book examples, you can get the essentials necessary to start using JBoss in a matter of a couple of hours.

Additionaly the book provides some examples to show Java EE features, like EJB interceptors and Web Service handler chains.

The book shows at first the most important changes introduced by the application server, focusing on the new server configuration with a lot of useful tables.

Then a configuration chapter is concerned about the core JBoss services: the Thread pool, logging, the Web Server configuration, the Transaction service and a very detailed chapter about configuring the Datasource.

In the next part, the book introduces a Java EE Project which starts as simple EJB project and is expanded throughout the next chapters to be a fully JSF-EJB 3 Project, then a clustered Project, and, in the last chapter, secured with JBoss Security Framework.

Besides the main example I've found also quite useful the JMS and JMX sections which provide a whole lot of examples.

Well, in the end i would just say, it is really an excellent resource for JBoss developers (beginners to advanced).