Section 1.1. Why

1.1. Why "JBoss at Work"?

Before we get too far into things, we should explain why we chose the title JBoss at Work for this book. Understanding the authors' backgrounds should help.

Both of us are practicing software engineers who have worked together off and on for years. More importantly, both of us are former presidents of the Denver Java Users Group (http://www.denverjug.org). When we polled the group for potential interest in a given subject, the same phrase came up over and over again: "I don't want to be an expert in it, I just want to make it work."

"I just want to make it work" really resonates with us because we feel the same way. An ever-growing number of technologies fall under the J2EE umbrella, and there are at least two or three competing implementations of each. Just trying to keep up is a never-ending battle.

There is a 1,000-page book out there for each topic we cover in only 20 to 30 pages. JBoss At Work isn't intended to be an exhaustive discussion of every facet of the J2EE collection. This book is meant to be a brief survey of each subject aimed at the working professional with limited time"Give me an overview, show me some working code, and make it snappy...." (Think of it as 12 months of JUG presentations collected in a single volume, minus the PowerPoint slides and cold pizza.)