Preface

Are you curious about the cool, new features of JBoss 4 and J2EE 1.4? Are you frustrated with all the simplistic "Hello World" examples? Do you want to see a realistic application deployed on JBoss?

As practitioners, we've seen that most people struggle with the following issues when deploying J2EE applications on JBoss:

• Real application deployment involves many J2EE and JBoss deployment descriptors, and it's difficult to make them all work together.

• Developers new to JBoss need a way to get started.

• Most projects don't have a packaging and deployment strategy that grows with their application.

• Class Loaders are confusing and can cause problems when developers don't know how to use them.

This book shows you how to use JBoss with the latest Open Source Java tools. By building a project throughout the book with extensive code examples, we cover all major facets of J2EE application deployment on JBoss, including JSPs, Servlets, EJBs, JMS, JNDI, Web Services, JavaMail, JDBC, and Hibernate.

With the help of this book, you'll:

• Implement a full J2EE application and deploy it on JBoss.

• Discover how to use the latest features of JBoss 4 and J2EE 1.4, including J2EE-compliant Web Services.

• Master J2EE application deployment on JBoss with EARs, WARs, and EJB JARs.

• Understand the core J2EE deployment descriptors and how they integrate with JBoss-specific descriptors.

• Deploy JSPs, Servlets, EJBs, JMS, Web Services, JavaMail, JDBC, and Hibernate on JBoss.

• Base your security strategy on JAAS.

Although this book covers the gamut of deploying J2EE technologies on JBoss, it isn't an exhaustive discussion of each aspect of the J2EE API. This book is meant to be a brief survey of each subject aimed at the working professional with limited time.