Acknowledgments

All of us today can trace our perceived success through the company we keep. I owe my good fortune to the many relationships, both professional and personal, that I have developed over the years.

I would like to thank Coby Sparks, Dale McElroy, Richard Dagit, Mike “mikey” Richardson, John “the japper” Peiffer, Kurt Herman, Steve “glacier man” Symonds, Jeff Kluth (a.k.a. Jeffery Homes of this book, backpacking buddy and the owner of the real Remulak, a DB2 consulting firm), Dave “daver” Remy, David Neustadt, John Girt, Robert Folie, Terry Lelievre, Daryl Kulak, Steve Jackson, Claudia Jackson, Bryan Foertsch, Debbie Foertsch, and Larry Deniston (the OO guru from Kalamazoo) and the other folks at Manatron (www.manatron.com). Thanks to Ellen Gottesdiener of EBG Consulting (www.ebgconsulting.com) for her wonderful assistance on project charters, use-cases, and business rules. Thanks to Marilyn Stanton of Illuminated Consulting (www.illuminatedconsulting.com) for her continued support and advice. A big thank-you to some very good friends: Bill and Cindy Kuffner, Nick and Peggy Ouellet, Bev Kluth, Bill and Sayuri Reed, Betsy Reed, Rodney Yee (my wine mentor), and Brian and Susan Maecker (besides being one of the top realtors in the country at www.maecker.com, Brian shares my passionate pursuit of the perfect glass of red wine).

Other individuals warrant commendation for shaping my thoughts about sound Java design and the use of its various technology offerings. In particular, I would like to thank Hans Bergsten for his excellent advice on the topic of JavaServer Pages, and Floyd Marinescu for the creation of his fantastic Web site (www.theserverside.com). Floyd's many articles on design patterns applicable to applications using Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) were very helpful to me. I would like to thank Eric Stahl and Tyler Jewell, both of BEA Systems, for their assistance in using their marvelous products. I want to acknowledge Per Kroll from Rational Software for his assistance with using Rational's tools.

I have the benefit of working with some great clients in both the United States and abroad. I would like to explicitly thank Vicki Cerda at Florida Power Light; Sara Garrison at Visa USA; all my friends at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, including Mike Stan, Linda Jimerson, Matt Rodriguez, and Bill Matchette; and finally, my good friend and Asian partner Lawrence Lim at LK Solutions (Singapore, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates, www.lk-solutions.com).

Finally, special thanks to Paul Becker of Addison-Wesley for putting up with my “whining” during this project. I would also like to thank Diane Freed of Diane Freed Publishing Services for helping organize the production of this book. I want to give a special thanks to Stephanie Hiebert for her wonderful copyediting and for providing clarity to my most jumbled collection of prose.

The real heroes of this project are the reviewers—Joe Chavez, Hang Lau, Prakash Malani, Jason Monberg, Nitya Narasimham, and David Rine—who slugged their way through my early drafts and weren't shy at all to cast darts when necessary.