From: Acme Head Offices
To: Francesco Marchioni
Hi Francesco,
Can you meet at 4 PM in the boardroom? We are going to interview a few guys for the new JBoss Enterprise project.
Regards,
Monty Burns
JBoss Application Server has been around since the beginning of the new millennium and, in personal resumes, it is common to find people who have acquired some experience on it.
Before every job interview, I have the expectation that high caliber Java/Java EE candidates surely know the core concepts of JBoss AS. Often, companies don't consider hiring just the best techie guy, but a well-rounded profile with a "situation-action-result" mind.
One thing I personally like to ask to identify smart developers is: Why have you chosen to learn JBoss and not XYZ? How does it differentiate from the competitors? The most habitual answer is:JBoss is free, so I chose to learn Java EE on this platform. Although there is some truth in this answer, I think it's a partial truth and the concept needs to be elaborated.
First, let's define what is free. Today there's a common misconception of open source products being like "free lunch". They can be so for a student who's learning these technologies, but for the real world, open source means you don't pay a license fee to develop/roll in production certain software.
This obviously doesn't mean that the software hasn't got a cost. Moreover, if you don't want to risk breaking your service level agreement, you usually sign a contract with the owner of the open source software so that it guarantees quick and decisive support.
From the financial point of view, this is the first important difference with a commercial product. If you start a project, running a product such as JBoss AS, you don't have an immediate entrance fee. You can even dispense with commercial assistance if you are confident that your technicians will be able to solve any issue. Whatever you choose, this policy is much more flexible than a commercial contract, which requires an immediate financial commitment.
That's better than simply saying: I like JBoss because it's free.
The second and, in my opinion, the most important reason is the worldwide spread of the product. Today JBoss is the most used application server and it has been not only built with the collaborative efforts of many developers around the world, but also with simple contributions of users who request new features. This boils down to the actual nature of the success of JBoss. The real driving force of this product is its community of users, while vendor products are usually designed around commercial or marketing schemas.
As an example of this, you can see that JBoss Application Server is a Java EE compatible server, but you can freely add or remove modules from the application server, thus creating a customized product for your specific needs. It is the flexibility and willingness to adapt that has brought JBoss AS this far, and it will be this trait that will drive the application server full speed into the future.
This book is an intense guide to creating professional Java EE applications with JBoss AS 5.0. Packed with example code and written in a friendly, earthy style, this book will act as a handy guide to take you from the basics to the skills that will make you a JBoss developer to be reckoned with.
We think that studying good code samples is one of the best ways to learn, so we included as many as we could. We also wanted this book to be a quick reference to solve most common issues—a book you can have on your desk and turn to when you have a doubt.
JBoss AS is an open source Java EE-based application server. The project's first milestone dates back to early 1999, when Marc Fleury developed an open source product named JBoss that was a simple EJB 1.0 container. Since then, the project has been incorporated in a company named JBoss Group. In April 2006 the company was acquired by Red Hat Inc., which started providing professional services to the product. As a matter of fact, you now have two main references for JBoss products—http://www.jboss.org, which is the community of developers where you can freely download products and join forums, and the commercial site http://www.jboss.com, which is targeted at commercial support for the product.