17.6. Summary

In this chapter, we looked at JSF, EJB 3.0, and how a web application that utilizes these standards can be improved with the JBoss Seam framework. We discussed Seam's contexts and how components can be wired together in a contextual fashion. We talked about integration of Seam with Hibernate Validator, and you saw why a Seam-managed persistence context is the perfect solution for LazyInitializationExceptions.

If you found this excourse into the Seam world interesting, much more is waiting to be discovered:

• The Seam component model also supports an event/listener concept, which allows components to call each other with a loosely coupled (wired through expressions) observer/observable pattern.

• You can enable a stateful navigation flow for a conversation with a pageflow descriptor, replacing the stateless JSF navigation model. This solves any problems you may have with the user clicking the Back button in the browser during a conversation.

• Seam has a sophisticated concurrency model for asynchronous processing on the server (integrated with JMS), as well as concurrency handling in conversations (Seam protects conversations from double-submits).

• Seam allows you to tie conversations and business process management tasks together easily. It integrates the workflows and business process context of JBoss jBPM (http://www.jboss.com/products/jbpm).

• Seam integrates JBoss Rules (http://www.jboss.com/products/rules). You can access policies in Seam components and Seam components from rules.

• A JavaScript library is bundled with Seam. With this Remoting framework, you can call Seam components from client-side code easily. Seam can handle any Ajax requests to your server.

• The Seam Application Framework provides out-of-the-box components that enable you to write an easily extendable CRUD database application in minutes.

• Seam components are easily testable, with or without an (embeddable) container. Seam makes integration and functional testing extremely easy with the SeamTest superclass for TestNG; this class allows you to script interactions that simulate a web browser.

If you want to continue with Seam and explore other features that didn't make it into this list, continue with the tutorials in the Seam reference documentation.