I would first like to thank Subho Gupta, a senior acquisition editor at Packt Publishing, who came up with the idea of writing a book on mastering Apache Maven; then I would like to thank, Ruchita Bhansali, a content development editor at Packt Publishing, who I worked with closely throughout the project—thank you very much, Ruchita, for your patience and flexibility. Also, I would like to thank all the others at Packt who helped me throughout to make this book a reality from the initial idea. Thank you very much for all your continuous support.

Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, the CEO of WSO2, and Paul Fremantle, the CTO of WSO2, have always been my mentors. I am truly grateful to both of them for everything they have done for me.

I'd like to thank my beloved wife, Pavithra, and my loving little daughter, Dinadi. Pavithra wanted me to write this book even more than I wanted. If I say she is the driving force behind this book, I am not exaggerating. She simply went beyond by not only feeding me with all the encouragement, but also by helping immensely in reviewing the book and developing samples. She was always the first reader. Thank you very much, Pavithra. Also, thanks to little Dinadi for your patience—it was your time I spent on writing the book.

I would also like to thank all the technical reviewers of the book. All your suggestions and thoughts were extremely valuable and are much appreciated.

My parents and my sister have been the driving force behind me since my birth. If not for them, I wouldn't be who I am today. I am grateful to them for everything they have done for me. Last but not least, I'd like to thank my wife's parents; they were amazingly helpful in making sure that the only thing I had to do was to write this book, taking care of almost all the other things that I was supposed to do.

Although this would sounds like a one-man effort, it's actually a team effort. Thanks to everyone who supported me in different ways.