I consider it a great blessing to have been associated with the JavaServer Faces technology for such a long time. In the 11 years since JSF 1.0 was released, the little corner of the enterprise software world in which JSF plays has experienced an enormous amount of growth and change, but it is still the world of enterprise software. During this time, I have come to have a deep appreciation of the unique technical and nontechnical requirements of enterprise software. This appreciation has shown me that these two aspects are very closely linked, and any framework that wants to play in the enterprise software space must broadly and deeply address both of them. The fact that there is still demand for the continued evolution of JSF is a testament to the ecosystem behind JSF and also how well it addresses these aspects.

One of the key nontechnical requirements of enterprise software is the ability to build projects that have very long service lifetimes. To do this, enterprises need technologies that are good enough to get the job done while having the necessary market backing and support guarantees to be trusted with mission-critical applications. This is where Java lives and thrives, and the Java Community Process (JCP) is the engine to develop Java.

There is a tension between the long service lifetime requirement of enterprise software and the constantly evolving state of the art. One element of this evolution is the rise and acceptance of open source software (OSS). When JSF first came out, enterprises looked at open source with a high degree of suspicion. Can we trust it? Will it be there for us throughout the service life for which we need it? Over time, enterprises have come to accept OSS. As the first part of Java to be made open source, JSF has ridden the crest of this trend. This was entirely enabled by the evolution of the JCP with which JSF is developed. Without the opening of the JCP to the ideas of OSS, JSF would have already faded out into nonuse. One could argue that the JCP has helped make OSS for enterprises.

The opening of the JCP was also a key enabler for the creation of the JSF component ecosystem, in which PrimeFaces is now the biggest player. I'm very grateful to all of the component libraries in the JSF ecosystem, in particular to PrimeFaces, for taking the core ideas of JSF and building on them to create solutions that can ultimately deliver real business value. Just as PrimeFaces takes the core ideas of JSF, Mert's and Oleg's book takes the core ideas of PrimeFaces and puts them in your hands for quick and easy deployment in your applications. These ideas are presented with frequent How to do it… and How it works… sections, showing first the practice and then the theory of PrimeFaces. With this style of presentation, Mert and Oleg cover the breadth and depth of PrimeFaces, diving down to the core underlying JSF when necessary to drive the point home.

I'm confident you'll find the second edition of this book a valuable resource as you develop JSF applications with PrimeFaces.

Ed Burns

JavaServer Faces Specification Co-lead