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JBoss at Work : A Practical Guide

Format: Paperback
Author: Tom Marrs
ReleaseDate: 01 November, 2005
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Excellent practical guide to JBoss and J2EE
It's readily apparent that two of the earliest vendors, WebSphere and WebLogic, implemented J2EE in vastly different ways. J2EE started out as a specification that left the implementation to each container vendor. As a result, early books on J2EE or Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) frequently either avoided or severely limited the discussion of a specific server because the details were better referenced from server vendors' manuals. JBoss changed that picture. It is an open source Java-based application server which is freely downloadable, plus it is a certified J2EE server.

"JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide", aims to provide practical examples for using JBoss by showing a practical and complete example of a web application running on JBoss. The "JAW Motors" application supports a fictitious automobile dealership. Each chapter progressively adds a new J2EE technology that solves a specific business problem. Viewing cars on a website involves JSP pages and some form of persistence (JDBC or Hibernate). Performing a credit check sends a JMS message and an email response using JavaMail. Purchasing a car requires the transactional support of Stateless Session Beans. Sharing data from the JAW Motors inventory with other dealerships involves setting up Web Services, and so on. The authors' hope is that a coherent business application in action will hopefully give you a clearer idea of how the various layers interact, as opposed to a series of disjointed "Hello World" examples exercising each layer in isolation, and I think their concept worked out very well.

The security portion of the book's example web application makes use of JAAS (Java Authentication & Authorization Service), which enables an application to protect its resources by restricting access to only users with proper credentials and permissions. It is a standard extension in J2SE 1. 4, but is not yet widely understood. Thus, one of the appendices is devoted to a tutorial on its use, which I found very helpful.

The authors assume that you're experienced in programming with the Java language and are familiar with Open Source tools such as Ant and XDoclet. They show how to download and install them, and they also provide Ant scripts for compiling and deploying the "JAW Motors" application. If you're new to J2EE, this book serves as a gentle introduction, but don't mistake it for a true J2EE reference manual. I found this book immensely helpful and clear and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get to work quickly using JBoss as an application server. The table of contents is as follows:

1. GETTING STARTED WITH JBOSS
Why "JBoss at Work"?; Why JBoss?; The Example: JAW Motors; The Tools; Installing JBoss; Deploying Applications to JBoss; Looking Ahead;

2. WEB APPLICATIONS
The Servlet Container; Three-Tier Applications; Exploring the Presentation Tier; Building the View Cars Page; Adding a Model and Controller; Looking Ahead;

3. BUILDING AND DEPLOYING AN EAR
WARs Versus EARs; Application. xml; Common JAR; Deploying the EAR; Adding a DAO; Using XDoclet; Looking Ahead;

4. DATABASES AND JBOSS
Persistence Options; JDBC; JNDI; JNDI References in web. xml; JBoss DataSource Descriptors; JDBC Driver JARs; Database Checklist; Accessing the Database Using Ant; Creating JDBCCarDAO; Looking Ahead;

5. HIBERNATE AND JBOSS
The Pros and Cons of ORMs; Hibernate Mapping Files; Hibernate MBean Service Descriptor; Creating a HAR; Adding the HAR to the EAR; Creating a JNDI lookup; Hibernate Checklist; HibernateCarDAO; Adding a Car; Editing a Car; Deleting a Car; Looking Ahead;

6. STATELESS SESSION BEANS
Issues with EJBs; Should I Use EJB or Not?; Business Tier; Enterprise JavaBeans; Our Example; Iteration 1-Introduce a Session Bean; Calling the Session Bean from the Controller Servlet; EJB-Based JNDI References in Web-Based Deployment; Descriptors; Session Bean Types; Session Beans; Remote Versus Local EJB Calls; Local and Remote Interfaces; Home Interfaces; Reviewing Iteration 1; Testing Iteration 1; Iteration 2-Move Business Logic Out of the Controller; Reviewing Iteration 2; Testing Iteration 2; Iteration 3-Buy a Car; The AccountingDTO; Developing the HibernateAccountingDAO; Adding buyCar( ) to the InventoryFacadeBean; Reviewing Iteration 3; Testing Iteration 3; Final Thoughts on Session Beans; Looking Ahead;

7. JAVA MESSAGE SERVICE (JMS) AND MESSAGE-DRIVEN BEANS
Sending Messages with JMS; Upgrade the Site: Running a Credit Check; JMS Architecture Overview; JMS Messaging Models; Creating a Message; Sending the Message; Core JMS API; Sending a JMS Message; JMS-Based JNDI References in Web-Based Deployment; Descriptors; Deploying JMS Destinations on JBoss; JMS Checklist; Message-Driven Beans (MDBs); MDB Checklist; Testing the Credit Check; Looking Ahead;

8. JAVAMAIL
Running a Credit Check; Sending Email Messages with JavaMail; Upgrading the MDB to Send an Email Message; Sending an Email Message; JavaMail-Based JNDI References in EJB Deployment; Descriptors; Automating JavaMail-Based JNDI References with XDoclet; Deploying JavaMail on JBoss; JavaMail Checklist; Testing the Credit Check Notification Email; Looking Ahead;

9. SECURITY
J2EE Security; Web-Based Security; Restricting Access with web. xml; JAAS; Deploying a JAAS-Based Security Realm on JBoss; Testing Secure JSPs; Protecting the Administrative Actions; Web Security Checklist; Integrating Web Tier and EJB Tier Security; EJB Security; EJB Security Checklist; Looking Ahead;

10. WEB SERVICES
Web Services Architecture; JBoss 4. x and Web Services; J2EE 1. 4 and Web Services; Implementing J2EE 1. 4 Web Services; Service Endpoint Interface (SEI); Modifying ejb-jar. xml; webservices. xml; JAX-RPC Mapping File; WSDL File; Set the Web Service URL; Modifying the InventoryFacadeBean EJB; Web Services Deployment; Automating Web Services Deployment; J2EE Web Services Checklist; Testing Web Services Deployment; Web Services Client; Implementing a Web Service Client; Web Service Client Checklist; Testing the Web Service Client; Final Thoughts on J2EE 1. 4 Web Services; Conclusion;



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My kind of book
I'm very much a hands on learner and this book fits very well with the way I like to attack things. I've built a number of J2EE/Servlet/JSP web applications over the past many years but was never formally trained in OO techiniques nor had any formal Java training. Some commenters wished for a book more focussed on JBoss particulars but for me the project management stuff and the use of Ant and Xdoclet are a big plus. I "get things" best by looking at code and scripts and this book delivers that.

I think it's a really swell book.

Exactly what a "practical guide" to technology should be
To me, that's an ideal "get-me-up-to-speed" book. This is the kind of book that you can go through once quickly and get a good overview of things, then dig deeper with further readings and get more and more out of it each time. If you're looking to learn about what JBoss is and does and how it does it all, this book is a great way to learn the basics quickly and work up to the more complicated stuff. I skimmed it quickly on a train ride into work one morning and got enough out of perusing the first five chapters to dive in and make use of it all. A lot of books talk about "starting with the basics" and building on acquired knowledge to teach the more advanced topics, but few actually do so in a consistent methodical way. This book achieves that goal by constructing an iteratively enhanced application over the course of the entire book. The JBoss directory structure and services functionality are explained in the context of deploying and configuring this app. The model and presentation components are iteratively built up over the course of the book. The JSP pages start out going against common best practices but evolve employ JSTL to provide iteration and conditional constructs more elegantly, optimize layout formatting with CSS, and finally make use of an MVC approach with controller that removes scriptlet code from the pages. Similarly, the model starts out as an in-core ArrayList, is enhanced to make use of a relational database, and finally uses Hibernate to demonstrate the flexibilities of ORM and EJB technologies. The application is refactored at each stage, and this demonstrates how bad practices evolve with experience into better and hopefully best practices. The chapters on EJB, especially Message Driven Beans with JMS, cover this complicated material very well, and explain it in the context of adding new functionality to this same application. This book covers not only the ins and outs of JBoss but the how's and why's of building a J2EE application in general, using JBoss as a specific example of how J2EE applications are written, configured, and deployed. A very practical guide indeed.