You've been told to develop a mission-critical Java enterprise application that has to run on a low-cost app server. Where do you turn? The app server is easy: JBoss, of course: it's hard to beat free, and it's also hard to find a better product, at any price. But to figure out how to get the application developed, deployed, and into production? JBoss At Work.

JBoss At Work shows you how to develop an enterprise application from start to finish: from the Java Server Pages on the front end to the session EJBs and the database on the back end. It's focused on writing working code, building the application, packaging the application properly (with all those deployment descriptors), and getting the application deployed. In addition to JBoss, it shows you how to use tools like Ant, XDoclet, and Hibernate (which is the preferred persistence mechanism). While there are thick and substantial books on all of these topics, JBoss At Work isn't one of those tomes. It's focused on the practical question that all developers ask: How do I make it work?

Topics covered include:

• Developing web applications
• Building and deploying WAR and EAR files
• Using Hibernate for the persistence layer
• When (and when not) to use EJBs
• Building applications around session beans
• Using JMS and message-driven beans
• Using JavaMail
• Managing Security
• Providing a Web Services interface

But this isn't a book about the individual pieces. It's a book about the whole package: putting everything together and making it work. If you need to make your enterprise application work (and--let's be honest--applications that don't work aren't a lot of fun. And make your boss unhappy), JBoss at Work shows you how.