Book for beginners?

[AnilPrakash Raju]

Hi Guys,
I am a developer but lately i am getting involved in installing and setting up servers . The company i am working for is thinking of installing JBoss. How good is your book for someone who has no experience in installing servers? Do i need to read other books/manuals before reading your book?
Also how helpful is you book explaining how Jboss works(connecting) with other open source applications(softwares) like eclipse and mysql server?

Thanks

Anil

[Tom Marrs]

Anil,
Our book shows how to install JBoss, and we cover how to connect JBoss to Hypersonic (the DBMS that comes bundled with JBoss). Although we don't show MySQL, you can follow the principles we show in our book. Also, you can find this on the JBoss Wiki - http://www.jboss.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp

There is a download from the JBoss web site called JBoss Eclipse IDE. It's Eclipse on steroids. It comes with the JBoss JARs baked in. It also does XDoclet and deployment for you. But I don't use it because it's too JBoss-centric. I also prefer an Ant or Maven-based build environment over an IDE build environment. It's easier to do Continuous Integration and push to production with an Ant/Maven-based build.

So, with all that said, I would recommend the JBoss Developer's Notebook by Norman Richards (also from O'Reilly) if you're starting out from scratch. He shows basic concepts and installation. When you're done with that book, then move over to ours to learn how to deploy applications on JBoss.

Tom

[S Davis]

I've read JBoss: A Developer's Notebook by Norman Richard and Sam Griffith, Jr. It's quite good. Norman was a tech reviewer for our book, and added quite a bit of insight.

I think that both books cover basically the same material, but are suited for different readers. The O'Reilly Dev Notebook series is quite terse by design -- all lab, no lecture. If you want to dive straight into code and deployment without all of the background material, the Notebook is where I would point you.

JBoss At Work takes a different approach -- not only do we show you the code, but we show you *why* we are using the code. We literally start with a static HTML file, and each chapter iteratively builds on it. HTML to Scriptlets. Scriptlets to JSTL. JSTL to JSPs, Servlets, and a full MVC architecture. It is meant to teach you as much about building a full J2EE app as it is about JBoss.

Both books talk about how to install JBoss. Both books talk about how to create a Datasource to connect to a database. We use the included HypersonicDB in our examples -- Norman and Sam use MySQL in theirs.

If you have "no experience" setting up JBoss, I would wholeheartedly recommend our book. You are the reason we wrote the book. If you are a seasoned veteran with years of J2EE experience, The JBoss Developer's Notebook is probably more your speed -- it cuts right to the chase.

[Will Fleming]

I too am looking for a good starter guide. I ordered the developer's notebook, but I will probably be looking for something deeper later on.

Thanks for the advice.

[AnilPrakash Raju]

Thanks for the advice
Anil

[Dale Seng]

Originally posted by Tom Marrs:
... I would recommend the JBoss Developer's Notebook by Norman Richards (also from O'Reilly) if you're starting out from scratch. He shows basic concepts and installation. When you're done with that book, then move over to ours to learn how to deploy applications on JBoss.

Tom, I'd LIKE to buy your book, but O'Reilly is on my "shucks list" (this being a ranch and all, I didn't want to say what I really wanted to say). See, I supposedly won a copy of the Developer's Notebook in this very forum back in July, yes, July. And even though I've nagged, I've not got my book. I wonder if you can light a fire under the arse of the appropriate person at the publisher.

--Dale--

[Will Fleming]

I just finished the Developer's notebook and liked it. (maybe 7.5/10) It wasn't perfect, but it got me up and running and even got me a little excited about using jBoss.

If I find the time, I will get "jBoss at Work", but for my needs (just get running) the dev notebook and some google searches did the trick.