JBoss, Inc, headed by Marc Fleury, is composed of over 100 developers worldwide who are working to deliver a full range of J2EE tools, making JBoss the premier Enterprise Java application server for the Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform.
JBoss is an Open Source, standards-compliant, J2EE application server implemented in 100% Pure Java. The JBoss/Server and complement of products are delivered under a public license. With upwards of 100,000 downloads per month, JBoss is the most downloaded J2EE based server in the industry.
JBoss, one of the leading Java Open Source groups, integrates and develops these services for a full J2EE-based implementation. JBoss provides JBossServer, the basic EJB container, and Java Management Extension (JMX) infrastructure. It also provides JBossMQ, for JMS messaging, JBossTX, for JTA transactions, JBossCMP for CMP persistence, JBossSX for JAAS based security, and JBossCX for JCA connectivity. Support for web components, such as servlets and JSP pages, is provided by an abstract integration layer. Implementations of the integration service are provided for third party servlet engines like Tomcat and Jetty. JBoss enables you to mix and match these components through JMX by replacing any component you want with a JMX compliant implementation for the same APIs. JBoss doesn't even impose the JBoss components. Now that is modularity.
Our goal is to provide the full Open Source J2EE stack. We have met our goal, and the reason for our success lies on JMX. JMX, or Java Management Extension, is the best weapon we have found for integration of software. JMX provides a common spine that allows one to integrate modules, containers, and plug-ins. Figure 1, “The JBoss JMX integration bus and the standard JBossXX components” illustrates how JMX is used a bus through which the components of the JBoss architecture interact.
The primary focus of this book is the presentation of the standard JBoss 3.2.x architecture components from both the perspective of their configuration and architecture. As a user of a standard JBoss distribution you will be given an understanding of how to configure the standard components. Note that this book is not an introduction to J2EE or how to use J2EE in applications. It focuses on the internal details of the JBoss server architecture and how our implementation of a given J2EE container can be configured and extended.
As a JBoss developer, you will be given a good understanding of the architecture and integration of the standard components to enable you to extend or replace the standard components for your infrastructure needs. We also show you how to obtain the JBoss source code, along with how to build and debug the JBoss server.