Chapter 1, Getting Started with JBoss AS 7, discusses installing the core application server distribution and all the required tools for running it and for developing Java EE applications (JVM, Eclipse, and Maven).

Chapter 2, What's New in JBoss AS 7, provides a crash course on JBoss AS 7. It introduces the new filesystem structure, the application's configuration, and the dichotomy between standalone servers and domain servers.

Chapter 3, Beginning Java EE 6 – EJBs, discusses the new features introduced by EJB 3.1, including Singleton EJB, Asynchronous EJB, and EJB Timer Service. We will develop our Ticket Booking application, which will be the main theme of the book.

Chapter 4, Learning Context Dependency Injection, introduces Context Dependency Injection, comparing its features with the older EJB and JSF programming models. We will show how to enhance out ticket system using CDI annotations.

Chapter 5, Combining Persistence with CDI, discusses the Java Persistence API, showing how we can persist data on a relational database. We will then combine the JPA API with the example developed in the earlier chapters.

Chapter 6, Testing Your Applications, introduces Arquillian, showing how to use it for testing your application using a running application server instance or by managing its own server instance.

Chapter 7, Developing Applications with JBoss JMS Provider, discusses the Java Message Service, showing how you can configure some core JMS elements (such as factories and destinations) on your server. Next, we will enhance our Ticket example by adding a JMS producer and consumer. The last part of this chapter deals with advanced concepts, such as consuming messages from an external JMS provider.

Chapter 8, Adding Web Services to Your Applications, talks about the two core web services stacks: SOAP-based web services and RESTful web services; it provides concrete examples and highlights the differences between the two approaches.

Chapter 9, Managing the Application Server, talks about the core concepts of the Command Line Interface and how it can improve your productivity. The next part of this chapter dives deep into writing CLI scripts using other languages such as Jython.

Chapter 10, Clustering JBoss AS 7 Applications, is all about the world of clustered applications. We will learn how to use the robust clustering features of JBoss AS applied to some of the examples discussed in this book.

Chapter 11, Securing JBoss AS 7 Applications, will show how to use security domains to perform required authorization and authentication checks. The next part of this chapter discusses securing the data that is transmitted from the client to the server and vice versa.

Appendix, Rapid Development Using JBoss Forge, is the last section of this book; it is about the JBoss Forge framework. It shows how you can use this framework to generate a basic CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) application.

This is a developer's guide; for this reason, it is highly recommended that you read this book with a computer beside you, where you can try the examples and open, compile, and test the provided projects. Besides this, it's also required that you have an Internet connection where you can download the core server and additional libraries used in the examples.

Good programming skills are required to easily understand the examples presented in this book. Most of the chapters complement the covered topics with a set of executable Maven projects. A basic understanding of Maven, Java, and JUnit is also required.

If you are a Java architect or a developer who wants to get the most out of the latest release of the JBoss Application Server, this book is for you. You are not expected to have accumulated a lot of experience on the application server, though you must know the basic concepts of Java EE.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "The users are stored in a properties file called mgmt-users.properties under standalone/configuration or domain/configuration depending on the running mode of the server."

A block of code is set as follows:

@WebServlet("/test")
public class TestServlet extends HttpServlet {       
  protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
    out.println("Hello World JBoss AS 7");
    out.close();
  }
  protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {     
  }

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

@SessionScoped
@Named
public class TheatreBookerBean implements Serializable {
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

mvn install jboss-as:deploy –Dhostname=localhost –Dport=9999

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on Finish to continue."

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