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      • 15. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
        slaboure
        • 16. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
          gary_kephart

          Yes, I am glad that JBoss is free. However, if I can't use it, then it doesn't matter that it is free - it's useless. I paid for the Admin/Devel docs; granted, it was only US$10. However, it was very much slanted towards the admin, and not the developer. It still left many questions unanswered. And I'm talking about JBoss in particular, not J2EE, necessarily. Frankly, I don't case about the internals of JBoss, as a developer. I just want the damn thing to work. I'm not going to make my own MBeans or anything else. I just want to know how to configure what's there.
          I do want some hand-holding. For example, if I want a particular JSP to be secured using users.properties and roles.properties, I want to know each and every step in between. What do I set in jboss-web.xml? How about jboss.xml? How about any other xml config file? This type of specific information is unavailable, at least in the Admin/Devel book. Actually, I was able to configure the web.xml file from the doc.
          I am a developer, not an administrator. You guys may be (rightfully) proud of knowing every in and out of JBoss, but if you want JBoss to be popular, you're going to have to cater to others like me. Otherwise, you might end up with someone like Microsoft winning, and none of us wants that.

          • 17. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile

            There are several sources for instruction and examples that I have used extensively, and knowing which to go to and in which combination is key to being comfortable with working in JBoss. As an aside, I would not rapidly discard the idea of writing MBeans because doing so will teach you a lot about JBoss and JMS in general, and they are also quite easy to get started with and they are quite powerful so the return on your time is high.
            So, the sources I have used are (in stream of consciousness order):
            1. The Admin/Devel Pay For PDF ($10): Honestly, the best part of this book for me was Chapter 8 dealing with Security (see #2). I think you will clear up your JSP security issues in this chapter. The chapter on JNDI was alos very helpful on clearing up some fuziness I had on EJB refs.
            2. Scott Stark's article on JavaWorld titled " Integrate security infrastructures with JBossSX" was also a big help. Some of it is derivative from the aformentioned Chapter 8 because it is the same subject. However, sometimes I found reading the same information phrased slightly differently made it clear for me. http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-2001/jw-0831-jaas.html. Get it soon. JavaWorld will be charging for access to their archives.
            3. The Getting Started docs (latest at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jboss/JBoss.3.0QuickStart.Draft4.pdf) covered pretty much everything you need to know about doing basic J2EE stuff in JBoss. My only criticism would be that the XDoclet tags were very lightly covered, but see #4.
            4. Download XDoclet 1.2b2 and XPetstore from SourceForge.
            (http://xdoclet.sourceforge.net/ and http://xpetstore.sourceforge.net/ respectively)
            The PetStore has a whole bunch of real life useful examples that you can adapt into your own code, as well as a wealth of examples covering descriptors etc. XDoclet has the utlimate set of examples and documentation for tags that will automatically generate the standard EJB and JBoss descriptors.
            5. The CMP2 Pay Docs ($10): If you are doing CMP2 and you do not have these docs, you either quite clever, or not so clever. I may be the later, but these docs were invaluable in helping me get the CMP2 stuff working, and it is now kicking ass.
            6. The JBoss developers have been pretty religious about implementing the specs and I have found that many of their answers to developer's questions proverbially end in " like it says in the spec." Not having been one to ever read any specs, I have fond of late that attacking a problem after referencing the appropriate section of the relevant spec gives you more insight into the issue.
            7. Finally, devour any concrete examples that come from a reliable source. For examle, the CrimePortal (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jboss/JBoss.3.0TemplateAndExamples.zip) has all sorts of useful information in it. I have doundthat the critical process with both docs and examples is to constantly cross reference code snippets, textual explanations and descriptors. Once you see how they all tie together, you will feel pretty good.

            In conclusion, if you are using JBoss for really simple stuff, you can probably get awaty without the pay docs. Otherwise, it is clearly worth it. Clear your mind of any preconceived notions about free docs with $20K products, and see that JBG makes money from $10 docs and gives away what I think is the best J2EE server out there. $10 !!!! It is a steal !

            So I must admit, I have not really used either of the analog JBoss books available of Amazon, even though I bought them both. ( I used the JMX book quite a lot though ).

            Cheers.

            //Nicholas

            • 18. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
              aweissman

              I have to agree heavily with those who criticize the documentation. Both the free and paid documentation are poorly written, unorganized, and overly technical. I bought the admin/dev docs last week and had to read the security section 3 times before I understood some of the sentences, and this is after using JBoss professionally for a year.

              My current position is training now 5 and soon about 15 developers in JBoss/J2EE, and while I can hand them 'Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans' to read, there is no analog for JBoss and any newbie who attempts to run ANY book's examples will have only the greatest of difficulty thanks to JBoss's barely-documented, proprietary configuration files.

              I will gladly pay $100 to anyone who offers some decent comprehensive documentation, and I can't imagine that I'm the only one. Really, if there was some professional documentation out there, you could probably charge $1000.

              Alan

              • 19. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
                darryl_staflund

                Hi there,

                I think the docs are worthwhile for the money you pay for it but I wish it would be more task-oriented and a little more reliable. Some of the instructions are wrong or out of date it seems to me. Has anyone have comments on the new JBoss 3.0 Handbook from Wrox? I find it's still fairly technical, but it's organized much more along administrative lines and walks you through topics step-by-step.

                Darryl

                • 20. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
                  kurt_olsen

                  I've been using jboss for awhile now and have to agree with the person who said that a world-class tool needs world class documentation. I purchased the 2.4x series docs but they seemed to be of a technical nature and not very usefull to me.

                  There is no way most of the users of this technology will ever become jboss developers/authors - nor should they. Given xdoclet, writing webapps has never been easier but I still don't know how to create a simple webapp that takes advantage of ssl and the security domains when using integrated jboss/tomcat.

                  Summary:
                  I think jboss is a very nice server.

                  I think there needs to be a professionally written user guide for the 3.2 series.

                  I think that jboss.org should adopt a scheduled release cycle that doesn't obsolete our knowledge too quickly.

                  I would love to attend some of the jboss seminars but be aware that many of us can't find a j2ee job right now. Seminars are expensive.



                  Thanks for listening,
                  Kurt

                  • 21. Re: JBoss Advanced Documentation: Is it Worthwhile
                    sharris

                    I can't understand how anyone could support the getting started guide. This is not about hand holding. If you don't want to support new users, then don't write this kind of guide. Be upfront and say we want to sell you training. But putting out such an awfully written tech doc is really nasty. I've used JBoss 2.x before and it's great. Now I want to use 3.x, so I bought the 3.x docs, partially to support JBoss. In doing this, I stumbled on the 3.x get started guide and figured it would be a quick way to see some differences. It made simple stuff almost impossible to understand. You really should either remove it or fix it.

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