Random Thoughts on Software

I’ve was going to write something today and I wanted to use the idiom “from a 20,000 foot view”, but I was questioning whether I got the number “20,000″ right. So, I did what any self-respecting geek would do, I Googled it. Well, as I expected, different people view things from different altitudes. I searched for two phrases, “from X feet” and “X foot view”, substituting X in for increments of 10,000. Here are the number of results Google said it had for the different numbers:

So it looks like people are generally looking at things from 30,000 feet (but keep in mind, my analysis is only based on a 10,000 foot view of the statistics).

In July of 2005, I received an e-mail from an editor at Manning Publications Co. regarding some articles that I had written about JBoss. They liked my writing style and wanted to see if I was interested in writing a book on JBoss. I pitched a table of contents for a book that would be in their “In Action” series and they accepted it. Now, nearly two years later I, along with my co-author Peter Johnson, are approaching the production stage for our book, JBoss in Action.

Between the two of us, Peter and I have spent a lot of time on the JBoss forums, teaching JBoss courses, contributing to JBoss projects, and consulting with companies on how to use JBoss. This experience allowed us to provide practical, real-world advice and focus the book on the topics and features that people actually use and ask about frequently. We hope that this book can put our experiences into your hands so that your journey through the world of JBoss is as painless as possible.

JBoss in Action is different from other JBoss books on the market because of several reasons:

• JBoss in Action covers JBoss Application Server (AS) 5.x. All of the other books that are available cover JBoss AS 3.x or JBoss AS 4.x.
• JBoss in Action is not stuffed with complicated explanations and disorganized content that lacks sufficient background. If you’ve spent some digging through the JBoss wiki, the JBoss documentation, or JBoss 4.0 - The Official Guide, you’ll appreciate this.
• JBoss in Action focuses on teaching you about the application server, not Java EE programming. The book JBoss at Work is great for learning how to program Java EE applications for JBoss, but it doesn’t give you enough detail on how to configure and operate the more advanced features of the application server.
• JBoss in Action covers a wide range of topics. The book JBoss: A Developer’s Notebook is very well written and is very practical, but it only gives you enough information to get your feet wet.

The first four chapters of JBoss In Action are currently available through Manning’s early access program. If you order the book through the early access program, you get to preview these chapters now; then, when the book comes out, you get a PDF and/or print version. You can find out more about the early access program by clicking here.

If you decide to purchase the book through the early access program, you can post any questions or comments about the book on the Manning forum set up for the book:

There are two types of standards: de facto standards and de jure standards. A de facto standard is one that is based on widespread use and recognition throughout an industry. A de jure standard is created by a body or committee. These two types of standards are not mutually exclusive, and often, the best standards are those that start as de facto standards then become de jure standards. This is because unproven de jure standards are less likely to be successful. For example, parts of the J2EE standard (a de jure standard) were arguably unsuccessful because they were unproven in the industry (e.g. EJB 2.x entity beans) . But the new Java EE 5 standard has learned and applied things that developers learned from real use in the industry.