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In this screencast on Apache Maven, you’ll learn how to gernate a basic web application and run it inside of the Tomcat web container. You’ll explore the file structure and pom file for a web application, learn how to import the Servlet API into your project, and how to add resource files to your source code.

You can find all of my screencasts on my Screencasts page which is linked off the top-level navigation for the site.

Technorati Tags: apache, build, maven, screencast, servlet

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This screencast explains the basics of how Maven repositories and artifact dependencies work. In this lesson you’ll learn how Maven coordinates are defined for an artifact in the Project Object Model (POM) file. Then you’ll learn how to reference a dependent artifact using the coordinate system. We’ll take a look at local and remote repositories and how they interact. We’ll also learn how artifacts are installed into the local repository and play around on the command line to see all of these features in action.

You can find all of my screencasts on my Screencasts page which is linked off the top-level navigation for the site.

Technorati Tags: apache, build, maven, screencast

I’m giving away a copy of my book, JBoss in Action, on twitter.com. To enter you have to follow me and then retweet a message that I have prepared (see below). I’m sure people have done this sort of thing before on Twitter, but due to my naivety, and my neologistic tendencies, I’ll just call this a “Follow-Retweet-Contest” or FoRC since that lends itself to the idea that you are “forking” your message when others retweet it.

I’m doing this in part because I want to promote my book and make more people in the JBoss community aware of its existence. But I’m also doing this as a social experiment. I want to see how virulent a $50 USD item giveaway can be for a product that has limited interest (not everybody codes in Java and uses JBoss AS). My hypothesis is that if I were to FoRC somwhere on the order of $1,000,000 USD cash that I would get significant media coverage, tens of thousands of followers (fast), and so much retweeting that practically every user of Twitter would have the promotion in their update list. If I were to do the same promotion for $50 USD cash, I wouldn’t get the media coverage or the the broad/pervasive exposure in Twitter, but I’d still get a few followers (perhaps into the hundreds).

Anyways, I don’t have a million dollars, and I’m not looking to throw out money just to gain followers, but I do I have a few copies of my book laying around, so I thought I’d try it out and see what happens. Here are the rules:

1. Follow me on Twitter: @javidjamae (yes you’ll need an account if you don’t already have one)
2. Retweet the following:
   

   RT @javidjamae Win a copy of my book JBoss in Action. Follow me and retweet this to enter. I’ll pay shipping up to $20 USD. #java #jboss

I will pick a random participant from the users who have entered and will pay up to $20 USD to ship the book anywhere internationally. I’ll wait until I have about 20 or so new followers from the promotion before I declare a winner.

Let’s see what happens.

Technorati Tags: jboss, jbossinaction, twitter

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This screencast explains how to run the two types of Apache Maven commands: goals and lifecycle phase commands. After watching this screencast you’ll have a basic understanding of how goals and plugins are related. You’ll also learn about the different lifecycles and lifecycle phases in Maven and how to execute and use them.

You can find all of my screencasts on my Screencasts page which is linked off the top-level navigation for the site.

Technorati Tags: apache, build, maven, screencast

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This screencast shows you how to get started with Apache Maven. First it points you to the Maven download and installation instructions. Then it shows you how to verify that Maven was installed. After that, the screencast walks through the generation of a basic project using the archetype:generate goal. The screencast concludes by taking a look at the generated directory structure and examining the contents of the pom.xml (Project Object Model) file.

Check back for a follow-up screencast that will walk through the basics of the Maven lifecycle and will show you how to build, test, and generate documentation and reports for the application generated in this screencast. You can find all of my screencasts on my Screencasts page which is linked off the top-level navigation for the site.

Technorati Tags: apache, build, maven, screencast

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This screencast goes over the basics of deploying into JBoss Application Server V5. It covers deployment and undeployment of archive files and an exploded directory structures through drag and drop, command line copy, twiddle, and the JMX console.

Technorati Tags: jboss, screencast

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In this latest screencast, I show you how to start and stop the JBoss Application Server from a console window. First I go over how to set up your JAVA_HOME environment variable, then I show you how to start and stop the server. I also show you how to start an alternate server configuration and give you a few tips on how to verify that the application server is running.

Technorati Tags: jboss, screencast

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As a supplement to my book, JBoss in Action, I’m creating a series of screencasts that walk through some basic setup and configuration tasks in JBoss AS 5. This screencast covers downloading, installing, and exploring the application server. Future topics will include starting/stoping the server, deployment, security, and clustering.

This is my first screencast, so any feedback that you can provide would be great. Please let me know what future topics you would like to see covered, what you think about the video/sound quality, and what you think about the narration and flow in general.

I’m planning on creating a paid, full-length series covering both beginner and advanced topics. I will make this available on my new website called Software Development School when it launches in the next few months. You can register your e-mail on the site to receive notifications about the launch date and the free and non-free products and services that will be available.

Technorati Tags: jboss, screencast

I just received my first print copies of JBoss in Action in the mail! It has been an exciting and rewarding endeavor to write a book and I hope that each of you who has a chance to read it gets a lot of value out of it.

There has been a bit of publicity going on for the book that I thought I’d share. JavaRanch has a promotion going on where you can ask Peter Johnson and me questions about the book in their forums and have a chance to win a free copy of the book. DZone also has a free book giveaway.

Technorati Tags: jboss, jbossinaction

In my experience, when it is suggested that a conversation be moved from a mailing list to a Wiki, nine times out of ten the conversation ends immediately without making it to the Wiki. When a conversation is transferred to a Wiki, nine times out of ten the conversation dies within a day.

Please don’t disrespect your co-workers and end a good discussion by asking that it be moved to a Wiki.

A Wiki is no place for a conversation. Just take a look at the conversations on the C2 wiki and see what an utter mess they are. Nobody can follow the conversations, yet we all know they contain valuable information. The most important technical criteria for encouraging participation in online conversations are distribution, presentation, chronology. In my opinion, conversations should be distributed in a push fashion, presented as discrete responses (ideally as a threaded conversation), and should appear chronologically so that people can see the history of the conversation. If these things don’t hold true, people don’t contribute to the conversation. These criteria are much more difficult to achieve in a Wiki than through a mailing list.

In addition to the criteria that promote participation, making your conversations searchable and archivable is usually a good idea. If you are asking for a conversation to be moved to a Wiki because you feel like its important and you want it to be captured, then you might consider using forum software (or an online newsgroup) instead of plain e-mail distribution.

Technorati Tags: email, etiquette, wiki