Tuesday, February 24, 2009

JSR-286 talk at Austin JUG

I will be giving a talk/presentation at Austin JUG about new features in JSR-286. The details of talk at http://www.austinjug.org/index.jsp?p=events-20090224 .

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Technical Review of a book on JBoss Portal


I had the pleasure of being one of the two technical reviewers of a book on JBoss Portal. The details of book is at http://www.packtpub.com/jboss-portal-server-development/book. This book is another example of world being flat.

I was electronically contacted by publisher who till date I have not met and don't even know where exactly it is located. I electronically signed the contract. I got book chapters one by one through a mediator who was liaison between me and the author. I have not met the author yet and book is published.

I hear that if publishers get break even with technical books then it's usually considered a good thing. This also means that a technical reviewer does not usually have a monetary benefit and my case is no exception. I did get two free copies of the book and most importantly a very brief bio which is printed in "golden" letters. And, I am grateful to publisher and author for that. Now back to book.

I believe that book is a good introduction on Portal servers in general and when to use them. You will also get a good feel of different features such as CMS, Security, Management of JBoss Portal server. It has working examples of how to use JSP, JSF, AJAX in a portal environment. The book ends with a good introduction of JSR-286 aka Portlet 2.0 specification.

So, if you are curious about Portal world and looking for a spec compliant open source portal server, then this book is a good to have item in your bookshelf. If you find something not working as explained in book then feel free to comment over here. I will hit myself for a while but make sure its errata is updated accordingly. If you find everything working as it should, I wont mind seeing few words of appreciation. ;-)