Freely available source code, with contributions from thousands of programmers around the world: this is the spirit of the software revolution known as Open Source.

Written by leading authorities in the field, this book shows you how to leverage a suite of best-of-breed Open Source development tools to take the pain out of J2EE and build a complete Web-based application. You'll combine these tools to actually reduce the points of failure in your application, while increasing overall system stability and robustness. Along with the tools introduced here, you'll develop the PetSoar application, which follows the PetStore application used by Sun Microsystems to demonstrate features of J2EE. With PetSoar, the authors focus on developing a maintainable and flexible application, rather than showcasing the end result, so that you can apply the material in your own projects