While there is only one name on the cover of this book, the credit for its development and delivery is shared by many individuals. Michael Loukides, my editor, was pivotal to the success of every edition of this book. Without his experience, craft, and guidance, this book would not have been possible. Other people at O’Reilly & Associates, including Rachel Wheeler, Rob Romano, Kyle Hart, and many others, were also very important to the success of this book.

Many expert technical reviewers helped ensure that the material was technically accurate and true to the spirit of Enterprise JavaBeans. Of special note are Greg Nyberg of ObjectPartners, Hemant Khandelwal of Pramati, Kyle Brown of IBM, Robert Castaneda of CustomWare, Joe Fialli of Sun Microsystems, Anil Sharma and Priyank Rastogi of Pramati, Seth White of BEA, Evan Ireland and Meyer Tanuan of Sybase, David Chappell of David Chappell & Associates, Jim Farley, author of Java™ Distributed Computing (O’Reilly), and Prasad Muppirala of BORN Information Services. They contributed greatly to the technical accuracy of this book and brought a combination of industry and real-world experience to bear, helping to make this one of the best books on Enterprise JavaBeans published today.

I would also like to thank everyone in the community who provided valuable feedback by reviewing this book while it was being written at http://oreilly.techrev.org, including (in alphabetical order): Dion Almaer, Jim Archer, Stephen Davies, John De la Cruz, Tom Gullo, Marty Harvey, Hai Hoang, Meeraj Kunnumpurath, Tom Larson, Bjarne Rasmussen, rgparker (name unknown), Larry Seltzer, and Curt Smith.

Special thanks also go to Sriram Srinivasan of BEA, Anne Thomas of Sun Microsystems, Ian McCallion of IBM Hursley, Tim Rohaly of jGuru.com, James D. Frentress of ITM Corp., Andrzej Jan Taramina of Accredo Systems, Marc Loy, coauthor of Java™ Swing (O’Reilly), Don Weiss of Step 1, Mike Slinn of The Dialog Corporation, and Kevin Dick of Kevin Dick & Associates. The contributions of these technical experts were critical to the technical and conceptual accuracy of earlier editions of this book. Others I would like to thank include Maggie Mezquita, Greg Hartzel, John Klug, and Jon Jamsa of BORN Information who all suffered though the first draft of the first edition so long ago to provide valuable feedback.

Thanks also to Vlad Matena and Mark Hapner of Sun Microsystems, the primary architects of Enterprise JavaBeans; Linda DeMichiel, EJB 2.0 specification lead; and Bonnie Kellett, J2EE Program Manager—they were all willing to answer several of my most complex questions. Thanks to all the participants in the EJB-INTEREST mailing list hosted by Sun Microsystems for their interesting and sometimes controversial, but always informative, postings over the past four years.

Finally, I extend the most sincere gratitude to my wife, Hollie, for supporting and assisting me through the three years of painstaking research and writing that were required to produce three editions of this book. Without her unfailing support and love, this book would not have been completed.