First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife Heather, daughter Madison, and son Foster for their incredible support during the months I spent writing this book. Many late nights and long weekends writing made for a pretty tired (and grumpy, no doubt) husband and daddy. Thanks Heather, Maddie, and Foster, for putting up with me! Many thanks go to Robert Denn and Mike Loukides at O’Reilly for their great editorial support. Thanks to others at O’Reilly for all the support and help: Rob Romano, Julie Flanagan, and Kyle Hart. I would also like to thank Eamonn McManus at Sun Microsystems for his very thorough technical review of this book and the wonderful feedback. Thanks also to Joel Feraud at Sun for providing an advance look at open MBeans. Finally, thanks to Christophe Ebro at Sun for help in answering questions and putting me in touch with other extremely helpful people at Sun, such as Joel Feraud and Philippe LaLande. Thanks a million, Chris!