Acknowledgments

This is my first book, so as you can imagine it was quite overwhelming at times. I was very fortunate, though, to have three extraordinary people in my corner who consistently went above and beyond the call of duty to help mold and shape this book: Dan Maharry, my development editor; Joel Kotarski, my technical development editor; and Andrew Gibson, my technical proofreader. They are an amazing team to work with and I can’t thank them enough.

Thank you, too, Sharon Wilkey, for the wonderful job as copyeditor, and Jean-François Morin, for lending a hand as the Java/Spring technical proofreader.

I’d also like to thank the numerous other people at Manning who made this book possible: Marjan Bace, Michael Stephens, Bert Bates, Maureen Spencer, Kevin Sullivan, Mary Piergies, Candace Gillhoolley, Rebecca Rinehart, Ana Romac, Toni Bowers, and Linda Recktenwald, as well as the unsung heroes who worked so hard to bring this effort to fruition.

Special thanks to Burke Holland for writing the book’s foreword. I’m a huge fan of Burke’s work and his writing and feel honored that he agreed to write this.

Thanks to the reviewers who read this book in its various stages of development: Alain Couniot, Anirudh Prabhu, Bruno Sonnino, David Schmitz, Fernando Monteiro Kobayashi, Johan Pretorius, John Shea, Maqbool Patel, Philippe Vialatte, Rajesh Pillai, Shrinivas Parashar, Trevor Saunders, Viorel Moisei, and Yogesh Poojari.

Thanks also to my family: my wife Rosalba, my daughter Ana Carolina, my son David, my other daughter Sofía, and my mom Lucy. Words just aren’t enough to thank you for all the love, support, and encouragement you gave me throughout this endeavor.

To all my friends and colleagues, both at work and elsewhere, thank you for your encouragement and support as well.