In this interview, we speak to Anil Saldhana, Senior Developer at JBoss Inc. Anil talks about J2EE applications servers, open source, aspect oriented programming and particularly about the JBoss range of products. He also shares his views on what is special about JBoss and what the company has to offer to the enterprise Java community.

An interesting bit for our readers from India is that JBoss will soon have an office in Bangalore and will be conducting JBoss training sessions in India.

IndicThreads >> Welcome to IndicThreads. Could you introduce yourself to IndicThreads readers?

Anil Saldhana >> My name is Anil Saldhana. I work as a Senior Developer at JBoss Inc. I work on the core development of the JBoss Application Server, focusing on Tomcat and Web Services. I lead the project that is focused on JAXR integration (Java API for XML Registries) in JBoss. I have worked at Sun Microsystems and Siemens and hold a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois . I actively participate in Apache jUDDI and lead Apache Scout. I live in Chicago currently, but grew up at Bangalore . I am also quite active in the Java community in Chicago via the Chicago Java User Group.

"We preach the concept of 'Professional Open Source'"

IndicThreads >> What do you think is special about JBoss? approach to open source? How would you compare using software from JBoss as compared to maybe picking it from Apache or from Sourceforge?

Anil Saldhana >> JBoss took the approach of ?POJO middleware? right from the beginning. JBoss has always strived to bring the power of J2EE to J2SE. This has been our approach right from the start-make your POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) enterprise quality. We preach the concept of ?Professional Open Source?. Majority of our fulltime developers are leaders in the open source world and are being paid to do what they love to do the most ? write open source software.

"Professional Open Source is a methodology for
delivering high-quality software and support at low cost."

Professional Open Source is a methodology for delivering high-quality software and support at low cost. It is born out of two distinct and complementary realizations:

1. High-quality, full-time developers need to be paid
2. For open source to be ?safe? for the enterprise, open source must offer professional services and accountability comparable, if not superior to what is offered in the proprietary software world.

The answer to your question on why you should pick JBoss over other freely available software on Apache or SF is pretty straightforward. You get the world-class production and developer support from JBoss Inc as well as the community via our forums, blogs and wikis. Plus we are J2EE 1.4 certified. If no cost, quality support and standards compliance matter to you, you will not think twice.

"Plus we are J2EE 1.4 certified.
If no cost, quality support
and standards compliance matter to you,
you will not think twice."

The customers as well as the community have appreciated our Service-oriented approach to middleware. The concept of services being deployed on a lightweight container is something that you will always need in your production environment and complex IT environment with different needs. One-size-fit-all approach will fail to deliver the power of J2EE to the industry. There should be a mechanism for users to scale up or down, and customize according to their needs. The JBoss microkernel does that for you.