Seam is an exciting new application framework based on the Java EE platform that you can use to build rich, web-based business applications. Seam is rapidly capturing the interest of Java enterprise developers because of its focus on simplicity, ease of use, transparent integration, scalability, and developer choice. Seam in Action offers a practical and in-depth look at Seam from outside the walls of RedHat/JBoss. The book puts Seam head-to-head with the complexities in the Java EE architecture. It discusses the shortcomings of JSF, the challenges of using Java persistence in the web environment, and other common development roadblocks, then shows how Seam makes these problems just melt away. In covering Seam, the author doesn't just ask you to sprinkle annotations on your code and expect that you understand how it works. Instead, the author lays down the facts, shows you the steps, reveals the logic, and diagrams the flow, so that by the end of the book, you will not only have gained a deep understanding of Seam, but will also come away ready to teach the material to others. All too often, developers spend a majority of their time integrating disparate technologies, manually tracking state, struggling to understand JSF, wrestling with Hibernate exceptions, and constantly redeploying applications, rather than on the logic pertaining to the business at hand. Seam in Action dives deep into thorough explanations of how Seam eliminates these non-core tasks by leveraging configuration by exception, Java 5 annotations, and aspect-oriented programming. To start off, you will see a working Java EE-compliant application come together by the end of the second chapter. As you progress through the book, you will discover how Seam eliminates unnecessary layers and configurations and uses an inversion of control technical known as bijection supplemented by a liberal use of the Unified Expression Language (EL) to establish the missing link between JSF, EJB 3 and JavaBean components. You also witness how Seam opens doors for you to incorporate technologies you previously have not had time to learn, such as business processes and stateful page flows (jBPM), rule-based security, Ajax remoting, PDF generation, Spring integration, and more.