"JBoss, the open source, J2EE-based application server, has been a favorite of the Java community for a long time. But recently JBoss got a handy new toolkit, thanks to Eclipse--one that may just help the product go from full steam to mainstream.
"While JBoss has always been applauded for being robust and scalable, with support for security, load balancing, clustering, and transactional capability, what it hasn't had is a GUI-based IDE. And that has left the mass marketplace solely in the hands of closed source competitors such as IBM, BEA, and Borland. Those who prefer can always continue to configure JBoss using command line tools, but thanks to the Eclipse project, JBoss has an IDE that plugs into the Eclipse development framework, making the product a legitimate option for the thousands of developers who prefer a GUI.
"There is a wide variety of Eclipse plugins available, but the JBoss IDE plugin is by far the easiest to install and use. And it doesn't require frequent updating. The plugin also supports starting and stopping a server, debugging server-side code, packaging archive files, and deploying archive files--and it's developed by the JBoss Inc., the makers of JBoss itself.
"In this article I'll show you how to install and configure the JBoss IDE plugin and then walk you through the steps of creating a simple Hello World application, packaging it, and deploying it to a JBoss server..."
