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The first thing to understand about Seam is that it’s a framework. Actually, it’s a framework that sits on top of another framework (Java EE), and that framework sits on top of another one (Java). But don’t get distracted by that just yet.

The title of this chapter isn’t very compelling, but that’s for a reason: this chapter discusses the dull but critical details related to the configuration of Seam applications. Before you can jump in and start writing applications with Seam, you need to set up your application deployment package with the necessary Seam libraries and configure your application code to “plug in” the Seam capabilities.

In this chapter, we’re going to explore the core capabilities of Seam’s component model, which is at the heart of all of the services provided by the framework. We’ll do this in a practical way (of course), by building out a (slightly) more complete version of the Gadget Catalog application that I introduced in Chapter 1. As you move along in the chapter, you’ll see me demonstrate the key capabilities of the Seam component model by adding these extensions to the Gadget Catalog application.

In this chapter, we explore Seam’s context support, which is an extension of the contexts supported by Java EE web containers. Most of the focus will be on Seam conversations, which is a key new capability provided by the Seam framework. But first, as background, I introduce you to all of the new contexts supported by the Seam component model.

In earlier chapters, we explored the core features of the Seam framework, namely its component model (bridging JSF and EJB, among other things) and its extended set of runtime contexts/scopes (providing the concept of conversations, among other things). In this chapter, we begin to look at the ancillary features of the framework. I label these as “ancillary” not to downplay their importance or practical value. Quite the contrary, they are eminently useful. I call them “ancillary” because it is not likely that you will choose to adopt Seam simply to use these features. Under normal circumstances, you’ll adopt the core Seam features (Seam components and conversations), and then pick and choose from among the ancillary features (pageflow, business process modeling, AJAX support) to suit your needs.

Security is a natural part of nearly every online application. Any application that requires some kind of personal service needs to know the identity of the user. Preferences and data can’t be associated with you unless the application knows who “you” are. This is the goal of authentication: securely identifying the users of a system.

In this chapter, we look at business processes and how business process management (BPM) is supported by Seam. I’ve already discussed JBoss Business Process Management (jBPM) in Chapter 5, when we explored Seam’s pageflow features, which are built on jBPM. As mentioned in that chapter, while BPM can be applied effectively to manage pageflow, it’s actually a much broader field, supporting tasks implemented in a variety of ways (web pages, business components, business rules, etc.), connected together with a structured workflow that can span multiple users across potentially long periods of time. In this chapter, we look at this broader application of BPM and how jBPM can be used within Seam to define and execute business processes.

The term “rich web clients” is typically interspersed with the terms “Web 2.0” and “AJAX.” It refers to web interfaces that provide a relatively high level of interactivity compared to traditional click-and-reload web interfaces. These rich web interfaces are thought of as the next generation of user experience on the Web (hence the association with Web 2.0), and the technology most often brought to bear to create them is JavaScript (hence the association with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or AJAX).