Out-of-the-Box 2.0 (Coming in mid-April)

Out-of-the-Boxa„? 2.0 is a distribution of over 100 (and counting) Open Source projects targeted mainly at Java developers, but any developer can take advantage of a web server, web app container, application server, database, database browser, source code control system, bug tracker, mail server, web logger, template engine, full text search engine, wiki site, charting package, and other utilities.

Java became a household name thanks to the advent of the mobile phone culture. Java-based applications and games were carried by earlier version of cellphones because of its compatibility. Since then, Java development has become part of mainstream programming which in turn gave birth to tools like Out-of-the-Box.

Pre-order Out-of-the-Box 2.0 and save $10

Features

• 100+ Open Source projects automatically installed, configured, deployed, integrated, and tested
• Graphical installer
• Project knowledge base
• Selective install/uninstall
• QuickStart project guides
• 10 Sample applications with full source code
• Linux and Windows compatibility - easily develop on Windows and deploy on Linux
• CD and download subscriptions available

Full Feature List

Developer Benefits

• Instant Infrastructure - no need to fight broken installations or configuration files
• Save hours integrating and deploying Open Source project code
• Modify fully functional sample projects and learn at your own pace
• Build your resume by learning the hottest Open Source projects: JBoss, Tomcat, Struts, Ant, Eclipse, Hibernate, Castor, AspectJ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and dozens more
• Instant weblogger and Wiki site creation

Management Benefits

• Instant Infrastructure - source code control, issue tracking, project documentation, and more up and running in hours
• Increased productivity - no down time waiting for tool setup and configuration
• Lower TCO - no up front or maintenance costs for the Open Source software
• Easy upgrade path with Out-of-the-Box subscription service

Out-of-the-Box Mini-FAQ

Q: Why should I buy Out-of-the-Box when I can just download the original software directly from the creators free of charge?

A:

As most users of Open Source software know, downloading a distribution is just the first 5% of the process. In many cases, the software you download has dependencies on specific versions of other projects that you must also download, install, configure, integrate, and deploy successfully before you can use it. There are also known and unknown issues with each component of the greater puzzle that often require hours or days spent searching news groups, asking questions, and experimenting with individual code changes in the quest for successful execution.

Thousands of hours went into the automated installation, configuration, deployment, and integration code that makes Out-of-the-Box work. Just kick off an installer and have it all working in about an hour, then spend your time using each project instead of making each project usable. Maybe we're biased, but for about the cost of two average computer books, we think this $69.95 piece of software is worth its weight in gold.

Q: Do you have a trial version I can use before I buy?

A: Our Free Community Edition is a fully-functional, non-expiring version of Out-of-the-Box that works on both Linux and Windows and installs about 25 of the 100+ projects, including JBoss/Tomcat, MySQL, the Castor sample project, their dependencies, and the mandatory projects such as Ant, JUnit, etc. The Community Edition is an excellent way to evaluate the quality of our products before you buy.

Q: What does "Enhanced Distribution" mean? Am I locked in to proprietary code?

A: The term "Enhanced" is used to explain that in many cases we don't simply put the freely downloadable Open Source projects on a CD and ship them. Wherever necessary, we have made changes to the standard installation, configuration, and/or deployment procedures of a distribution to make the fully integrated development environment install and work as smoothly as possible on both Linux and Windows. Each change we made is well-documented and all source code is included to make sure our clients are never locked in to a proprietary solution.

Q: When you say "Integrated Development Environment", what exactly do you mean?

A: We're not talking about a traditional Java-based IDE such as JBuilder, although we do include two such IDE's (Eclipse and NetBeans). We mean that you get a suite of deployed and ready-to-use Open Source tools that make software development much easier. With Out-of-the-Box, you get a web server, web application container, application server, bug tracker, source code control system, two relational databases, database browser, mail server, full-text search engine, distributed caching engine, template engine, diagram generator, multi-format documentation generator, testing harness, sample build and deployment scripts, web logger, wiki site, common utilities, and more. And these aren't just copied to your machine; they are integrated, tested, and running when your installation completes. In fact, our custom sample applications will be deployed and automatically tested using JUnit and HttpUnit against your live environment before installation finishes to ensure that everything we install is functioning at 100% before leaving you in control.

Q: What if I don't really need all 100+ projects?

A: The graphical installer allows you to selectively install just what you need. You can run the installer as many times as you like, incrementally installing or uninstalling projects as you go. This features promotes experimentation and learning at your own pace and is especially useful when it comes to modifying the sample projects in place, because you can play all you want and simply uninstall/re-install them to restore their original condition if you break something.

Q: I don't know what all these projects do or what I need - how do I find out?

A: We provide several resources to help you discover exactly what each project does, why it's useful, what its competitors are, what dependencies it has, what other projects use it, and much more.

First, there are two project summary tables, one for projects new to Out-of-the-Box 2.0 and one for projects that have been included since Out-of-the-Box 1.0. These tables list all the projects in alphabetical order and provide project descriptions, justification for inclusion in Out-of-the-Box, the version numbers we ship, and links to each project's home page and download page.

Next, these tables also include links to more descriptive paragraphs for each project. These paragraphs are grouped and organized by meta project, hosting site, or other criteria to help you navigate this sea of Open Source project information. The paragraphs are heavily cross-linked to let you easily discover competitors of each project, how they all fit together, and, in many cases, provide our opinions about which project is better for a particular development situation. At the top of each page of descriptive project paragraphs, we've included a hyperlinked diagram that graphically depicts some of the relationships among the projects.

Our documentation includes a glossary, FAQ, and index for all the projects. It also provides a comprehensive set of links for all the project mailing lists and archives, a page of assorted resource links, an up-to-date collection of book links, and the full license text for every project.

Last, but certainly not least, the Out-of-the-Box graphical installer contains a complete and highly organized project knowledge base with all the information you need to make your development infrastructure selections. It integrates much of the project information as described above right into the project selection process, giving you exactly what you need to know precisely when you need to know it.

Q: How useful are your Quick Start user guides?

A: If you're new to several of the main applications (JBoss, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Hibernate, AspectJ, Middlegen, XDoclet, James, Scarab, CVS, ViewCVS, Ant, Struts, Castor, Maven, or DocBook), we believe there are nuggets of information in the guides that are easily worth the price of admission. The guides aren't meant to tell you exactly how to use each project, nor do they serve as tutorials in any way, but they will give you a few must-do things and a few gotchas for each project that can easily save you dozens of hours of pain. If you print out all the installation procedures, installation help, read me help, Quick Start guide, etc., there are well over 150 pages of useful (i.e., non-license agreement) documentation.

Q: What are your custom sample projects like? What do they do? Can I copy and reuse them?

A: The sample projects most certainly make Out-of-the-Box a must-have if you've spent any time struggling with compilation, packaging, deployment, integration, or testing of the projects used in the samples. If you want to go from zero to a productive development environment pre-configured for the projects you want to use and ready for live deployment and testing in about an hour, this is it.

Each sample project comes with clean, well-documented, easily customizable Ant scripts that do everything you need. Just modify the sample project code in place or copy the entire sample project tree and get going. Each sample project is self-contained except for a common sample utilities directory that contains jars used by all the samples; copy that directory along with the sample you want to explore and you're good to go.

The Out-of-the-Box installer allows you to uninstall and re-install any of the sample projects at any time, so feel free to experiment in place knowing that you can always get restored to a known good state at any time.

As far what the sample projects actually do, don't expect too much along the lines of fully functional office suites or ERP systems. They provide you with a framework upon which to implement your own projects. They get all the plumbing out of the way so you can concentrate on the interesting work instead of fighting packaging and integration nightmares. They point out key features and gotchas for each project, but they do not provide a tutorial or extensive documentation. They're well-written, they're all fully tested, and they work as designed, but there aren't any rockets shooting across the screen (except for in our multi-player, networked space war game in the AspectJ sample project, of course).

You can read the full sample project documentation before you buy to get a feel for the contents and quality of each project.

Q: What platforms do you support?

A: Out-of-the-Box 2.0 is certified on Red Hat Linux 7.3/8.0/9.0, and also on Windows XP and Windows 2000 with SP2. Windows XP SP1 is highly recommended and must be installed to avoid security problems if you install the Apache HTTP Server.

Edition Summary

The Free Community Edition is a fully-functional, non-expiring version of Out-of-the-Box that works on both Linux and Windows and installs about 25 projects, including JBoss, MySQL, the Castor sample project, their dependencies, and the mandatory projects such as Ant, JUnit, etc. The Community Edition is an excellent way to evaluate the quality of our products before you buy.

The Enterprise Edition includes all 100+ Open Source projects, 10 sample projects, a fully automated documentation generation system for producing HTML, PDF, JavaHelp and more, an automated graph layout engine with diagram source code, test case source code, OpenOffice.org, and more. It comes on two CDs, one for Red Hat Linux and one for Windows, but you can download it immediately after purchase to get started right away.

Out-of-the-Box is a unified architecture of integrated Open Source projects that serves as a basis for a myriad of dynamic web site, e-commerce, web services, and a virtually unlimited number of other solutions.

If you want or need to develop with Open Source tools, just get them Out-of-the-Box and hit the ground running.