Q: What version of JBoss AS do I need to run Seam?

A: For Seam 1.3: Seam was developed against JBoss 4.2. Seam can still be run against JBoss 4.0. The seam documentation contains instructions for configuring JBoss 4.0.

A: For Seam 1.2: Since Seam requires the latest edition of EJB3, you need to install JBoss AS from the latest JEMS installer. Make sure that you select the "ejb3" or "ejb3+clustering" profile to include EJB3 support. Also, the jboss-seam.jar library file from the Seam distribution must be included in each Seam application you deploy. Refer to examples in Seam distribution (inside the examples directory) to see how to build and package Seam applications.

Q: Can I run Seam outside of JBoss AS?

A: Yes, you can run Seam applications in plain Tomcat 5.5+ or in the Sun GlassFish application server. To run Seam application in Tomcat, you need a number of additional library files and a few configuration files to bootstrap the JBoss EJB3 inside Tomcat. Please refer to the deploy.tomcat ANT build target for the Seam booking example (in the examples/booking directory of the Seam distribution) for more on how to build a Tomcat WAR for Seam applications. Refer to this blog post on how to run Seam in Sun's Glassfish application server.

Q: Can I run Seam in a J2EE environment?

A: Yes, as of Seam 1.1, you can use Seam in any J2EE application server, with one caveat: you will not be able to use EJB 3.0 session beans. However, you can use either Hibernate or JPA for persistence, and you can use Seam JavaBean components instead of session beans.

Q: Can I run Seam with JDK 1.4 and earlier?

A: No, Seam only works on JDK 5.0 and above. It uses annotations and other JDK 5.0 features.

Q: Where can I find Seam examples and documentation?

A: The source code and build script of all Seam example applications are included in the examples directory of the Seam distribution. Seam

documentation is available here.

Q: Where can I ask questions and make suggestions about Seam?

Please use the Seam User's discussion forum for user questions.

Q: Are there books about Seam?

A: Yes, Prentice Hall's "JBoss Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java EE 5.0" is a comprehensive guide for Seam written by JBoss insiders.

Q: Is it true that Seam only works with JSF?

Seam only supports JSF as a view framework at this time. We plan to support other web frameworks in the future. We like JSF because it is a component-based UI framework, which fits really well with Seam's component-based approach to business objects and persistence objects. Seam made a major improvement to JSF by eliminating almost all XML configuration for backing beans -- you can now define back beans from POJOs or EJB3 components using simple annotations. We recommend you use Facelets, instead of JSP, with JSF. Facelets provide a powerful templating framework, better appplication performance, and allows us to write much simpler JSF pages. Please see the Seam booking example application for an example on how to use Facelets.

Q: Can I use AJAX with Seam?

A: Yes, Seam provides excellent support for AJAX. First, Seam supports the ICEfaces and Ajax4JSF Ajax component libraries for JSF. If you prefer a more "old fashioned" approach, Seam provides a complete JavaScript remoting framework which lets you call Seam components and subscribe to JMS topics directly from the client. Please refer to the Seam remoting example application on how to use AJAX remoting to implement a chat room.

Q: Can I unit test Seam applications without starting the Application Server?

Yes, Seam provides its own integration test framework based on TestNG. You can easily mock all Seam services using those facilities without ever loading an application server or a database. Refer to the testexample ANT target in the Seam booking example application for more details.