GlassFish vs. JBoss -- current best dev kit?

As I previously posted, lately I've been working with the Netbeans/GlassFish combination in an effort to keep my Enterprise Java skills current. I've been very pleased with the ease of application development and have to say that JEE has never been easier.

I have a concern, though. The shop I work at is a JBoss shop, which makes me wonder about the current state of the development world for JBoss developers.

I've worked with JBoss for a number of years, but never did find it especially easy to keep current on toolkit usage, especially compared to the aforementioned Sun toolkit. I really like the latest NetBeans all-in-0ne toolkit that runs the databases, App server, dev tools, etc. all within the IDE. To counter that, the last time I checked JBoss had a free offering that was comprised of a set of Eclipse plug-ins that offered similar functionality. It's been a while since I used that kit, but I don't remember it being nearly as slick as this latest NetBeans offering. Maybe it's time I have a fresh look at what the JBoss folks have in store for us.

I know I'm going to get results fastest if I seek expert counsel, so I'm going to refer to "JBoss AS 5 Development" from Packt Publishing. The book promises to cover plenty of ground, going from app server install, through the development process, security, and deployment all the way through app server clustering.

I've already had a read through the FREE sample chapter, which can be found here. The sample chapter covers use of Hibernate and Hibernate tools under JBoss, written in a very easy to understand step-by-step manner. In my next code practice session I'll get JBoss installed and try to establish my own basic Hibernate web app, based on the contents of this chapter.

I'll blog more about my luck with the JBoss kit after I've had a chance to read the book and write a few sample applications. Here's hoping we find good things there!

'Till then, Happy Coding!

Rick