This book would not have seen the light without constant encouragement of my parents, sisters, wife, and daughter. A very special thanks to my wife Vidya and daughter Saahithi for their boundless patience and support. In spite of many instances that I was not available to them for many household duties, they provided all the encouragement that they could.

Over many years, many people have indirectly contributed to the content of this book. Martin Lunt, Peter Kirschner, Sri Guha V, and Jyothi G S from Robert Bosch were my mentors for several years. I would not be the same person as I am now without these wonderful and sweet personalities. My sincere thanks to Amey Kanse, Susmita Panda, and Vishal Bodwani from Packt Publishing, who successfully guided me and my co-author during writing of this book. For a first-time author, all of them gave a huge support and hand-holding when needed.

Erich Gamma, Christophe Elek, Seth Packham, and many others from IBM and Jazz team who have provided timely help on many topics when needed. As a reviewer, Thomas Starz did a fantastic job of asking tough questions and making sure that the content is valuable for the reader. Finally, Trebor, my co-author has been very supportive and helpful when I was juggling with time and personal priorities.

TC Fenstermaker is a Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience building n-tiered OLTP applications for a variety of business and government endeavors. He has experience with various Java technologies, relational databases, and software engineering practices. He is the co-author of several IBM developerWorks articles, including Using Eclipse Ganymede to develop for the desktop, Web and mobile devices, which he wrote with Suresh.