I suppose it is inevitable that an author opens his book for the first time and immediately sees a problem. An obvious typo perhaps. Or maybe a sentence or topic that could have been made more clear. For me it was a little more jarring. Picture this scene: Wife and kids gathered around a box. Everybody doing a fake drumroll. Box opens, book opens, and…hey, wait a second. Where the hell is the acknowledgements page? You know, the one that thanks my wife and kids for putting up with me. Nowhere, that’s where! Maybe in some unorthodox location? Flip to the back. Nope. Nada.

So, if you own a copy of the book and it is missing the acknowledgements, consider it a collector’s item. Hopefully, Packt will fix this problem before too many more get shipped. To the reader it isn’t an issue, but to me it is a big deal because it is important to express my appreciation to the large group of folks that made this project come together. It certainly wasn’t a solo effort. So, until this gets fixed, here is the elusive acknowledgements section.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without Optaros. What an awesome place to work and what a stellar team to work with. Thanks to Bob Gett, Mavis Chin, and Marc Osofsky for providing an incredible level of senior leadership support. Dave Gynn, John Eckman, and Seth Gottlieb (we miss you, Seth!) also provided early inspiration and counsel. Noreen Vincent helped with marketing and promo. Optaros colleagues from around the world rolled up their sleeves and dug in with code and technical editing: Olivier Pépin, Brian Doyal, Xavier Naud, Jens Scheutter, Alan Fehr, and Michael Ruflin all gave incredible amounts of thorough and thoughtful feedback. The book is significantly better than it would have been because of your involvement.

Alfresco has been tremendously supportive of and excited about this project. Thanks to John Powell, John Newton, Matt Asay, Dr. Ian Howells, Paul Holmes-Higgin, Luis Sala, Phil Robinson, Michael Uzquiano, and Nancy Garrity for providing information and support and for building such a cool platform. Alfresco team members also pitched in with technical reviews: David Caruana, James Urquhart, Jean Barmash, and Peter Monks spent time reading chapters and providing feedback when they probably should have been cranking out 3.0 code.

David Barnes at Packt Publishing deserves thanks for suggesting the project and getting it on track. Rajashree Hamine and Nikhil Bangera have done a great job holding me to task and handling everything on the Packt side.

My ecmarchitect.com readers deserve a big thanks. Your helpful feedback and encouragement motivated me to keep posting. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Finally, to Christy, Justin, and Caroline: Thank you for putting up with the late nights and lost weekends, providing so much encouragement, and being so understanding.