I agree that you don't want to spend lots of time learning how to deal with issues and problems in various technologies, when seam provides answers to many of those issues and problems. On the other hand, as you mentioned, you need to have some knowledge of how those technologies work. For our team, the book I recommend people read immediately after Michael's book is "Java Persistence with Hibernate". Most of the book covers JPA/EJB3 concepts that are independent of Seam. Chapter 11, Implementing Conversations, is one area that Seam handles for you, and Chapter 17 is an introduction to Seam, but the other 15 chapters are stuff you should know when building a properly designed Seam app. The next book I recommend is Core Java Server Faces (be sure to get the 2nd edition). There is more overlap between some of the concepts covered here and what Seam does for you automatically, but this book does provide plenty of background information that Seam assumes you know as well. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4089893#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...