While I was reacquainting myself with some tools for my class, I ran across a good tool called xdoclet.  My class uses jBOSS as their application server and since I don't get to play with these things as part of my job anymore, every year, I have to get up to speed on the latest release and what new features it has.  jBOSS changes a lot in a year, to the point where almost nothing I knew last year is applicable anymore.  While I was searching for a good primer, I ran across this document on the jBOSS site and some associated examples.   The examples are based on a template (which is quite helpful) for bean development that uses xdoclet.  xdoclet, with some help in comments, creates all the associated bean files (remote interface, home interface, deployment descriptor, etc.) from the primary bean source.  Its configurable to support BEA Weblogic, IBM WebSphere, and others in addition to jBOSS, so its really quite helpful.