Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition: With BEA Web Logic Server - Softcover

Gomez, Paco; Zadrozny, Peter

 
9781861002990: Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition: With BEA Web Logic Server

Synopsis

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification is one of Java's success stories; a standard for enterprise web application development that has wide industry support.

J2EE is basically a collection of specifications for web services, business objects, data access, and messaging. They define the way in which web applications communicate with the servers that host them. J2EE focuses on two things - creating a standard that allows web applications to be portable between servers, and giving the server control of component lifecycle and other resources, in order that it can handle issues of scaling, concurrency, transaction management, and security.

This book is based around one of the most popular J2EE and EJB implementations, BEA WebLogic Server. The authors work for BEA in Europe, providing technical support for customer's implementations of Weblogic-based solutions. They have first-hand knowledge of the practical difficulties developers face in applying J2EE and WebLogic to their projects, and in debugging and testing these applications. This book is a distillation of their real-world expertise.

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Review

Despite the title, Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition with BEA WebLogic Server is basically a book about "middleware". Most of it is applicable to any well-implemented Java application server. It covers all three tiers: client, server and data store along with the technologies enabling their interaction. Even better, it doesn't assume you are building your applications in a vacuum. Excellent coverage is given to integrating existing company applications with the Web application server.

The authors adopt a familiar conceit and build their lessons on the story of Pizza2Go, a pizza company taking its business online--listen up, there are other foods. On a more positive note the authors are happy to discuss competing technologies--for example, when introducing Java server pages they also talk about ASP and Cold Fusion. Such discussion is kept under control, though, with the emphasis firmly on Java developer needs. This runs through the selection of an appropriate technology for each feature of the business model, how it fits into the application architecture and then through to coding.

Practical business requirements are well addressed, such as how to implement a WAP interface to the application. But one of the best features of the book is the huge section devoted to building the Grinder, an application designed to stress test the whole portal.

Anyone using transaction-based Web sites is well aware of how poorly so many perform their functions. After working your way through Professional Java 2 Enterprise Edition with BEA WebLogic Server you can be sure you won't be responsible for delivering cold pizzas. --Steve Patient

Synopsis

Business objects are basically encapsulated business processes that deal with some input data and mediate the appropriate business response. This book shows how suited Java is to the creation of business objects and the n-tier applications centered on them. Key areas covered include real world techniques for application development, explanation of how to create business logic components from Enterprise Java Beans, database handling with JDBC, JNDI and directory services, Java messaging services and interfacing applications to CORBA/DCOM systems and XML.

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