Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development

The results of using J2EE in practice are often disappointing: applications are often slow, unduly complex, and take too long to develop. Rod Johnson believes that the problem lies not in J2EE itself, but in that it is often used badly. Many J2EE publications advocate approaches that, while fine in theory, often fail in reality, or deliver no real business value.

Expert One-on-One: J2EE Design and Development aims to demystify J2EE development. Using a practical focus, it shows how to use J2EE technologies to reduce, rather than increase, complexity. Rod draws on his experience of designing successful high-volume J2EE applications and salvaging failing projects, as well as intimate knowledge of the J2EE specifications, to offer a real-world, how-to guide on how you too can make J2EE work in practice.

It will help you to solve common problems with J2EE and avoid the expensive mistakes often made in J2EE projects. It will guide you through the complexity of the J2EE services and APIs to enable you to build the simplest possible solution, on time and on budget. Rod takes a practical, pragmatic approach, questioning J2EE orthodoxy where it has failed to deliver results in practice and instead suggesting effective, proven approaches.

This book is of value to most enterprise developers. Although some of the discussion (for example, on performance and scalability) will be most relevant to architects and lead developers, the practical focus makes it useful to anyone with some familiarity with J2EE. Because of the complete design-deployment coverage, a less advanced developer could work through the book along with a more introductory text, and successfully build and understand the sample application. This comprehensive coverage would also be useful to developers in smaller organisations, who might be called upon to fill several normally distinct roles.

Over the course of the book, you will learn:

When to use a distributed architecture

When and how to use EJB

How to develop an efficient data access strategy

How to design a clean and maintainable web interface

How to design J2EE applications for performance

The results of using J2EE in practice are often disappointing applications are often slow, unduly complex, and take too long to develop. I believe that the problem lies not in J2EE itself, but in that it is often used badly. Many J2EE publications advocate approaches that, while fine in theory, often fail in reality, or deliver no real business value.

In this book I offer a real–world, how–to guide so that you can make J2EE work in practice. I draw on my experience of designing successful high–volume J2EE applications and salvaging failing projects, as well as intimate knowledge of the J2EE specifications.

I’ll help you to solve common problems with J2EE and avoid the expensive mistakes often made in J2EE projects. I will guide you through the complexity of the J2EE services and APIs to enable you to build the simplest possible solution, on time and on budget. I take a practical, pragmatic approach, questioning J2EE orthodoxy where it has failed to deliver results in practice and instead suggesting effective, proven approaches.

What you will learn from this book

• When to use a distributed architecture
• When and how to use EJB
• How to develop an efficient data access strategy
• How to design a clean and maintainable web interface
• How to design J2EE applications for performance

"I just wish this book had been around earlier when I was starting enterprise Java development. This book shows the benefits and pitfalls of J2EE and how best to avoid them."
Andrew J. Smith, Java Architect

"Rod’s depth and breadth of experience is quite impressive! J2EE developers can avoid many of the hard lessons Rod learned by reading this book."
Todd Lauinger, Software Construction Fellow, Best Buy, Inc.