Board index » jbuilder » J2EE engines and tutorials

2005-03-05 11:56:54 PM
jbuilder1
I'm a ColdFusion developer who'd like to learn more about J2EE (servlets,
jsp, struts, jstl, Beans, *MP).
Working with CF, you get a lot of exposure to Macromedia's JRun.
But before I started working with JRun for J2EE stuff, I thought I'd find
out what the perception of it was in the market. (If you had any insights
into how well it scaled for multi-server environments, I'd appreciate
it...we're thinking about switching at work).
Basically I'm wondering which engine will make my resume look best and give
me the most complete exposure to the technology:
* JBoss' Hibernate seems like an interesting reason to try that platform,
for example, but I've also seen a lot of bad press about it.
* Tomcat seems to be very popular, but something I read made me think it
JUST does jsp/servlets, not Beans or *MP.
* BEA/IBM seem to be market leaders, but most of the coverage suggests
they're the worst performers (and I'm running this all on my Vaio-size
laptop). [They're also A LOT of money but at least they have generous 6-12
month trials]
So what would you all recommend?
Also, what is the best guide for learning to write these things? There
seems to be A LOT of books on this (JSF, JSTL, Servlets, Beans). I worry
that Java will get creamed by .Net if they don't do something to streamline
the presenation. What's a good guide that takes you through the
technologies, their application, writing the components, deploying (web.xml,
application.xml, etc.), WAR vs. EAR, etc.?
Thanks
Scott
 

If your interest is in development you should strive to create applications
that are server independent. For learning and testing I'd advise against
JBoss and JRun as both are far from standardised.
Take Tomcat for Servlet/JSP development. Anything that works on that should
work everywhere (and if it doesn't run elsewhere that other server is most
likely ready for the s{*word*99}yard).
Websphere and Weblogic are indeed market leaders but the market is so
divided that that's not saying much. Personally I prefer Orion
(www.orionserver.com ) (the basis for Oracle's appserver) and Novel
eXtend (formerly SilverStream).
Orion is free for non-commercial and educational use.
Orion is also good for standards compliance (while they sometimes are a bit
slow implementing the latest and greatest what they have is correct).
some inroads but isn't generally accepted. Servlets are by now relegated to
non-visual tasks, beans were never a presentation technology at all.
.NET is just getting to where Java was a few years ago, they're slowly
catching up that's all. It's only natural with Java solidifying its position
with a pretty well crystalised system that it's not changing as fast as it
did in the past, and more's the better as it was hard to keep up with new
tech as it emerged.
I'd not worry overly much about JSF. Except for a lot of hype I've never
seen it...
Get O'Reilly's JSP and servlet books. They'll tell you all you need to know.
O'Reilly's Head First Servlets and JSP is an excellent tutorial (keep the
others for reference and background information).
 

Jeroen,
Thanks for your reply.
So Tomcat is a good choice for starting development.
Looking at the Jakarta/Apache site, it seems like Tomcat does Servlet and
JSP (and with that JSTL).
Then there's Geronoimo, also from apache (but not part of Jakarta?), which
will be a J2EE server.
Do you know how these things are different?
Navigating around Sun's site, I see that EJB is listed under J2EE at Sun
while CMP and BMP are under J2SE. Does that mean they'll all be available
in Tomcat?
Thanks
Scott
Does it also handle EJB, CMP and BMP stuff?
(I'm sure that sounds like
"Jeroen Wenting" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message

{smallsort}

Geronimo uses Tomcat under the hood for Servlets and EJB.
Jeroen Wenting
 

"Jeroen Wenting" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message
According to recent articles I have read, it leads over both Web Sphere and
WeB Logic as the # 1 app server employed.
 

"Scott" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message
Persistence.
CMP lets the App Server container handle Transaction management and SQL
optimizations to the underlyign database, which are reflected using Entity
Beans (part of Java Enterprise Beans).
BMP, on the other hands requires you to handle the plumbing of the
Transactions and SQL optimizations on a Database's tables. (they are also
Entity Beans).
All EJBs are part of the j2EE spec, not the J2SE spec. So, must be a typo.
 

Paul & Jeroen,
Thanks.
I thought the J2SE bit was strange -- but it's actually part of the
navigation trail at Sun's site!
Tomcat supports a subset of J2EE upon which Geronimo will be based. Which
bits (or buzzwords, take your pick :)) come from Tomcat and which will
Geronimo add? I want to understand which bits of technology I can be
looking at and expect to work if I work with Tomcat vs. which ones I should
explore with some other engine (like JBoss or JRun, which, because I'm on
Cold Fusion, I have easy access to).
I know that JBoss introduced Hibernate. And I've read articles that suggest
EJB 3.0 will based on it. Is that true?
Thanks again.
Scott
"Paul Nichols (TeamB)" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message

Scott Powell wrote:
with "introduced". Hibernate sprang up on its own, the brainchild
of Gavin King. Only after it gained wide acceptance did the Hibernate
open source team enter into an agreement JBoss Inc. to host and
support further Hibernate development. JBoss' take on it is to
charge for services it provides to anyone who needs help
with Hibernate (and JBoss) development and deployment (at a
healthy price!).
videos on EJB 3.0, and so on. Plenty of interesting
info and insight. Basically, EJB 3.0 will be a capitulation,
will arrive too late, and still too heavily influenced by
vendors on the committee. Then be sure to watch the
discussion on J2EE which includes Rod Johnson on the
panel, and listen to his interview.
--
Paul Furbacher (TeamB)
Save time, search the archives:
www.borland.com/newsgroups/ngsearch.html
Is it in Joi Ellis's Faq-O-Matic?
www.visi.com/~gyles19/fom-serve/cache/1.html
Finally, please send responses to the newsgroup only.
That means, do not send email directly to me.
Thank you.
 

"Paul Nichols \(TeamB\)" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote:
And AFAIK the compliant version isn't generally available yet, but that may be old information.