Building Java Enterprise Applications

Preface

If you’re basing your livelihood on Java these days, you are going to run across at least one enterprise application programming project; if it hasn’t come upon you already, it’s just around the corner. I’ve been faced with more than twenty at this point in my career, and see many more in my future. Each time I get into these projects, I find myself paging through book after book and searching the Web, looking for the same information time after time. Additionally, I’ve developed a bit of a toolkit for handling common enterprise tasks.

What I have determined is that there are many terrific books on specific technologies like Enterprise JavaBeans, servlets, and the Java Message Service. These books cover the details of these APIs and explain how to use them. I have also found, though, that there is no resource in existence that describes connecting these components in an intelligent way. No coherent examples are documented and explained that tell how best to code façade patterns, attach entity beans to directory servers, use servlets and JSP with EJB without killing performance, or a host of other common tasks. At the same time, these very issues are the heart of my job description, and probably of many other programmers’ as well.

Rather than simply write a short article or two and fall short of really addressing the topic (something I see lots of people doing), I convinced O’Reilly & Associates to put forth an exhaustive series on enterprise programming in Java. I’m proud ...