Professional Oracle® WebLogic Server

Chapter 14. Development Environment Best Practices

Congratulations! Your boss just gave you the go-ahead to build a new Java EE application using WebLogic Server. Months of meetings and proposals are behind you, and it's time to get started on the actual development. It's going to be a fairly large application, requiring a development team of 10 to 15 people. You have a reasonable budget for development hardware and software and the full confidence of management and the other team members. Now what?

It's not enough to know the technology inside and out. You must structure your development effort in a way that optimizes productivity and reduces the risk of failure. This chapter continues the discussion of development best practices with recommendations in the following areas.

• Defining the required development environment hardware and software.

• Installing WebLogic Server in the development environment.

• Configuring the project directory structure.

• Establishing a build process.

• Choosing development tools.

• Creating a unit testing infrastructure.

There can be a lot more to Java EE development than these six items. You need to choose a development methodology and team structure, create realistic plans with measurable deliverables, create useful design artifacts and specifications, and embrace the other development best practices known in the industry. This book does not cover best practices in these general areas. Classic references for information on these topics include Rapid Development: Taming ...