Rather than a simple update of the existing Professional Java Server Programming book, the J2EE edition represents an evolution of the content to reflect the changing state of server-side Java development. Whereas the first edition can be seen as an introduction to Java on the server, the new edition is a more tightly integrated vision of how to combine the Java technologies to develop n-tier applications in Java based primarily around J2EE. Since the release of the first edition in the fall of '99, probably the single most significant change in the Java server-side landscape has been the release of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Although we covered many of the elements of J2EE in the first edition of the book, many things have changed.

J2EE represents a serious attempt by Sun to make Java not just a viable language, but more importantly a viable platform for enterprise development. This book is about how to use Java for enterprise development, using the J2EE runtime architecture.

Wide range of technologies including: J2EE, RMI, JDBC, JNDI, LDAP, XML, XSLT, Servlets, JSP, EJB, JMS, JavaMail, CORBA, Performance, Scalability, Unit Testing, and Debugging

Benefits and limits of the typical real-world vendor implementations of the J2EE specification

The resulting practical aspects of real-word design using the J2EE technologies

Review:

Sun's Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), provides all of the APIs that are needed to build world-class enterprise applications. Written by over a dozen experts, this new edition of Professional Java Server Programming provides a truly massive and authoritative guide to the latest standards and APIs that are available in J2EE. This title is a must-have for anyone who's serious about enterprise development in Java.

Weighing in at over 1,400 pages, Professional Java Server Programming provides a wide-reaching resource of all of the APIs that are required for J2EE development that centers on servlets and JSPs for creating UIs and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), XML, and JDBC for getting to data on the server. Besides being a practical guide to how to combine these standards (with plenty of useful examples of these APIs in action), it also delivers a healthy dose of the design philosophy that's recommended by Sun for building scalable and robust enterprise Web applications.

Throughout, this text does a good job of merging theory with practice. Almost every chapter has a useful working example that shows how APIs work, with sample code for such Web applications as an e-commerce shopping cart, tech support pages, and a front end for a manufacturing database. The core of this volume is its treatment of servlets and JSPs for building Web-based front ends in Java. This new edition also highlights EJBs in excellent detail, with a thorough tour of designing, programming, and deploying EJBs effectively. (There's also notable coverage of the emerging EJB 2.0 standard, which adds several important features, like a query language for more powerful database access.)

The practical focus here is reflected also in chapters that are devoted to debugging, testing, and deploying J2EE applications--critical issues for any aspiring enterprise developer. While no single book can make you an expert, this one can get you started with a superb tour of the APIs and technologies that you'll need to tackle large-scale development in Java. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

Introduction to enterprise computing with the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform (technologies, APIs, architectures; development roles)
Introduction to RMI (including security, parameter passing, and distributed garbage collection)
JDBC tutorial (including prepared statements, updateable result sets, batch updates, connection pooling, and distributed transactions)
JNDI and LDAP
XML basics (including XML parsers, XSLT, and CSS)
Servlet tutorial (servlet APIs, the servlet life cycle, requests and responses, and maintaining session information)
Shopping cart servlet example
JavaServer Pages (JSPs) tutorial (directives, scripting elements, custom tags, and tag libraries)
JSP coding standards
Using JSP and XML together
JavaMail
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) tutorial
EJB containers
Design guidelines for EJBs
Session and entity beans
Container vs. bean-managed persistence
New EJB 2.0 features (including the EJB 2 0 Query Language)
Sun's Model-View-Controller architecture for designing enterprise-level applications
Performance and scalability hints
Debugging and testing techniques
The Java Message Service (JMS) and message queuing
Integrating J2EE with CORBA
Deploying J2EE applications