[TheServerSide Newsletter #14]

TheServerSide.com Connectionn newsletter keeps you up-to-date on the most important J2EE industry news and issues emerging on The ServerSide.com. More, it delivers to your screen exclusive J2EE articles and advanced topics not available on any other enterprise java site or publication. This newsletter is transmitted bi-weekly. It is printer-friendly and available online


IN THIS ISSUE


Featured Technical Articles
  o Web Application Development with JSP and XML Part III: Developing JSP Custom Tags

Enterprise Java Education Strategies
 o Experience IS the difference!

Shape the Next Set of Definitive J2EE Books
  Mastering EJB II:
 o Persistence Best-Practices
 o Container Services
 o Hello, World!

  EJB Design Patterns:
 o Value Objects
 o Value Object Factory

New J2EE Patterns
 o Dynamic Proxy for Local and Remote Interface (EJB 2.0)
 o Remote to Local Data Service Pattern

Key J2EE Industry News Headlines
 Some key headlines:
 o Opinion: J2EE = Just 2 Existing Enterprises OR J2EE 2 End Early
 o Comparing BEA Weblogic, iPlanet, and Sybase
 o Oracle9i JDeveloper BETA available for download
 o Persistence Software announes J2EE-certified Powertier 7.0
 o P6Spy released: automatic logging of your database/EJB queries
 o Rexip AppServer Beta claims to outperform JRun, Orion, & Resin
 o J2EE Applications & BEA WebLogic Book Available
 o Oracle# - New Oracle Application Server for .NET?
 o JDBInsight - Performance Tuning and Testing of J2EE Apps
 o BEA Weblogic Server 6.1 has been released



FEATURED TECHNICAL ARTICLES


Web Application Development with JSPTM and XML Part III: Developing JSP Custom Tags
By Qusay H. Mahmoud

JSP technology allows you to introduce new custom tags through the tag library facility. As a Java developer, you can extend JSP pages by introducing custom tags that can be deployed and used in an HTML-like syntax. Custom tags also allow you to provide better packaging by improving the separation between business logic and presentation logic. This article presents a brief overview of custom tags, then it shows How to develop and deploy simple tags. How to develop and deploy advanced tags. How to describe tags with the Tag Library Descriptor

Read the rest of the article here



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ENTERPRISE JAVA EDUCATION STRATEGIES


Experience IS the Difference!

The Middleware Company offers all its courses on-site and for open enrollment. It builds a one week immersion training on the topics of most valuable in your domain on the experience and and skills of advanced Java architects with proficiency in building distributed systems. The difference between sitting in a lecture on enterprise Java and being fully immersed in a course guided by an experienced architect is the difference between reading the features of a BMWZ3 and driving it across Europe on the Autobahn.

Take a Test Drive

Corporations send one developer to any advanced Java training before September 30; get a full credit of the tuition toward any on-site training you book in 2001.www.middleware-company.com/privatecourses.shtml?nws813

Now Until September 30

Developers take any Java training before September 30, 2001; get Game Boy Advance with our compliments. www.middleware-company.com/schedule?nws813

Course schedule:

New York, NY:
SEPT 24 - 28, NOV 12 - 16    XML & Web Services
SEPT 10 - 14, OCT 15 - 19,
NOV 26 - 30 		   Mastering EJB
AUG 27 - 31, OCT 1 - 5    Building J2EE Systems
SEPT 17 - 21, OCT 29 - NOV 2,
DEC 10 - 14 		  EJB For Architects
San Francisco, CA:
SEPT 10 - 14, OCT 29 - NOV 2    XML & Web Services
AUG 20 - 24, OCT 1 - 5,
DEC 10 - 14 		   Mastering EJB
NOV 12 - 16    Building J2EE Systems
AUG 27 - 31, OCT 15 - 19,
NOV 26 - 30 		  EJB For Architects

Get complete course outlines at www.middleware-company.com.
Email: registration@middleware-company.com
Call for details about private courses or for more information: (512) 336-9347

Support TheServerSide.com

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SHAPE THE NEXT SET OF DEFINITIVE J2EE BOOKS


TheServerSide.com is hosting two new J2EE book projects: Mastering EJB II, and EJB Design Patterns. Chapters from these two new books will be posted to TSS as they are written for public feedback. For the first time ever you will be able to directly participate in the writing of these two influential books and personally influence thousands of developers who will learn from them.

Latest Public Review Postings:

Mastering Enterprise Java Beans II

 Persistence Best-Practices
1st public review posting, By Ed Roman

In this chapter we explore the issues surrounding EJB persistence and explore the various approaches to persistence that you may employ within your EJB applications. We'll cover the following topics:

Read/Review rest of the chapter

Container Services
1st public review posting, By Ed Roman

Assuming you've learned the fundamentals of EJB programming in previous chapters, this chapter will build on that knowledge and cover a slew of essential topics, including:

Read/Review rest of the chapter

Hello, World!
1st public review posting, By Ed Roman

In this chapter, we'll get down-and-dirty and write a real working EJB component. Our stateless session bean will be responsible for the mighty task of returning the string "Hello, World!" to the client. We'll see how to write each of the files that make up this bean, and how to access it from clients. It is a useful template for building more complex beans. This will give you the necessary foundation to then understand the later chapters on entity beans, session beans, and message-driven beans............

Read/Review rest of the chapter



EJB Design Patterns

 Value Objects
4th public review posting, By Floyd Marinescu

How can a client exchange bulk data with the server without making multiple fine-grained network calls?

In any distributed application there are two ways that a client can interact with a server. The first is to read some data from the server for display purposes; the second is to change some data on the server by creating, updating or removing data. In an EJB context, these types of operations typically involve the exchange of data between the client (servlet, applet, etc), and a Session Bean, Entity Bean, or Message Driven Bean. ........

Read/Review rest of the chapter

Value Object Factory
3rd public review posting, By Floyd Marinescu

How should value object creation and consumption logic be implemented, in order to minimize the impact of frequent changes in the value object layer on the rest of the system?

Value Objects have a tendency to change often. Domain Value Objects change whenever the domain objects change (adding a new attribute to an entity bean, etc). Custom Value Objects are just use case specific data holders for transporting data across a network; they can change as frequently as your application's presentation view. A medium to large application could potentially have tens to even hundreds of different Value Objects, each of which would require custom logic to create it. A critical question then becomes: how and where should this logic be implemented, in order to decouple and protect the rest of this system from value object changes........

Read/Review rest of the chapter

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NEW J2EE PATTERNS


Dynamic Proxy for Local and Remote Interface (EJB 2.0)
By Kjetil Helle

With the introduction of local interface in the new EJB 2.0 spec, one question arises: Is it possible to create a session bean that can use both local and remote interface?

You use the DynamicProxy class to manufacture a single class that implements both your local and remote interface. Within the method invocation handler, use reflection to match up to the appropiate method. You should hardly need to change your implementation code at all, you would just use a factory class to create the DynamicProxy.

Read more on this pattern.


Remote to Local Data Service Pattern
By Stephen Bennett

This pattern is designed to overcome the problems assoicated with moving remote data to a local location, such as saving a lot of user data in a session. It deals mainly with read only type data. Usually you would hold user session data in server memory, (part of session state) but this can lead to scalability problems. If you take this user data out of memory and dump it to disk via serialization you have the server affinity issue. With this pattern, you pass your user session data to a database, a developer-configurable persistent session, part of which is using data taken from a remote database.

Read more on this pattern.

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KEY J2EE INDUSTRY HEADLINES

Opinion: J2EE = Just 2 Existing Enterprises OR J2EE 2 End Early

With BEA and IBM dwarfing the rest of the J2EE servers in marketshare, I have heard many developers imply that other J2EE server vendors should simply give up and focus their attentions else where. Could this be the end for many other companies trying to bring quality implementations to the J2EE arena? Are we going to let history repeat itself?
Click here to read more.

Comparing BEA Weblogic, iPlanet, and Sybase

A new article reviews three J2EE app. servers: BEA's WebLogic 5.1 and 6.0, iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions' iPlanet Application Server 6.0, and Sybase's EAS. While all three servers dissapointed the reviewers, they concluded that BEA WebLogic's problems were the most manageable.
Click here to read more.

Oracle9i JDeveloper BETA available for download

Oracle, Wednesday, will give developers their first look at a new version of its JDeveloper integrated development environment for Oracle 9i, the first full release of the toolset in almost two years. The new IDE is optimized for Oracle's 9i application server but also is compatible with other J2EE-based app servers.
Click here to read more.

Persistence Software announes J2EE-certified Powertier 7.0

Industry veteran Persistence Software has announced version 7.0 of Powertier, its new J2EE 1.2 certified application server. Powertier was the first application server with a distributed shared object cache (entity bean cache across a cluster). Version 7.0 includes J2EE certification, and large improvements in failover and fault tolerance features.
Click here to read more.

P6Spy released: automatic logging of your database/EJB queries

The P6Spy driver seamlessly (no code changes required to applications) intercepts and logs all database statements of any application that uses JDBC. This application is particularly useful for developers to monitor the SQL statements produced by EJB servers, enabling the developer to write code that achieves maximum efficiency on the server.
Click here to read more.

Rexip AppServer Beta claims to outperform JRun, Orion, & Resin

Developers at TCCybersoft have recently implemented a Java Servlet Container (Rexip AppServer), claiming to have surpassed JRun, Orion, & Resin in a standard benchmark test. A newcomer to the J2EE space, Rexip also has a beta of a Java Data Objects (JDO) implementation available for download.
Click here to read more.

J2EE Applications & BEA WebLogic Book Available

The first hardcopies of the only programming book to cover J2EE & WebLogic 6 are now available. Building J2EE Applications & BEA WebLogic is targeted at Java programmers developing applications for the BEA WebLogic platform, the leading Web Application Server in the marketplace today. This book focuses on best practices for developing enterprise applications using the WebLogic APIs. After reading this book, intermediate or professional-level Java developers will possess the skills and knowledge required to develop scalable and robust applications on the WebLogic platform.
Click here to read more.

Oracle# - New Oracle Application Server for .NET?

Rumour has it that Oracle is considering to start implementation of a.k.a. Oracle# - Oracle Application Server for MS Windows .NET platform. They are trying to redevelop it from scratch in a C# language combination of the best from J2EE (Orion source will be the starting point for translation to C#) and the best of Microsoft (exact same list of enterprise services as Hailstorm, Passport and etc.). Underneath, it will be based on an asynchronized messaging engine. Sounds like Oracle is deciding to fight all J2EE vendors together with Microsoft, at least for awhile.
Click here to read more.

JDBInsight - Performance Tuning and Testing of J2EE Apps

Inspired is pleased to announced JDBInsight, a new product aimed at simplifying the performance tuning and testing of J2EE applications, which access enterprise data through the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API.
Click here to read more.

BEA Weblogic Server 6.1 has been released

The full version of Weblogic Server 6.1 has been released and is available for download. Along with full EJB 2.0, Servlet 2.3, and JSP 1.2 support, WL 6.1 is BEA's Web Services release, allowing J2EE components to be exposed as Web Services.
Click here to read more.



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