Welcome to the first installment of JDJ Labs. Our goal is to introduce you to commercial (and open-source) products and technologies that will help you, the Java developer, work more efficiently. We expect our testing to provide you with a starting point for your own testing and analysis. In this column we’ll be looking at common market trends that affect the commercial products and services in the Java space.

FrontierSuite is a single tool that can help you design, develop, and deploy your e-business Java applications from start to finish. You can start your project with UML-based object modeling using Frontier Modeler and move on to generate EJB entities and deploy using Frontier Deployer. ePersistJ serves as CMP (container-managed persistence) and BMP (bean-managed persistence).

As the Internet continues to grow as a viable medium for enterprise-class applications, the tools and technology for developing these applications continue to advance at a frenetic pace. The state of the technology now allows for a multitiered application that involves anything from simple scripting to complex objects. Such technological advances have created an environment in which multiple developers can work together on a single “logical” application.

Anyone who has used the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) has to be impressed with how quickly it’s matured and become a robust programming model. Besides the ability to build new applications, developers can use J2EE to connect to third-party software, legacy systems, and Java-based e-business application engines and deploy them across a distributed computing environment. As powerful as the various technologies supporting this platform are, efficiently managing and using them all in a development environment can be problematic. Providing an IDE to manage this complexity is what Oracle has set out to accomplish – and in my opinion, has very successfully – with its new Oracle9 i JDeveloper product.

In Parts 1 and 2 of this article (JDJ, Vol. 6, issues 1 and 7) I discussed how to use a JTable with a table model and showed how much work is involved getting a JTable to work with data. This is quite a departure for veterans of other fourth-generation languages who may be used to developing in Visual Basic or PowerBuilder. Both these languages have intelligent controls that keep track of the data as the user is manipulating it.

A contagious disease that results in oddly colored teeth? A South Seas pirate with a penchant for eating toxic sea food? Or perhaps a superhero with really unhelpful superpowers? If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you've had your Java blinkers on and haven't been paying attention to the rest of the industry.

As an industry we used to consider mobile/wireless computing to be the next frontier. Now it has become part and parcel of critical, enterprise applications ranging from Customer Resource Management to Enterprise Resource Planning. Many of the early mobile computing efforts that I've run across were built around external application service providers (ASPs) and relied on gateway technology. From an investment perspective it made perfect sense to approach the problem in this manner.

It's often said that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' - and I've generally found this to be true. In fact, it's often easier for users to digest numeric data when it's displayed in picture form, such as with a chart or graph. Business analysts have long understood this concept and often choose to display raw data in graphic form to make it easier to understand. With the popularity of Java servlets and JavaServer Pages, it's now possible to dynamically display this very same data on the Web. Sitraka Software is one of the premier software vendors in the Java components market. They market a powerful dynamic-charting component called JClass ServerChart, which is perfect for generating colorful charts and graphs for the Web.

Before we get started, it's worthwhile noting that I'm not a big fan of WAP. Well, not the protocol itself exactly, but WML-based Web sites - the whole idea of browsing the Web on your mobile seems somewhat flawed when your screen real estate is minimal and you probably have only one more color than Henry Ford wanted for his cars. So when 4thpass offered me a look at their KBrowser for MIDP and Palm devices, I wasn't expecting to be that enthused. Sure, it's written in Java - feel free to clock me over the back of the head with a large shoe if I ever turn up my nose at a look at a good Java application - but it's WAP. If you've ever used a WAP phone (or know someone who has) you undoubtedly know the rhyme that goes along with it: WAP is crap. Okay, so maybe you haven't heard it, and I hang out with some really unimaginative people.

Despite the 'slowdown' in technology, the developers and project managers who I speak with continue to be under enormous pressure to deliver new applications and technology at a frenetic pace. It can be incredibly difficult to juggle all the various development tasks when team members are working on multiple projects.

In June 2001, Borland released the latest version of the JBuilder series. Borland is an ever-popular presence in the Java IDE market, but with most IDEs now offering the same functionality, is there anything to set JBuilder apart?

Convergence. A word loved by PR companies and feared by nontechnical consumers. If you believe industry pundits, we'll all be carrying combination mobile phone-PDA-TV-toasters in the next few years. You'll be able to make a phone call, write a memo, watch the morning news, and cook your breakfast all at the same time while on your way to work. How close reality comes to the dream (or nightmare, depending upon your point of view) is anyone's guess, but the first devices that might fit a definition of 'convergence' are emerging on the market. Nokia's 9210 Communicator is one such combination - a mobile phone and PDA.

Tag libraries were introduced into the Java specification to solve many of the limitations of using scriptlets (bits of Java code) as part of a JSP page. The main limitation is that advanced page design may require the designer to understand Java to perform tasks such as constructing a loop, if/else blocks, and sending an e-mail, and so on. Art designers and HTML developers are creating many pages in today's Web development environment, making this approach less than optimal. Tags provide a mechanism that will allow a non-Java developer to utilize Java functionality without having to learn the language.

Sometimes finding hosting for your well-crafted pieces of code can be more work than the coding itself. Locating a service that does it free of charge is a real challenge; however, www.mycgiserver.com is a service that meets both criteria. The site started life as a CGI server that could run user's Perl scripts, PHP, and Java servlets, but in November 2000 they made the decision to concentrate on Java deployment.

In my opinion there have always been two types of Java application developers. The first type prefers to use a text editor, compiler, and debugger to get the job done. Once upon a time, this was the only way to write code, from COBOL and Fortran all the way through C. The age of the fourth-generation language introduced the concept of a specialized developer 'coding tool,' which we now refer to as an integrated development environment (IDE).

New-car buyers often fear that they're getting a 'Friday afternoon' vehicle - a car built by the last shift at the end of a tough week. Manufacturers have spent an untold number of man-years trying to prevent such defects.

This month I review two books, both of which are valuable sources for developers and architects building enterprise applications using J2EE technologies. If you're familiar with the J2EE Blueprints from Sun,Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java2 Platform, Enterprise Edition is the official 'Java Series' book from Addison-Wesley on them. It's a part of the Java Series Enterprise books from Sun. J2EE Blueprints are still available for a free download from Sun's Java site, but if you like to have the professionally bound book, this is it.

Founded in the U.K. in 1986, Insignia started out developing technology that enabled non-Intel computers to run DOS and Windows applications. Twelve years later, after a shift in focus, the first beta versions of the Jeode platform and Jeode Embedded Virtual Machine emerged. According to Insignia's statistics, more than 35 million runtime units of Jeode technology have been contracted by OEMs, OS, and middleware suppliers.

This is the first in a series of reviews of devices that are capable of running Java 2 Micro Edition - be it PersonalJava, MIDP, or any other new profile that comes along. In this and future issues of JDJ, we'll try to provide a rundown of the various kinds of handheld, embedded, and mobile devices, and how well they run your favorite language. First up is Compaq's iPAQ.

When Sun Microsystems rings you up and asks whether or not you'd be interested in playing with a new desktop system they've just announced that's aimed at Java developers, amongst many, what can you do but nod affirmatively. After much paperwork to allow the machine to leave the shores of the U.S., it arrived here in Scotland where it was immediately unpacked and fired up. That was two months ago.

In a recent editorial meeting with the JDJ staff I broached the subject of open source software with editor-in-chief, Alan Williamson. I freely admit that I was baiting him - but Alan was favorable towards it. It's a touchy subject for any technical person, sort of a motherhood and apple-pie thing.

iPlanet recently announced some updates to their family of Web and application server products that help consolidate the overall product line. The new product positioning won't surprise iPlanet enthusiasts as it positions iPlanet as a superior solution for a broader range of the application server marketplace. The core of these announcements is a new release of the Web server software and new packaging for the application server lineup:

In my travels I've run across lots of bad Java code (some of which I've written myself). Usually it's due to unrealistic project deadlines, bad estimates for how long something will take, no architecture in place, and developers' not really understanding the subtleties of the language.

Development of enterprise applications using Java technologies is not for the faint-hearted. Writing to the J2EE specs is proving to be complex, difficult, and tedious - slowing down advanced Java developers and creating a barrier to entry for many mainstream developers.

Bill Coleman, Edward Scott, and Alfred Chuang must be looking at their September 1998 acquisition of WebLogic as the best money they ever spent. WebLogic's Tengah product was a little-known, Java-based application server when BEA made the decision to buy their way into the growing market for Java application servers way back when. Since those early days the J2EE specification has matured and BEA has made great strides with the WebLogic product line. Their most recent effort is WebLogic Server 6.0 - a product that was touted with much fanfare at BEA's eWorld conference in Dallas, Texas.

Most companies have a large investment in legacy systems for ERP, transaction processing, and database applications. Everyone's talking about how they can leverage these systems and integrate them into their modern, multitier, e-business application architectures.

ZeroCode is a Web-based development environment that allows a team to graphically develop a Web-based database application with minimal handwritten code. The development environment is Web-based and housed on zeroCode servers. Developers build the application via the Web interface and when complete, the entire site is downloaded and installed on servers in the production environment.

Database Programming with JDBC and Java by George Reese Published by O'Reilly & Associates

Last month in JDJ (Vol. 6, issue 4) I introduced the topic of object/relational mapping. Databases such as Oracle8i or DB2 store data in tables and columns. Thus, customer data is stored in a 'customer' table and information relevant to the customer such as ID, name, and address are stored as columns. All the data for a single customer within the customer table is equivalent to a 'record.' From the EJB perspective customer data is represented by a customer 'class' and the data elements are represented by 'attributes.' Con- ceptually, the mapping process is a simple one. Each database table is an EJB class (CMP or BMP), and each and every column in the table becomes an attribute. Individual customer records are instantiated as EJB objects as necessary.

In this new era of rapid application development (RAD), there's an ever-increasing push to get applications into production without adequate testing. This methodology does meet deadlines, but it can also lead to serious implications for your business's future. For example, many Internet companies deploy applications that lack the ability to handle high loads, or their applications aren't scalable enough to grow with the increasing demands of the business. With a little testing these simple mistakes can be caught before an application goes into production.

In Part 1 of this article (JDJ, Vol. 6, issue 2) we discussed the problems associated with J2EE's Servlet/JSP container. In Part 2 we'll discuss Cybelink's Jlink architecture and how it solves those problems.

The year 2000 saw J2EE compliancy move out of the realm of marketing and into nine shipping products. The threat of commoditization of J2EE application servers forced vendors to switch gears in 2001 toward leveraging J2EE servers as platforms for Web services, wireless, and EAI development.

Application servers are the one category of software product that seems to be on everyone's mind these days. No longer is there any doubt in my mind that n-tier applications are the future. Certain applications will benefit from a heavy-client architecture, such as desktop publishing, but most will have at least some portion of their logic running on the middle tier.

Using a software configuration management (SCM) system is an integral part of any development project. Source code is your most valuable resource and must be protected. However, with the large number of products available from many different vendors, it's essential that you choose an SCM system that will work with your favorite development tools.

Let's start by getting the naming business out of the way! First there was a company named Borland. Then, for apparently no good reason, they changed their name to Inprise. The Inprise name was supposed to encompass the Enterprise products (such as VisiBroker, Entera, etc.) and the Borland name was kept for the tools (JBuilder, Delphi, C++Builder, etc.). Well, all the name change did was confuse everyone.

One of the more complicated issues that J2EE application developers face is the process of mapping relational data to EJBs. The J2EE specification provides EJBs as the mechanism to persist objects into a database. They certainly solve lots of problems for developers, especially in the areas of transaction management and distributed computing.

DeployDirector provides a comprehensive environment for maintaining Java applications across the enterprise. It consists of several modules, including a server-based repository, an administrative interface, and a client-side agent. The administrative tool allows you to configure and deploy new or updated versions of an application to thousands of client desktops across the enterprise.

For software developers source code is more than just files on a disk - it's the result of hours of thought and work and must be protected. If you look at the number of software tools available to help developers track and store their source code, you'll see that code protection is a key part of any serious software development effort.

In the increasingly fast-paced world of the Internet, myriad new Web sites seem to arrive daily, intent on gaining market share. Whether your site is involved in business-to-consumer sales, online services, or portal services, the name of the game is the same: try at all costs to retain users and give them the best customer service experience.

This is my first book review for Java Developer's Journal. As coauthor of a competing book, I figured I'd be very critical of the author's writing and the book's content. I must admit I'm pleasantly surprised; this is a really good book and, in many ways, better than the book I coauthored.