The JEE Knowledge Sharing Thread

[Fuma]

I would like to see this thread have a sticky as well for those who want to go into Java (in JEE) development.

I have been "researching" to see what one should know about JEE/Java.
Things like which framework, ORM, application servers, and etc should one use or look into.
Spring, EJB3, JPA, Hibernate, Struts2, WebWork, iBatis, JBoss, Glassfish, Web Logic, Websphere.

It seems very complex for junior people like us. I know this is a broad question and it depends on your needs and stuff like that, but any input or direction can help.

 

[alpha777]

Things like which framework, ORM, application servers, and etc should one use or look into.
Spring, EJB3, JPA, Hibernate, Struts2, WebWork, iBatis, JBoss, Glassfish, Web Logic, Websphere.

I have not even looked at the stuff you mentioned. I'm looking into arrays, objects, arrays of objects, methods, gui's, classes, simple stuff like that!

 

[sn3rd]

I have not even looked at the stuff you mentioned. I'm looking into arrays, objects, arrays of objects, methods, gui's, classes, simple stuff like that!

They're particular frameworks and technologies that are commonly used in enterprise environments.

 

[Gnome]

IMHO:
Step 1:
Java EE 5 Tutorial
or
Java EE 6 Tutorial

Note that most Application servers still sit @ Java EE 5 specs so might be prudent to study Java EE 6 but take note that not everything might be available.

Step 2:
Grails
and/or
Spring

Spring and Grails aren't the same thing, Grails is a framework and I would recommend it, it includes Spring btw.

You needn't know Spring but as you progress you'll learn a bit of Spring for sure.

Step 3:
Google Web Toolkit

The front end is a GWT project that connects to a back-end which is a Grails application. GWT takes native Java and converts it to Javascript. So your front end project is just a Java application you write and then it is converted to Javascript. It is very powerful!

The front end is just Javascript & Ajax while the back-end stuff will be a REST service to which the front-end connects.

REST services are incredibly quick and easy to write in Grails!

I also make use of Ext GWT (commonly known as GXT) which runs on top of GWT, I use it because GWT is very sparse (eg. it has basic building blocks only and GXT makes my development much quicker. Another popular GWT "extension" is smartGWT but I haven't used it much.

GXT is free except for commercial use (license per developer is around R3K for commercial development) whereas SmartGWT is completely free.

Some samples of what GXT can do:
http://www.sencha.com/examples/#overview
http://dev.sencha.com/playpen/gxt/desktop/
http://dev.sencha.com/playpen/gxt/portal/

The above combination can actually create nice looking applications in a very short amount of time. I couldn't do the same in PHP or .NET but then again, PHP allows me to create other applications that I wouldn't be able to do as quickly using GWT and Grails.

I've said it before but in the face of PHP and the above combination I never have need of .NET and probably never will, .NET is just too far behind in terms of technologies.

 

[Fuma]

Thanks. Gnome.

I just downloaded Jee 5 and 6 SDKs, JBoss 6, Eclipse, Grails, Spring , GWT, etc to play around on my UBUNTU 10.10 over the next few days.

 

[Gnome]

Cool, if I get some time I'll upload a sample application.

However development in Netbeans is a bit easier because it natively supports Grails.

At work we don't use Grails tho and doing back-end calls is a bit more effort but you can still create very nice looking applications.