J2EE Platform Technologies

by Vijay Ramachandran

ThE J2EE platform specifies technologies to support multitier enterprise applications. These technologies fall into three categories: component, service, and communication.

The component technologies are those used by developers to create the essential parts of the enterprise application, namely the user interface and the business logic. The component technologies allow the development of modules that can be reused by multiple enterprise applications. The component technologies are supported by J2EE platform's system-level services. These system-level services simplify application programming and allow components to be customized to use resources available in the environment in which they are deployed.

Since most enterprise applications require access to existing enterprise information systems, the J2EE platform supports APIs that provide access to databases, enterprise information systems such as SAP and CICS, and services such as transaction, naming and directory, and asynchronous communication. Finally, the J2EE platform provides technologies that enable communication between clients and servers and between collaborating objects hosted by different servers.

This chapter will provide an overview of the J2EE platform technologies.