J2EE Technology in Practice: Building Business Applications with the Java 2 Platform

252 Pages·2001·3.698 MB·English

by  Rick Cattell, Jim Inscore, Enterprise Partners, Enterprise Partners

Table of Contents
Foreword..............................................................................................................................................................1
Acknowledgments...............................................................................................................................................3
About the Editors................................................................................................................................................5
Chapter 1. A Multi−Vendor Standard for Distributed Enterprise Applications.........................................7
1.1 The Networked Economy..................................................................................................................7
1.2 Why Standardize?..............................................................................................................................7
1.3 Why Standardize on J2EE?................................................................................................................8
1.4 Why a Standard Based on Java Technologies?................................................................................10
1.5 Why a Book of Success Stories?.....................................................................................................11
Chapter 2. Overview of the J2EE Technology and Architecture.................................................................13
2.1 The Evolution of Distributed, Multitier Applications.....................................................................13
2.2 J2EE Platform Architecture and Technologies................................................................................17
2.3 Application Configurations Supported by the J2EE Architecture...................................................26
2.4 J2EE Roles.......................................................................................................................................28
2.5 Things to Come................................................................................................................................28
ATG/JCrew.......................................................................................................................................................31
Chapter 3. J.Crew Rebuilds its Web Presence with the ATG Dynamo Suite.............................................33
3.1 Technology Evolution......................................................................................................................33
3.2 Why J2EE Technology?..................................................................................................................34
3.3 Problem/Opportunity Profile...........................................................................................................35
3.4 Collaboration with Sun Professional Services.................................................................................37
3.5 Solution Analysis.............................................................................................................................38
3.6 Benefits............................................................................................................................................45
3.7 Looking Forward.............................................................................................................................46
BEA/Homeside Lending...................................................................................................................................47
Chapter 4. HomeSide Deploys Electronic Lending on BEA's WebLogic J2EE Server.............................49
4.1 The Project.......................................................................................................................................49
4.2 Business Problem.............................................................................................................................51
4.3 Technology Choices.........................................................................................................................52
4.4 Vendor Selection..............................................................................................................................54
4.5 Application Architecture..................................................................................................................54
4.6 Solution Analysis.............................................................................................................................57
4.7 Current Results................................................................................................................................59
4.8 Future Directions.............................................................................................................................60
4.9 Lessons Learned...............................................................................................................................62
Borland/AT&T Unisource................................................................................................................................63
Chapter 5. AT&T Unisource: Cost−Optimized Routing Environment on the Borland AppServer........65
5.1 Technology Adoption......................................................................................................................65
5.2 Business and Technological Challenges..........................................................................................66
5.3 Approaching the Challenges............................................................................................................68
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Chapter 5. AT&T Unisource: Cost−Optimized Routing Environment on the Borland AppServer
5.4 The Solution.....................................................................................................................................72
5.5 Life after CORE...............................................................................................................................86
Brokat/Codexa...................................................................................................................................................89
Chapter 6. Codexa: Building a Big Bang Architecture with Brokat's GemStore J2EE Server................91
6.1 Codexa (cid:28)Big Bang(cid:29) Architecture Explodes onto the Scene...........................................................91
6.2 Charting Galaxies of Financial Information....................................................................................91
6.3 J2EE Helped Codexa Bring Order to Its Universe..........................................................................92
6.4 System Architecture: Layers Upon Layers......................................................................................92
6.5 Application Architecture: Billions and Billions of InfoBytes.........................................................96
6.6 The Working Solution: Codexa in Action.......................................................................................99
6.7 Achieving the Big Bang.................................................................................................................101
6.8 Codexa Through Time...................................................................................................................106
Chapter 7. Java Technology BuildseTapestry.com ASP for Charities with Forte Tools.........................107
7.1 The Project.....................................................................................................................................107
7.2 The Company.................................................................................................................................107
7.3 Technology Adoption....................................................................................................................108
7.4 Opportunity: The Business Problem..............................................................................................108
7.5 The Solution...................................................................................................................................111
7.6 Vendor Selection............................................................................................................................112
7.7 Application Architecture................................................................................................................113
7.8 Solution Analysis...........................................................................................................................114
7.9 Future Directions...........................................................................................................................116
7.10 A Rich Tapestry...........................................................................................................................118
Forte/eTapestry...............................................................................................................................................119
Chapter 8. HP Bluestone's Total−e−Server at Altura International: Deploying J2EE for
Performance and Scalability.........................................................................................................................121
8.1 The Company.................................................................................................................................121
8.2 The Challenge................................................................................................................................121
8.4 Altura Merchant Operating System...............................................................................................122
8.5 HP Bluestone Total−e−Server and the J2EE Specification...........................................................128
8.6 Configuring the Altura Merchant Operating System Framework.................................................133
8.7 Benefits of the J2EE Platform and HP Bluestone to Altura..........................................................136
HP Bluestone/Altura.......................................................................................................................................139
Chapter 9. Honeywell and Bekins Succeed with IBM.................................................................................141
9.1 IBM and the Evolution of e−Business...........................................................................................141
9.2 Honeywell......................................................................................................................................143
9.3 Bekins............................................................................................................................................149
IBM...................................................................................................................................................................161
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Chapter 10. International Data Post Brings Snail Mail to the Internet Age with iPlanet.......................163
10.1 Company Profile..........................................................................................................................163
10.2 Problem/Opportunity Profile: The Applet Dilemma...................................................................167
10.3 Solution Analysis: The Lifecycle of a Hybrid Letter...................................................................168
10.4 Future of Hybrid Mail..................................................................................................................169
10.5 A Multitiered Architecture...........................................................................................................170
10.6 A Bounty of Benefits...................................................................................................................172
iPlanet...............................................................................................................................................................175
Chapter 11. CERN Simplifies Document Handling Using the Oracle Application Server......................177
11.1 EDH Application.........................................................................................................................177
11.2 The EDH Component Model.......................................................................................................179
11.3 Migration to EJB: First Steps.......................................................................................................183
11.4 The CERN Material Request.......................................................................................................188
11.5 Deployment Descriptors..............................................................................................................191
11.6 Putting It All Together.................................................................................................................195
11.7 CERN's Experience......................................................................................................................198
Oracle/CERN...................................................................................................................................................201
Chapter 12. USMTMC Overhauls Small Package Shipping with SunPS.................................................203
12.1 Global Freight Management, Military Traffic Management Command, Mission.......................203
12.2 Technology Evolution..................................................................................................................204
12.3 The Small Package Application...................................................................................................205
SunPS/USMTMC............................................................................................................................................217
Glossary...........................................................................................................................................................219
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iv
Foreword
This book is for the skeptics. In 1996, the skeptics thought the Java platform would have inadequate
performance for Internet and intranet servers. But they were proven wrong: Thousands of scalable Java
technology−based servers are now online. In 1997, the skeptics said that Sun's community
consensus−building process could not compete with established standards processes to produce a viable
platform. But it did(cid:20)with an overwhelming groundswell. In 1998, the skeptics said the J2EE platform would
be too big and complicated to implement, and that Sun would be unable to get others to adopt it. But it was
widely adopted, and the design proved very powerful. In 1999, the skeptics said the J2EE platform would
come out years late, that it would take too long to complete specifications, a reference implementation, and a
compatibility test suite. But the J2EE platform came out right on schedule at the end of the year, with all these
deliverables. In 2000, the skeptics said that vendors wouldn't take the compatibility tests seriously and would
not implement the J2EE platform in their mainstream products. But they did; all the leading vendors became
J2EE licensees, and over twenty vendor products have already passed the extensive J2EE compatibility test
suite. In 2001, the skeptics questioned whether real enterprise applications would be implemented and
deployed successfully on the J2EE platform. But they have been. This book is the proof.
This book is for the optimists(cid:20)developers, engineering managers, CTOs, CEOs, and others who will have the
foresight to bet their enterprise on a promising state−of−the−art platform that can put them ahead of their
competition. In this book, these people will find examples that will help them design their own solutions, and
case studies to demonstrate to their colleagues that J2EE is a powerful, proven platform. There have been over
a million J2EE platform downloads from Sun since its release a year ago, not to mention thousands of
customers who use J2EE−compatible products from one of the two dozen vendors that have licensed the J2EE
platform to date.
This book is for those who want to better understand the J2EE platform. It demonstrates the most important
feature of the platform(cid:20)that it is an industry−wide initiative, with support and contributions from many
companies and many people. The J2EE platform is not one product from one company. It's a standard
framework around which the leading enterprise vendors are competing to build innovative,
high−performance, distributed enterprise software platforms. In the pages of this book, you will find
contributions from BEA, IBM, iPlanet, Oracle, and half a dozen other vendors, as well as their customers:
AT&T, Bekins, CERN laboratories, the U.S. Army, and many others.
This book is for all the people who are already involved with the J2EE platform. The success of the platform
is the result of outstanding work and vision from a lot of people. I would personally like to thank those
people. In this book, you will read about the most important of them(cid:20)the people who took the J2EE platform
into the trenches to solve business problems and reap the benefits of this new technology. Their experience is
enlightening. The book's editors, Rick Cattell and Jim Inscore, are ideally suited to bring these experiences to
you: Jim has managed all the technical writing for the J2EE platform, and Rick was instrumental to the
inception and technical architecture of the J2EE platform. We hope you enjoy reading the book as much as all
these people enjoyed working with this technology.
Patricia Sueltz
Executive Vice President
Software Systems Group
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
May 2001
2 Foreword
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the J2EE licensees for their enthusiasm for this book, and for their spirit of
coopetition around the J2EE Platform. Their customers, of course, made this project possible: They were both
helpful and encouraging. It has been fun working on a platform with energy and such momentum. Many of
these contributors are named as authors of the chapters of this book, but others were just as important in
making it happen. In particular, we would like to thank Vince Hunt from Altura; Dave Nyberg from BEA;
Eric O'Neill, Ralf Dossman, and Rebecca Cavagnari from Borland; Eric Odell, Elizabeth Dimit, and Anita
Osterhaug from Brokat; Mark Herring and Dan Gillaland from Forte; Bob Bickel, Mark Mitchell, and Paige
Farsad from HP Bluestone; Jeff Reser from IBM; Patrick Dorsey and Michelle Skorka Gauthier from iPlanet;
Moe Fardoost from Oracle; Barbara Heffner from Chen PR; Corina Ulescu and Bruce Kerr from Sun; and
Brooke Embry and John Selogy from Navajo Company. Patrick Spencer from Sun Professional Services
deserves particular recognition for his enthusiastic participation in the project and his ability to always come
through with the goods. Ann Betser, Kim Olson, and Ullon Willis have also lent valuable support.
The publishing team deserves credit for getting this book out on time while coordinating over a dozen
contributors. Thanks to Mary Darby and Zana Vartanian from Duarte Design for their support on the graphics.
And of course, we're particularly grateful to the Java Series publishing team: Lisa Friendly, Series Editor from
Sun, and Mike Hendrickson, Julie Dinicola, and Jacquelyn Doucette from Addison−Wesley.
Sun's J2EE platform marketing team were very helpful to us: Rick Saletta, Ralph Galantine, Glen Martin,
Milena Volkova, Cory Kaylor, and Bill Roth. Thanks also to Carla Mott, Elizabeth Blair, Vijay
Ramachandran and Jill Smith. The J2EE management team deserves extra credit for keeping the J2EE project
on track(cid:20)Karen Tegan, Connie Weiss, Janet Breuer, David Heisser, Kevin Osborn, Jim Driscoll, Vella
Raman, Steve Nahm, Bonnie Kellet, Carla Carlson, Vinay Pai, Kate Stout, Linda Ho, Anita Jindal, Larry
Freeman, Peter Walker, Vivek Nagar, and Tricia Jordan.
Finally, special thanks to Jeff Jackson, director of engineering for J2EE, for supporting our (cid:28)enormous
enterprise edition encylopedia(cid:29) and for understanding that people really do read the manual.
4 Acknowledgments
About the Editors
Dr. R. G. G. (cid:28)RICK(cid:29) CATTELL is a distinguished engineer in Java platform software at Sun Microsystems,
and a founding member of the Java Platform Group that produced J2EE. He has worked for 17 years at Sun
Microsystems in senior roles, and for 10 years before that in research at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC) and Carnegie−Mellon University. The author of more than 50 technical papers and five books, Cattell
has worked with object technology and database systems since 1980. He is co−creator of JDBC, and was
responsible for forming Sun's Database Engineering Group, whose performance tuning helped to make Sun a
leading database server provider. He led the Cypress database management system effort at Xerox PARC, was
a founder of SQL Access, and was founder and chair of the Object Database Management Group (ODMG).
He authored the world's first monograph on object data management, and has received the Association for
Computing Machinery Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Jim Inscore manages technical publications for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, in the Java Platform
Software Group of Sun Microsystems. His roles include overseeing developer documentation, such as the
J2EE Tutorial and J2EE Blueprints, providing developer content for the java.sun.com/j2ee Web site, and
serving as technical editor on the Java Series, Enterprise Edition, from Addison−Wesley. Inscore has been
involved with object−oriented and enterprise−related technologies for more than 15 years, working with
developer documentation for organizations that include Oracle, Ingres, NeXT, Kaleida, and Macromedia.
Prior to that, he spent 10 years writing marketing communications materials for the technical marketplace.
6 About the Editors