More action with Struts 2
In a recent review of Struts 2 in Action, JW Blogger Oleg Mikheev notes that Struts 2 is "just a collection of extensions built upon WebWork, which is ultimately the right thing to learn before starting a Struts 2 project." While Struts 2 has some architectural flaws, Oleg calls WebWork well-designed, well-tested, and reliable. What are your experiences using Struts 2 and WebWork?

Also see "Hello World the WebWork way," a JavaWorld excerpt from WebWork in Action, by Patrick Lightbody and Jason Carreira.

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Vendor panel extols Java's enterprise-readiness

Representatives from Sun, Oracle, and IBM gathered in San Francisco recently for the CityJava forum to answer the question 'Is Java enterprise-ready?'

By Jeff Walsh, InfoWorld, 06/09/99

May 14, 1999 -- Representatives from Sun, Oracle, and IBM gathered in San Francisco on Thursday night for the CityJava forum to answer the question "Is Java enterprise-ready?" before a packed auditorium of Java developers.

The cryptic consensus among the panelists seemed to be that Java is ready for the enterprise, but in many instances the enterprise is not ready for Java.

EJB 1.1 spec
Vlada Matena, lead architect for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) in Sun Microsystems's Java Software Division, discussed the new features in EJB 1.1, which was released as a public draft Monday. (See the related story, "Sun delivers draft of EJB 1.1 spec".)

Matena said one of the key new features in EJB 1.1 is that the deployment descriptor is now represented in Extensible Markup Language (XML), which provides an overview of how different JavaBeans are wired together in an application.

The final version of EJB 1.1 should be finalized by December, and EJB 2.0 will ship in 2000, Matena said.

Matena said that EJB 1.1 is a key part of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition, which will be announced at the JavaOne Worldwide Java Developer Conference in June, and will be a complete platform for delivering enterprise applications.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition
Java 2 Enterprise Edition will consist of EJB, Java Server Pages (JSP), servlets, stand alone applications, and applets.

At the JavaOne show, Sun will deliver the new platform by way of a platform specification, reference implementation, a compliance test suite, and application programming modes, Matena said.

During the question-and-answer period, Matena also said JSP 1.0 should be available before the JavaOne conference.

Java and the Oracle8i database
Oracle, represented by four of the six panelists, got the lion's share of the presentation time. The database vendor is pushing the idea that it is impossible to deploy enterprise applications written without Java unless you are using a database.

"If you don't know how to use a database, you can't write enterprise applications," said Hal Hildebrande, Java engineer at Oracle.

Oracle Senior Director of Java Technology Dave Rosenberg indicated the company would be demonstrating the scalability of Java in the enterprise when coupled with the Oracle8i database.

"We're able to show scalability out to the tens of thousands of users," Rosenberg said.

Oracle technology evangelist Yong Su Kim pushed the company's JDeveloper tools for building Java applications on top of Oracle8i. The software is available free from the company's TechNet site and contains wizards to help in the development process.

Reaching out to bring Java developers to the Oracle platform is a new focus for Oracle, according to Oracle Vice President of Partner Services Jay Peretz.

"For Larry Ellison to say 'free software' was a big step for Oracle," Peretz said.

Peretz said that traditionally, the only people who learned how to develop for Oracle were people who needed to provide solutions in their workplace, which had already standardized on Oracle. He said the company now has a partnering program with Java developers, which enables them to embed Oracle database services within a Java application, and potentially resell the Oracle database to clients. There is also a venture fund set up for companies who are developing technologies for the Oracle platform.


For more enterprise computing news, visit InfoWorld. Story copyright InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

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