Mastering a hodge-podge of different technologies, including Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java server pages (JSP), servlets, database connectivity, or naming application programming interfaces (APIs), is a prerequisite for developing e-commerce software using Java. Arranging for the coherent and harmonious configuration of the various elements that, put together, form the framework of such operational applications can be mind-boggling, given all the options and settings that need to be dealt with, notwithstanding the development of specific software implementing the business logic. Fortunately, there is help: WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), which replaces IBM’s VisualAge for Java, is an integrated software development environment (IDE) intended to simplify the design and implementation of advanced J2EE-based applications. Livshin’s purpose for this book is to provide us with a hands-on introduction and user manual to this tool bench, specifically to its 5.0 version.

The first part of this three-part book provides a general presentation of WSAD 5.0. After a short introduction, the author spends some time discussing this version’s major differences from the previous versions of this tool, namely its handling of message driven beans in Java Message Service (JMS) and its support of the J2EE 1.3 and EJB 2.0 specifications, which adds the notions of local interfaces, in addition to the traditional concept of remote interfaces for distant objects and container-managed persistence. The rest of this part is used to explain how to set up WSAD 5.0, and introduces a library management system for technical books that will be used throughout the book as a sample project.

Part 2 focuses on the use of WSAD in a typical J2EE distributed environment framework. WSAD has been designed to optimally operate with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server (WAS), which handles database connections and other J2EE chores. Other servers can, of course, be used instead. After a general presentation of the basics of J2EE-based developments, three types of specific applications related to the library management system example are covered: an EJB project, which focuses on the notion of session and its use of states; a Web development project, which demonstrates how typical applications based on servlets can be readily implemented using WSAD; and an Extensible Markup Language (XML) application, which seeks to show how XML documents, schemas, and stylesheets can be defined and manipulated using WSAD.

Part 3 covers the interplay between WSAD and JMS, using the two asynchronous communication modes offered by JMS, namely the P2P and Publishing/Subscribing models. WSAD uses an internal JMS provider that can be used to prototype JMS-based applications, but full-production systems, particularly those using legacy code, may need to use more sophisticated middleware, such as WebSphere MQ. Both approaches are discussed in detail in this part.

A full-fledged index and an appendix that shows how all of the examples illustrated in the book can be deployed conclude the book.

This is a heavy-duty, technical, and down-to-business book, with several Java excerpts, screenshots, version numbers, and detailed descriptions of menu contents. Once it is understood that the reader is assumed to know the principles of J2EE, Java, EJB, servlets, and JSP, the text presents how these technologies can be managed via WSAD in a clear manner, guiding the reader through the large number of parameters that need to be set to make all this work. To really benefit from such a reading, one would probably need to install the code discussed in the book, and test the environment. On the minus side, there are a couple of mistakes (badly-numbered references, minor typos, and font and spelling errors) that might have been alleviated by a more thorough proofreading process.

If the obvious audience for this book is software designers who develop production-class distributed transactional systems based on Java, other software engineers, such as developers interested in IDEs might also profit from this book.