Java Enterprise Best Practices

Enterprise Java Programming Resources Online

As I mentioned earlier, this book is not a tutorial for the individual J2EE APIs. However, you can find several excellent choices online if you need a place to start. In addition to the books listed earlier, many free sources of information about Java and J2EE programming are available.

Sun’s official Java web site is http://java.sun.com, which can also be reached by the now deprecated http://www.javasoft.com. Another web site specifically for Java and J2EE developers is the Java Developer Connection: http://developer.java.sun.com. Most of the technical articles and beta software on this developer site is password-protected, and access to it requires registration. However, registration is free, and you can allow the site to automatically log in through the use of cookies.

Don’t forget O’Reilly’s Java web sites: http://java.oreilly.com and http://www.onjava.com. These sites contain links to our catalog of latest books, as well as insightful tips and tricks for every level of Java programmer. Some other useful sites that you can access are those for Javaworld magazine, at http://www.javaworld.com; JavaPro magazine, at http://www.javapro.com; and IBM developerWorks, at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks.

Finally, if you’ve just started with the J2EE and want to come up to speed quickly, you should probably be aware that several of the Enterprise APIs covered in this book are now part of the core Java 2 platform. Hence, if you have downloaded the Java Development Kit (JDK), you already have the classes for APIs such as JDBC, RMI, and parts of XML. Other APIs are standard extensions, however, so if you want to use, say, JSP or servlets, you have to download the classes separately. The best way to get the latest API information is to start on Sun’s Products and APIs page at http://java.sun.com/products and find the appropriate API.