Patterns: Implementing Self-Service in an SOA Environment

Chapter 5. Product mappings and product overview 89

5.4 Rational Application Developer

IBM Rational Application Developer V6.0 is the full function development platform

for developing Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE), and Java 2 Platform

Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications with a focus on applications to be

deployed to IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal.

Rational Application Developer contains a great deal of functionality for Web,

Java, and J2EE application developers. This section gives a high-level overview

of just a few of the features found in Rational Application Developer. These are

the features that you will see used in the development scenarios later in this

book.

For more information about Rational Application Developer and a more complete

listing of its capabilities, we would suggest the following IBM Redbooks:

򐂰 Rational Application Developer V6 Programming Guide, SG24-6449

򐂰 WebSphere Version 6 Web Services Handbook Development and

Deployment, SG24-6461

5.4.1 Web development

Web developers can use the Web perspective and supporting views within

Rational Application Developer to build and edit Web resources such as servlets,

JSPs, HTML pages, style sheets and images, as well as the deployment

descriptor files.

You create and maintain Web resources in Web projects. They provide an

environment that enables you to perform activities such as link-checking,

building, testing, and publishing. Within a Web project, Web resources can be

treated as a portable, cohesive unit.

Web projects can be static or dynamic. Static Web projects are comprised solely

of static resources, which can be served by a traditional HTTP server (HTML

files, images, and so on), and are useful for when you do not have to program

any business logic. J2EE Web projects, on the other hand, can deliver dynamic

content as well, which gives them the ability to define Web applications.

Wizards provide the means to create Web projects and the artifacts that go in

them. These wizards include:

򐂰 HTML File wizard

򐂰 JSP File wizard

򐂰 Faces JSP File wizard

򐂰 Page Template File wizard

򐂰 JavaScript™ File wizard

90 Patterns: Implementing Self-Service in an SOA Environment

򐂰 CSS File wizard

򐂰 Image File wizard

Web perspective

The Web perspective is designed for Web application development. It contains a

default set of views, wizards, and toolbar icons that are often used by Web

developers.

Page Designer

The Page Designer is the primary editor for developing HTML, XHTML, JSPs,

and Faces JSP source code. It has three representations of the page, including

Design, Source, and Preview. The Design tab provides a WYSIWYG

environment to visual design the contents of the page. As its name implies, the

Source tab provides access to the page source code. The Preview tab shows

what the page would like if displayed in a Web browser.

Web Site Designer

The Web Site Designer is provided to simplify and speed up the creation of the

Web site navigation and creation of HTML and JSP pages. You can view the

Web site in a Navigation view to add new pages, delete pages and move pages

in the site. The Web Site Designer is especially suited for building pages that use

a page template.

The Web Site Designer is used to create the structure for your application in

much the same way you would create a book outline to serve as the basis for

writing a book. You use the Web Site Designer to visually lay out the flow of the

application, rearranging the elements (JSPs, HTML pages) until it fits your

needs. Then you continue by creating pages based on this design.

As you build your Web site design, the information is stored so that navigation

links and site maps can be generated automatically. This means that when the

structure of a site changes, for example, when a new page is added, the

navigation links are automatically regenerated to reflect the new Web site

structure.

Struts

Struts development can take advantage of the Web development features

available. In addition, Rational Application Developer provides the following

support for Struts-based Web applications:

򐂰 A Web project can be configured for Struts. This adds the Struts runtime and

dependent JARs, tag libraries, and action servlet to the project, and creates

skeleton Struts configuration and application resources files. Rational

Application Developer provides support for Struts 1.1, selectable when setting