Want to become J2EE developer
Hi,
I am a Sun certified java programmer. In my current job i am using core java/c++ but no J2EE stuff. I have around 6 years of experience in telecom industry . It is my keen desire to become a J2EE developer but i don't understand which direction i should choose JSP/Servlet or EJB. I have no web programming experience. Can anybody help me to find the right direction to achieve my goal ? I will highly appreciate your help and support.
Thanks & Regards
Upabbi
[493 byte] By [
upabbia] at [2007-10-3 9:22:14]
dont do it. its a bad idea
JSPs and Servlets are more common than EJBs in my experience.
Start with JSP using JSTL and JDBC. You can go a very long way indeed with those. You don't need EJBs.When you find you need EJBs, I'd recommend that you investigate Spring first. You STILL won't need EJBs.%
> Start with JSP using JSTL and JDBC. You can go a
> very long way indeed with those. You don't need
> EJBs.
>
> When you find you need EJBs, I'd recommend that you
> investigate Spring first. You STILL won't need
> EJBs.
>
> %
So, Duffy - I know you're a big Spring proponent, and I've not messed with it at all, but I've a question and maybe you can help. I like the ability of a J2EE app server to expose my business logic to remote Swing clients in a very easy to deal with way. Can Spring do this? Can I grab a jar file with the stubs and use that to enable my remote Swing client to hit my server-side business logic as RPC or do I have to go to something more web-services like to make that happen?
Thanks for replying back.What is the scope of EJB as compare to JSP/Servlet from job point of view ? Will my past experience help in getting a job of J2EE developer ?upabbi
Servlet/JSP/JDBC is by far the most common and versatile.
EJB is very specialized and limited, and to the best of my knowledge only used in big investment banks and a handful of huge companies. ('A handful' is here comparatively speaking, not literally.)
EJB is Enterprise, after all. Enterprise normally means that it solves problems that only exist if you have more than a million employees and 500 incompatible IT platforms.
Enterprise also means that it's massively expensive, and noone outside the enterprise would touch it with a 10-foot poker.
On the upside, EJBs may pay better (more specialized and big companies have tons of money). On the downside, EJB skill is fairly useless anywhere else, and on its own it's too narrow to base a career on. IMHO.
I would suggest that you first find the kind of job you want, and then check what skills you need to get one of those.
But webapp development is a fairly general skill that can come in handy in many situations. I would suggest starting with servlet/JSP/JDBC (or Ruby on Rails :) whether or not you go for the EJB part.
Thanks for your help.I have one more question, do i need to get another java certification to become a web developer because i don't have any experience in web development.ThanksUpabbi
Depends on who you want to work for. Certification doesn't mean to much to most people. You can develop web apps without it.
You can get a web developer certification if you want to. Whether it is actually useful varies a lot. (I have been working with Java webapps, and a bit EJB, over the past 7 years or so, and nobody I know has certification.)
I guess the honest answer is that I don't know. You could try finding a couple of companies you would like to work for, then call them and ask.
> Servlet/JSP/JDBC is by far the most common and
> versatile.
> EJB is very specialized and limited, and to the best
> of my knowledge only used in big investment banks and
> a handful of huge companies. ('A handful' is here
> comparatively speaking, not literally.)
>
Not really. Most successful EJB projects are executed in those sectors (and in companies supplying them).
Many more companies though try and fail, often repeatedly.
Everyone wants to be "enterprise", and to many that means EJB (though it might be declining).
There's a massive misunderstanding here that EJB is all there is to J2EE, that everything else is not J2EE at all.
> EJB is Enterprise, after all. Enterprise normally
> means that it solves problems that only exist if you
> have more than a million employees and 500
> incompatible IT platforms.
Nope. Anything corporate can be called "enterprise". In fact most really large companies have pretty well consolidated their IT efforts on a few platforms by now, with at most some others hanging on for dear life as legacy applications inherited from companies they acquired over time that haven't been replaced (yet).
> Enterprise also means that it's massively expensive,
> and noone outside the enterprise would touch it with
> a 10-foot poker.
>
We're a rather small company (70ish people here, some 350 worldwide).
We're running several hundred servers, dozens of them with heavy EJB clusters.
> On the upside, EJBs may pay better (more specialized
> and big companies have tons of money). On the
> downside, EJB skill is fairly useless anywhere else,
> and on its own it's too narrow to base a career on.
> IMHO.
>
It does however give you a foot in the door in a lot of places, even if you may end up burrying EJB projects and redoing them using other things :)
> I would suggest that you first find the kind of job
> you want, and then check what skills you need to get
> one of those.
>
That IS good advise.
> But webapp development is a fairly general skill that
> can come in handy in many situations. I would suggest
> starting with servlet/JSP/JDBC (or Ruby on Rails :)
> whether or not you go for the EJB part.
Certainly, though specialising on it in this environment of offshoring is dangerous precisely because it is a general skill and can thus be easily moved to say Bangladesh or Bulgaria.
> . It is my keen desire to become a J2EE developer but
> i don't understand which direction i should choose
> JSP/Servlet or EJB.
Understand first that enterprise applications have different layers, and JSP/servlets only address the front layer, not a the business logic or backend.
It is a mistake to assume that you'll only need to learn JSP/ servlets (or only EJB) to do J2EE.
You'll need familiarity with both and other technologies....
Going through the [url=http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/]Sun J2EE tutorial[/url] would give you an idea of what awaits you.
> Servlet/JSP/JDBC is by far the most common and
> versatile.
> EJB is very specialized and limited, and to the best
> of my knowledge only used in big investment banks and
> a handful of huge companies. ('A handful' is here
> comparatively speaking, not literally.)
EJBs are used in many, many places, and are much more common than you think.
In particular, I've contracted with many small to middle-sized companies that were using EJB.
Bear in mind that that particular technology was "hot" towards the end of the 90s, where it was at the top of its hype cycle.
> Bear in mind that that particular technology was> "hot" towards the end of the 90s, where it was at the> top of its hype cycle.End of 90s? I thought it was in the beginning of 2000.
> > Bear in mind that that particular technology was
> > "hot" towards the end of the 90s, where it was at
> the
> > top of its hype cycle.
>
> End of 90s? I thought it was in the beginning of 2000.
I worked with EJB 1.0 end of 1998. At that time, the technology was already heavily hyped.
I did a contract for another company in 1999 which was moving from EJB 1.0 to EJB 1.1...
> I did a contract for another company in 1999 which
> was moving from EJB 1.0 to EJB 1.1...
That was fast considering that the draft for 1.1 was released in may -99, and I think that the specification then was released in june. I don't know when the application server started to support EJB 1.1, but I would still say that EJB had a great hype in early 2000. But we in Sweden can also be late adaptors :)
kajbja at 2007-7-21 12:46:11 >
> > I did a contract for another company in 1999 which
> > was moving from EJB 1.0 to EJB 1.1...
>
> That was fast considering that the draft for 1.1 was
> released in may -99, and I think that the
> specification then was released in june. I don't
> know when the application server started to support
> EJB 1.1, but I would still say that EJB had a great
> hype in early 2000. But we in Sweden can also be late
> adaptors :)
In oct 1999, I was working for a financial company in EJB 1.0-1.1 ( in the USA). WebLogic was not the only player at that time, there were other app servers like Netscape App server (NAS - later called iPlanet ) and Websphere.
If I remember correctly, all those app servers were implementing EJB 1.1 by late 1999, although in a pretty awkward way.
We developed on WebLogic, which was a relatively better product, already.
I have a vague impression that EJB may be on the way out. Not necessarily in the sense that existing customers stop using it, but in the sense that the market seems pretty much saturated.
It should me mentioned that in my line of work there's not a whole lot of EJB around, the only case I know personally was a customer in 2000 - a 30k employees bank - that was planning to move from CORBA to EJB.
So perhaps I'm basing my impression on the reduced level of hype.
What do you think?
> We're a rather small company (70ish people here, some
> 350 worldwide).
> We're running several hundred servers, dozens of them
> with heavy EJB clusters.
May I ask what your company does? Do you need the transaction capabilities, CORBA connection to a mainframe, or something else? Or to put it differently, which aspects of EJBs are useful for your company?
> > But webapp development is a fairly general skill
> that
> > can come in handy in many situations. I would
> suggest
> > starting with servlet/JSP/JDBC (or Ruby on Rails
> :)
> > whether or not you go for the EJB part.
>
> Certainly, though specialising on it in this
> environment of offshoring is dangerous precisely
> because it is a general skill and can thus be easily
> moved to say Bangladesh or Bulgaria.
I agree with that. I wouldn't specialize on Java webapps.
I was thinking webapps more along the lines of 'general knowledge', with some form of specialization thrown in on the side.
> I have a vague impression that EJB may be on the way
> out. Not necessarily in the sense that existing
> customers stop using it, but in the sense that the
> market seems pretty much saturated.
> ...
> So perhaps I'm basing my impression on the reduced
> level of hype.
There is a significant amount of legacy code which was written while the level of expectation of the technology was high, and that code needs to be maintained.
As for new developments, it is true that non-EJB alternatives like IoC containers have taken a big chunk of the market, but it is also true that there is another wave of next generation EJB development with EJB 3.0 ([url=http://www.jboss.com/products/seam]JBoss Seam[/url]).
So I wouldn't say that EJB is on the way out. Just not yet.
EJB isn't on the way out, it's just moved a bit out of the hype phase (which is a good thing as that means less projects using it that shouldn't).
In fact you could say that EJB has finally come of age, reached maturity.
If that means less hype and less high profile projects failing dramatically that can only be a good thing.
> Certainly, though specialising on it in this
> environment of offshoring is dangerous precisely
> because it is a general skill and can thus be easily
> moved to say Bangladesh or Bulgaria.
I would like to ask jwenting a question what are the foundations for making relationship between these two countries? Because at least based on statistics Bulgaria is far more advanced than Bangladesh compared by many factors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria
If this is based on experience then it could be reasonable, but I see no other point for comparing an eastern European country to a country considered to be among the poorest nations in the world.
Of course I cannot be impartial and though I know we cannot be economically compared to western European countrues, I feel that Buldaria is more than just a country providing low-skill services. There are many big european companies having offices here, hiring specialists, providing them with further education when needed.
Sorry if this sounds funny. My general point was that stating something just becaus some journalists said something is not enough. Things must be backed up with real facts.
Mike
> I would like to ask jwenting a question what
> are the foundations for making relationship between
> these two countries?
Both are possible destinations for outsourcing. That was his sole point. Your explanation about many IT companies having development offices in Bulgaria proves that point. I don't see any other point or comparison he's making.
If you mean that there are skille dpeople in Bulgaria: well, I'd assume the same about Bangladesh. And pure coding is moved to Eastern Europe because of the lower costs. There may be centers that also provide wholesome development, but he didn't deny that. He just said "J2EE skills will be offshored". And he's correct.
Of coursse, if this was the point I agree, but it is the same if you have an office in Poland, Czech Republic, i.e. former eastern block.
If what he meant was 'target for outsorcing' it is fine. I may have interpereted the words incorrectly as 'unreliable but cheap service'.
Mike
> Of coursse, if this was the point I agree, but it is
> the same if you have an office in Poland, Czech
> Republic, i.e. former eastern block.
Correct. He said "to say...", which I understand as being similar to "for example".
> If what he meant was 'target for outsorcing' it is
> fine. I may have interpereted the words incorrectly
> as 'unreliable but cheap service'.
Even if, be thankful. I have to deal with unreliable and increasingly expensive services from other countries. ;)
>Correct. He said "to say...", which I understand as being similar to "for example".
Then I was wrong.
>Even if, be thankful. I have to deal with unreliable and increasingly expensive services from other countries. ;)
Feel welcome to come here, sometimes we provide those services too;) And the price is constantly increasing.
Mike
> Feel welcome to come here, sometimes we provide those> services too;) And the price is constantly> increasing.Maybe I come for a visit one day. Recently I've met a lot of people who went to Bulgaria for vacation. As for increasing prices: I'm used to a
