J2EE: Back to Basics

By the very nature of their operations, large and medium-sized businesses have complex requirements. And when the time comes to port legacy systems to today’s business demands or to build entirely new functionality, IT planners in the know tend to think in terms of .NET, Oracle, SAP or Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

The great appeal of J2EE rests on its open source heritage, pretty much an anti-establishment way to get even complex enterprise applications developed without license fees or kowtowing to “Big Brother”. Far from being scanty, the Java programming language defined basic objects, as well as the needed higher-level classes to handle security, networking, XML parsing and GUI crafting. And to this, as most users have known since 2003, the Enterprise Edition added the ability to develop and run very large, scalable, multi-tiered and increasingly robust networked applications.