J2EE FAQs

Question: What is J2EE?
Answer: J2EE Stands for Java 2 Enterprise Edition. J2EE is an environment for developing and deploying enterprise applications. J2EE specification is defined by Sun Microsystems Inc. The J2EE platform is one of the best platform for the development and deployment of enterprise applications. The J2EE platform is consists of a set of services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and protocols, which provides the functionality necessary for developing multi-tiered, web-based applications. You can download the J2EE SDK and development tools from http://java.sun.com/.

Question: What do you understand by a J2EE module?
Answer: A J2EE module is a software unit that consists of one or more J2EE components of the same container type along with one deployment descriptor of that type. J2EE specification defines four types of modules:
a) EJB
b) Web
c) application client and
d) resource adapter

In the J2EE applications modules can be deployed as stand-alone units. Modules can also be assembled into J2EE applications.

Question: Tell me something about J2EE component?
Answer: J2EE component is a self-contained functional software unit supported by a container and configurable at deployment time. The J2EE specification defines the following J2EE components:
• Application clients and applets are components that run on the client.
• Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology components are Web components that run on the server.
• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components (enterprise beans) are business components that run on the server. J2EE components are written in the Java programming language and are compiled in the same way as any program in the language. The difference between J2EE components and "standard" Java classes is that J2EE components are assembled into a J2EE application, verified to be well formed and in compliance with the J2EE specification, and deployed to production, where they are run and managed by the J2EE server or client container.
Source: J2EE v1.4 Glossary

Question: What are the contents of web module?
Answer: A web module may contain:
a) JSP files
b) Java classes
c) gif and html files and
d) web component deployment descriptors

Question: Differentiate between .ear, .jar and .war files.
Answer: These files are simply zipped file using java jar tool. These files are created for different purposes. Here is the description of these files:
.jar files: These files are with the .jar extenstion. The .jar files contains the libraries, resources and accessories files like property files.
.war files: These files are with the .war extension. The war file contains the web application that can be deployed on the any servlet/jsp container. The .war file contains jsp, html, javascript and other files for necessary for the development of web applications.
.ear files: The .ear file contains the EJB modules of the application.

Question: Why J2EE is suitable for the development distributed multi-tiered enterprise applications?
Answer: The J2EE platform consists of multi-tiered distributed application model. J2EE applications allows the developers to design and implement the business logic into components according to business requirement. J2EE architecture allows the development of multi-tired applications and the developed applications can be installed on different machines depending on the tier in the multi-tiered J2EE environment . The J2EE application parts are:

a) Client-tier components run on the client machine.
b) Web-tier components run on the J2EE server.
c) Business-tier components run on the J2EE server and the
d) Enterprise information system (EIS)-tier software runs on the EIS servers

Question: Why do understand by a container?
Answer: Normally, thin-client multi-tiered applications are hard to write because they involve many lines of intricate code to handle transaction and state management, multithreading, resource pooling, and other complex low-level details. The component-based and platform-independent J2EE architecture makes J2EE applications easy to write because business logic is organized into reusable components. In addition, the J2EE server provides underlying services in the form of a container for every component type. Because you do not have to develop these services yourself, you are free to concentrate on solving the business problem at hand (Source: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.3/docs/tutorial/doc/Overview4.html ).

In short containers are the interface between a component and the low-level platform specific functionality that supports the component. The application like Web, enterprise bean, or application client component must be assembled and deployed on the J2EE container before executing.

Question: What are the services provided by a container?
Answer: The services provided by container are as follows:
a) Transaction management for the bean
b) Security for the bean
c) Persistence of the bean
d) Remote access to the bean
e) Lifecycle management of the bean
f) Database-connection pooling
g) Instance pooling for the bean

Question: What are types of J2EE clients?
Answer: J2EE clients are the software that access the services components installed on the J2EE container. Following are the J2EE clients:
a) Applets
b) Java-Web Start clients
c) Wireless clients
d) Web applications

Question: What is Deployment Descriptor?
Answer: A deployment descriptor is simply an XML(Extensible Markup Language) file with the extension of .xml. Deployment descriptor describes the component deployment settings. Application servers reads the deployment descriptor to deploy the components contained in the deployment unit. For example ejb-jar.xml file is used to describe the setting of the EJBs.

Question: What is J2EE Connector architecture?
Answer: J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) is a Java-based technology solution for connecting application servers and enterprise information systems (EIS) as part of enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions. While JDBC is specifically used to connect Java EE applications to databases, JCA is a more generic architecture for connection to legacy systems (including databases). JCA was developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 16 (JCA 1.0) and JSR 112 (JCA 1.5). As of 2006, the current version of JCA is version 1.5. The J2EE Connector API is used by J2EE tools developers and system integrators to create resource adapters. Home page for J2EE Connector architecture http://java.sun.com/j2ee/connector/.