Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies (2nd Edition) [Hardcover]

Deepak Alur (Author), Dan Malks (Author), John Crupi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0131422464 | ISBN-13: 978-0131422469 | Edition: 2

Completely updated and revised, this is the second edition of the best-seller Core J2EE Patterns. J2EE has become the platform of choice for Web-centric distributed enterprise application development. Expert consultants from the Sun Java Center have identified powerful J2EE design patterns that lead to applications with superior performance, scalability, and robustness. This book brings those design patterns together, sharing Sun's best practices for development with Java Server Pages (JSP), Servlets, EJB, and other J2EE technologies. It presents a complete catalog of J2EE patterns encapsulating proven and recommended designs for common J2EE-related problems, organized into presentation tier, business tier and integration tier solutions. This second edition introduces new patterns, new refactorings, new patterns for using XML as well as new patterns for J2EE Web services. The authors also identify bad practices to be avoided. Finally, it presents an end-to-end multi-tier case study covering every stage of enterprise development.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The Java landscape is littered with libraries, tools, and specifications. What's been lacking is the expertise to fuse them into solutions to real-world problems. These patterns are the intellectual mortar for J2EE software construction."
--John Vlissides, co-author of Design Patterns, the "Gang of Four" book

"The authors of Core J2EE Patterns have harvested a really useful set of patterns. They show how to apply these patterns and how to refactor your system to take advantage of them. It's just like having a team of experts sitting at your side."
--Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Rational Software Corporation

"The authors do a great job describing useful patterns for application architectures. The section on refactoring is worth the price of the entire book!"
--Craig McClanahan, Struts Lead Architect and Specification Lead for JavaServer Faces

"Core J2EE Patterns is the gospel that should accompany every J2EE application server...Built upon the in-the-trenches expertise of its veteran architect authors, this volume unites the platform's many technologies and APIs in a way that application architects can use, and provides insightful answers to the whys, whens, and hows of the J2EE platform."
--Sean Neville, JRun Enterprise Architect, Macromedia

Developers often confuse learning the technology with learning to design with the technology. In this book, senior architects from the Sun Java Center share their cumulative design experience on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology.

The primary focus of the book is on patterns, best practices, design strategies, and proven solutions using the key J2EE technologies including JavaServer Pages(TM) (JSP(TM)), Servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans(TM) (EJB(TM)), and Java(TM) Message Service (JMS) APIs. The J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns and numerous strategies is presented to document and promote best practices for these technologies.

Core J2EE Patterns, Second Edition offers the following:

• J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns--fully revised and newly documented patterns providing proven solutions for enterprise applications
• Design strategies for the presentation tier, business tier, and integration tier
• Coverage of servlets, JSP, EJB, JMS, and Web Services
• J2EE technology bad practices
• Refactorings to improve existing designs using patterns
• Fully illustrated with UML diagrams
• Extensive sample code for patterns, strategies, and refactorings

About the Author

DEEPAK ALUR is an Enterprise Java Architect with the Sun Java Center with over 14 years of experience. He remains focused on architecture, design, and implementation of large-scale Enterprise applications using Object-Oriented technologies, patterns, and Java and J2EE technologies.

JOHN CRUPI is a Distinguished Engineer and the Chief Java Architect of the Sun Java Center. He has over 17 years of experience in distributed object computing and remains focused on creating reusable, scalable J2EE architectures and bringing patterns to the next level.

DAN MALKS is a Principal Engineer with the Sun Java Center. He has over 16 years of experience and focuses on Object-Oriented technologies and their application within Enterprise and Web Services-based projects. His publications include industry periodicals and books on Java and J2EE technologies and patterns.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (May 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131422464
• ISBN-13: 978-0131422469
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not only applicable to J2EE applications, October 27, 2003

By 

Ray Ye (Dallas, Tx) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

We software developers often get ourselves buried in learning new technologies, particularly in J2EE, there are so many things to learn, e.g., JSP, Servlet, JAAS, JSSE, JMS, JavaMail, EJB, JDBC, JDO, etc. just to name a few. With these overwhelming technologies, we often overlook the issue how to "design" "good" systems using these technologies. Knowing the technology itself is one thing, and knowing how to design with it well is another. Technologies are always advancing, it is really the design technique that is the essence or hard-core skill that a software developer should obtain.

Patterns, are such essences. They are best practices from experiences on how to design the systems/components at different levels. And Core J2EE Patterns are such collections in the J2EE context.

Even though the authors claim that these patterns are used under the J2EE context, I see most of them also application in a more general context. For example,

If a remote service is to be provided, it is good practice to use Session Facade (or Remote Facade), and it will provide service by delegating to the Application Service (or Service Layer) or Business Delegate.

To facilitate the client to access a remote service, Business Delegate can be applied to hide the remoteness, in which it will use Service Locator to look up the remote service. In this sense, Business Delegate also functions as a proxy of the remote service.

To decouple the Business Object from accessing the resources directly, Data Access Object is a good design to be applied.

To move the data between the tiers or processes, Data Transfer Object can be use.

If studying carefully, you will a lot of patterns and concepts can be applied to non-J2EE applications. And a lot of them can be traced back to the seminal work of GoF (Design Patterns). That is why I said the design skill should be essential to a developer, these techniques are correlated and inter-connected, and accumulated by experience. They are relatively stable (IMO), though the technologies are changing (rapidly).

The other good things about book, the authors not only document the best practices (patterns) of J2EE applications to learn, they also list a set of bad practices (anti-patterns) to avoid, in between, they provide a bridge, the refactoring, to go from bad to good.

Also, no pattern is an island. All patterns are related, and to form a bigger or higher level of pattern, and these higher level of patterns collaborate with each other and eventually form the whole architecture of the system, that is pattern oriented architecture. In last episode, the authors gave such an example, and they call it a micro architecture.

The authors also refer to the work of Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture(which list patterns of more general enterprise application patterns besides J2EE) to clear out some gaps between the two books, e.g., Value Object in 1st edition really means Transfer Object, which is the same pattern listed as Data Transfer Object in Fowler's book. And Value Object is just another pattern in PEAA.

The writing style is very smooth, succinct and to the point. The pattern template is classic, with the authors chose strategies for implementation variations. The examples are probably excerpt from real projects, however, there are some errors in the code, which made me doubt that these codes were ever compiled. But, hey, it is the concept that is more important :-)

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Update to an Excellent Book, August 27, 2003

By 

Scott Leberknight (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

Core Patterns begins by introducing patterns in general, then presents common J2EE AntiPatterns and proceeds to discuss the refactored solutions to these bad practices along with pointers to the relevant area of the J2EE Pattern Catalog. This allows a straight-through reading for those unfamiliar with patterns or use as a reference guide for experienced pattern users. Two years ago when the first edition of this book came out, I purchased it and read it. Immediately I recognized areas where I could improve my J2EE designs as well as a new vocabulary for describing common solutions to recurring problems.

In all J2EE applications I have developed since then I have used the patterns and refactorings presented here to great benefit. In addition, the common vocabulary allows my project teams to discuss potential designs much more quickly and unambiguously, since we understand exactly what someone has in mind when they say something like "We should use Business Delegates in our Struts Actions to access our business services, and we should use Transfer Objects to pass data between the tiers, and use Data Access Objects to access our data stores."

The Second Edition brings updates to the original patterns plus several new patterns and the concept of micro-architectures. In addition to the updated and new patterns, this edition also discusses many patterns in the context of widely-used frameworks such as Struts and JSTL. For example, the book notes that the Struts ActionServlet is a Front Controller which hands the request to the Struts RequestProcessor, which implements the new ApplicationController pattern.

Understanding and applying the patterns and refactorings is certain to make your application designs more robust, clean, and maintainable. In addition you will be able to talk about J2EE refactoring and design at a much more abstract and concise level while simultaneously being able to cover a lot more ground much more quickly since everyone will know exactly what is meant by the patterns you are discussing. Along with the GoF's Design Patterns and Fowler's Refactoring books, Core J2EE Patterns is a must-have guide that every J2EE developer and architect should own.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for J2EE architects/developers, August 11, 2003

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

There are two obvious changes between this second edition and the first edition of this book. First, some new patterns have been added mostly dealing with web services. Second, the book has been released as a hard cover book, presumably because the publisher expects this to last on your shelf as long as the original "Design Pattern" book. The new patterns dealing with web services are a welcome addition to the book although anyone who is interested in this subject will probably want more detail such as found in Paul Monday's book.

Part 1 is an introduction to design patterns and the J2EE platform followed by a catalog of design considerations, bad practices and refactorings. Developers working with poorly designed J2EE applications will find this section especially helpful.

Part 2 is the collection of the design patterns and strategies. Each pattern is described in the expected level of detail. The format will remind you of the GoF book. Since this has become the standard format for presenting design patterns this should not be a surprise. The patterns are well thought, explained clearly, and demonstrated with some good code samples. If you have the first edition you will be very impressed with the improvements made in this new edition. It appears that virtually every pattern has been reworked to make the pattern easier to understand and use.

This is the book that every J2EE architect and programmer should have on their desk. Using the strategies in this book will make your applications more robust, make you more productive, and make your code easier to understand and maintain. Anyone designing, architecting, or coding with J2EE will find this book to be extremely useful.