J2EE Blueprints Unrolled

How does Blueprints achieve its goals?

The program helps intermediate developers

• understand various components and features of the J2EE platform,
• put together small but complete applications while describing intricacies and design guidelines,
• learn the finer details of the technologies through white papers, design discussions, questions and answers, and
• look at sample code in the form of small applications that show the implementation of specific technologies.

The program helps advanced developers by

• recommending application programming models,
• publishing architectural recommendations,
• publishing sample code in the form of complete and full fledged real life applications that implement the design guidelines prescribed,
• publishing a catalog of J2EE design patterns, and
• discussing issues of portability, scalability, interoperability

The program maintains a free J2EE Blueprints web site, where we publish white papers, recommendations, and articles. Develop can ask questions through the site, and we expect to generate discussions between them and the J2EE Blueprints team members.

Since the site's first release, the program has updated the sample code and published a catalog of J2EE design patterns. The site includes a sample application, the Java Pet Store Demo, which we've refined to demonstrate the design guidelines. We've also added modules that show interaction of applications like Sun's Star Office and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with the J2EE platform.

On the site, we show a sample MIS application by introducing an administrator's view of the Java Pet Store. We also introduce the the concept of componentization, and showcase better packaging methods, as well as better ways of exception handling across application tiers

The J2EE Blueprints program also publishes books. In June 2000, we published Designing Enterprise Applications with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. The book explains an application programming model and best practice guidelines based on J2EE Reference Implementation version 1.2.1. This book, along with the Java Pet Store Demo sample code, are available at the web site.

Future Plans

We plan to build a section for intermediate developers showing them how to build and deploy complete applications on the J2EE platform following the design guidelines. This effort will also help intermediate developers with an introduction to J2EE design patterns

Other plans include:

• Release updates to the current sample application with the latest J2EE platform features.
• Showcase UML modeling of J2EE applications.
• Publish white papers on various topics related to the platform and the technologies.
• Update the Questions and Answers section.
• Explore developing other complete real world applications, in addition to the existing Java Pet Store demo.
• Include more interoperability features.

We believe that J2EE Blueprints offers an excellent guide -- complete with sample code -- to understanding, architecting and building better J2EE applications. Since the future of J2EE Blueprints program is driven by the needs of the J2EE application development community, its success depends on the value it provides to that community.

Vijay Ramachandran is a Member of Sun Microsystem's J2EE Blueprints Team.

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