3.2 Tools

Tools are very important to the EJB application environment. The container provider or other third-party vendors may provide tools to support the EJB application development, assembly, integration, and deployment tasks, simplifying everyone's job. The diversity of the EJB environment leaves room for a variety of tools, such as interactive development environment (IDE) tools, data access tools, Unified Modeling Language (UML) tools, Web page authoring tools, non-EJB application integration tools, deployment tools, and container and server management tools.

  • IDE tools An IDE tool supports the EJB architecture and simplifies enterprise bean development. In an EJB-aware IDE, the bean developer does not need to learn the low-level details of the EJB specification. For example, a good IDE can generate template code for the enterprise bean class and its associated home and component interfaces. An IDE can also simplify the debugging process and provide an easy-to-use environment for application assembly.

  • Data access tools Most enterprise beans need to access data in databases. Good data access tools can greatly simplify the bean developer's efforts. The most important are data access tools that implement the data access for entity bean container-managed persistence. See the section Container-Managed Persistence on page 178 in Chapter 7.

  • UML tools A UML modeling tool facilitates the high-level design of enterprise applications, providing a graphical view of the business entities and processes and their interactions. An EJB-aware modeling tool allows architects and bean developers to specify the mapping of a design model to a set of enterprise beans that implement the model, and it may generate the skeleton code for the enterprise beans.

  • Web page authoring tools Most recent enterprise applications have a Web component, which means that they display Web pages to their users. Web pages can be complex to design and develop, and these tools simplify this task. EJB-aware Web page authoring allows the components implementing the Web pages to invoke enterprise beans.

  • Non-EJB application integration tools Many enterprise bean applications will be added to environments that include preexisting enterprise information systems, such as ERP systems, mainframe applications, and so forth. It is essential that enterprises be able to integrate their existing systems with these newly developed enterprise bean applications. Although such integration can be a major task, it can be made easier with tools that address specific legacy systems. The J2EE platform includes the J2EE Connector specification, which simplifies and standardizes the task of integrating EJB and non-EJB applications.

  • Deployment tools The container vendors typically bundle deployment tools with their EJB products. Vendors other than the container provider may provide deployment tools. If so, these tools are typically specific for a particular container. Deployment tools help with such tasks as processing the information in the XML deployment descriptor file and resolving the application's dependencies on the operational environment.

  • Container and server management tools These tools monitor the state of the EJB container within the system. They also monitor the state of deployed beans.



Applying Enterprise Javabeans
Applying Enterprise JavaBeans(TM): Component-Based Development for the J2EE(TM) Platform
ISBN: 0201702673
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 110

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