Foreword to the First Edition

Bill Shannon

The NetBeans IDE was the first free and open source tool to provide support for building J2EE web tier applications five years ago. With the 4.1 release, the NetBeans IDE has advanced even further to include full support for building complete J2EE 1.4 applications, including Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components, as well as supporting the key new capability of J2EE 1.4web services.

EJB components have been a core strength of the J2EE platform from the beginning. The NetBeans IDE now provides support for creating and using EJB components. Developers can create EJB session beans to contain their transactional business logic, and use message-driven beans to create event-driven applications. Developers can also use the powerful database support in the NetBeans IDE to map existing database tables to EJB entity beans, or to create new object models using EJB entity beans and map them to database tables.

The use of web services in the enterprise is expanding rapidly and forms the core of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). A developer using the NetBeans IDE can easily create simple Java applications that are exposed as web services for others to use, without knowing all the details of web services protocols, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), etc. Similarly, given a WSDL description of a web service developed by someone else, a developer using the NetBeans IDE can easily make use of that web service in his or her J2EE application. Web services are incredibly important to enterprise applications, and the NetBeans IDE makes web services easy!

Deployment descriptors are key to enabling portable enterprise applications, but they can get in the way when developing simple applications. The NetBeans IDE removes the burden of dealing with deployment descriptors by completely managing them for the developer. Developers never need to think about deployment descriptors when developing and deploying J2EE applications. The NetBeans IDE will automatically and transparently create and manage the deployment descriptors that are needed for the J2EE application being developed.

The NetBeans IDE, when used with the J2EE SDK, provides a complete environment for creating, packaging, deploying, and debugging J2EE applications. The NetBeans IDE uses the J2EE application server from the J2EE SDK, and completely manages the application server for the developer. With a single click the NetBeans IDE will start the application server, deploy the application, and run the application in a mode ready for debugging!

The complexity of managing deployment descriptors is one of the problems recognized by J2EE 5.0, whose major goal is to significantly simplify development of J2EE applications. Version 4.1 of the NetBeans IDE delivers much of that simplification today. Future versions of the NetBeans IDE will further simplify J2EE application development, taking advantage of the improvements in J2EE 5.0.

The success of the J2EE platform is greatly enhanced by tools such as the NetBeans IDE, and J2EE developers will find that they're even more successful with the NetBeans IDE. We look forward to working with the NetBeans IDE team to provide great tools support to deliver on the promise of J2EE 5.0!

Bill Shannon

May 2005