Chapter 1: Introduction

Welcome

Welcome to Application Interoperability: Microsoft .NET and J2EE. This book gives you the best information available about how to ensure that enterprise applications based on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) work in harmony with components based on Microsoft .NET and vice versa. If you are developer with responsibility for implementing interoperability between these two platforms in an enterprise environment, this book is for you.

The information in this book is both practical and prescriptive. Rather than discuss every possible interoperability technique in detail, it focuses on the three most likely scenarios and shows how to solve those specific challenges. If you want more in depth discussions of the concepts behind this material, refer to resources such as Simon Guest’s book Microsoft .NET and J2EE Interoperability Toolkit, Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-1922-0.

The focus is very much on enterprise or data center environments, where scalability, throughput, reliability, and security are the main operating requirements. It is not intended as a manual for how to write .NET or J2EE applications, but how to get these components to work together while minimizing any compromises to operational effectiveness.

This book includes material from consultants working in the field and from early implementers of interoperability solutions. It contains current best practices for running Microsoft .NET applications alongside J2EE components. We hope you enjoy reading this book and that you find the material contained in it helpful, informative, and interesting.