With the release of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, Java-based Web application servers are gaining in popularity. Although application servers have been around for a few years, they forced programmers to be tied to a proprietary API. Support of J2EE by application server vendo...

A tip window (also known as a tool tip window) is a small popup window that displays a single line of descriptive text. Tip windows are usually displayed over toolbar buttons to provide textual help about a toolbar button's functionality. The tip window control is available for Swing c...

In the last couple of years Sun has introduced a number of APIs targeted toward enterprise application development. One of the most exciting of these is the Java Message Service, or JMS. The JMS API is designed to do for messaging in the enterprise what JNDI does for naming and directo...

This month the Java platform segues into the new millennium. These are very exciting times; 1999 was a crucial year in the acceptance of Java in the enterprise as one of the key drivers of e-business. It's ironic that applets ­ the components of Java that helped propel it into the main...

Java programs can use the JDBC API to access relational databases, thereby cleanly separating the database system from the application. This approach holds the promise of cross-database portability, i.e., "write once, run on any database." In practice, several stumbling block...

There are several books and articles out there on dynamic-content generation technologies such as CGI, NSAPI, server-parsed HTML, server-side JavaScript, Active Server Pages and ColdFusion. Recently, Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs) have emerged as a very popular technology an...

Rumor, they say, is a great traveler – if developers were in any doubt about this, they need only monitor the worldwide rumor-mill surrounding the rivalry between Sun and Microsoft…

Sun Leads Industry Cavalry Charge to 'Liberate' the Internet from Microsoft

Is the writing on the wall for Open Source? This is an i-technology tale involving Sun's J2EE specifications, a well-respected Californian software company, and the inflamed passions of the international OSS (open source software) community.

Full text of JDJ'S exclusive interview with Lutris's foremost critic, George C. Hawkins. 'Their behavior is a complete slap in the face to all those in the user community' says Hawkins.

One of the great things about the JavaBeans specification is the flexibility it affords component developers in how they package their beans. As a bean developer, all you need is a class with a no-argument constructor that supports serialization and it's a bean. If you follow some simp...

As of V8.i, Oracle developers can now write stored procedures, functions, packages and triggers in Java instead of PL/SQL (Oracle's proprietary procedural language), which provides some appealing options:

The story about how the n-tier architectures evolved from the single-tier mainframe model has probably been told umpteen times by now (in fact, I retold it myself in last month's e-Java column). Nowadays the trend is to distribute functionality. Modularize everything. Components provid...

Sun, IBM, Novell, Oracle and nearly 50 other companies have proposed the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) as a solution for the development and deployment of e-business applications. What is J2EE? What does it offer to developers and users of e-business applications? This art...

This is the fourth in a series of articles focused on using Java and ColdFusion technologies to develop an Online Ticket Store application. As JDJ's September issue had an XML focus, we went with the flow and discussed data formatting aspects of our store and developed XML objects to p...

Today developers are creating a full spectrum of Internet applications and systems ranging from enterprise servers to handheld devices that manifest a number of unique requirements. Although these applications and systems are commonly written in Java, they have different footprint requ...

How can Java classes be used as scriptable components? DCOM, like CORBA, provides both static and dynamic invocation of objects. DCOM uses type library to provide metadata to do the dynamic invocation and introspection similar to CORBA's interface repository or Java's introspection mec...

In the world of distributed computing, the industry has latched on to another snazzy, buzzword-compliant, omnipotent entity, the Application Server, also known affectionately as the App Server. Here's the sales pitch. You want a robust system? Fault tolerance? Load balancing? Multithre...

E-mail functionality is an important system requirement in areas such as e-commerce, customer care, work-flow management and unified messaging. In addition, some application architectures may need to support not only standard mail protocols but also proprietary ones. If you're charged ...

The conventional way to present up-to-date information is to keep it on your Web site or a Web site you have some access to or control over so you can modify the information as needed. This article describes a way to create newsfeeds using Java applets so that the applet can be embedde...

I'd like to start this month's article with some of my impressions of JavaOne '99. Last year was far more exciting with promises of new magic kits and potions handed out in abundance. This year there was a definite touch of reality in the air with less sleight of hand and more live rab...

JavaMail is a set of abstract classes that create a framework for sending, receiving and handling e-mail, along with implementations of those classes. The package Sun provides contains implementations of IMAP and SMTP, allowing you to get started immediately on sending and receiving ma...

Today the technical media talks a great deal about the Java platform and its importance in creating a ubiquitous Internet execution environment. While most of us have bought into this concept, other technologies that are emerging rapidly promise to smooth out the road to the computing ...

Tango 2000 is a singularly powerful and easy-to-use tool for creating dynamic, intelligent Web sites that are integrated with popular database systems. Unlike other application servers that take a simplistic "mail-merge" or page-centric approach to page generation, Tango 2000...

A year ago developers were just learning that XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Six months ago CIOs started taking an interest in XML and smart developers started buying "Introduction to XML" books. Now "XML for Managers" books are becoming popular and it ...

A few months ago, at JavaOne, I discussed the possibility of starting an XML publication with the folks at SYS-CON Publications. Two questions came up: "Is it as big as Java?" and "Are there any real products out there?" Both are valid.

This is the third in a series of articles focused on using Java and ColdFusion technologies to develop an Online Ticket Store application. In the July issue of JDJ we went through the ticket reservation system for our online store. We took a look at how the actual protocol used for com...

Creating software can be considered an art form, requiring all of the characteristics associated with an artist, such as creative style. Most artists, however, aren't required to modify their creations after the work has been purchased. Software, on the other hand, needs to be maintain...

Where were you in mid-June 1999, between the 15th and the 18th? I know where at least 20,000 of you were: Moscone Center, San Francisco.

In the CORBA-based, service broker framework, the data that's required and shared among various heterogeneous systems is coordinated in a synchronized manner by a server process, yet maintained locally by each participating system.

JavaBeans has been at the center of many new paradigms and technologies that have emerged since its inception. Among emerging technologies, Enterprise JavaBeans has generated tremendous interest in the business computing community. However, a common misconception is that an Enterprise ...

Developing distributed components with Java and DCOM (distributed component object model) simplifies developing distributed applications. If you know CORBA or RMI, DCOM is easy to learn. Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine makes developing COM and DCOM components painless.

I've spent over a decade working with Oracle technology to develop and deploy applications. In the process I've developed an area of expertise: the Oracle PL/SQL language.

Last week a friend of mine who lives in Hong Kong was telling me how advanced the business environment is there. Folks that have Internet access actually use the business facilities the Internet offers. For example, people use the Internet for their regular grocery shopping. They place...

This is the second in a series of articles focused on using some of the prominent Internet and Java technologies to develop a Ticket Store application. In the last issue of JDJ we defined the APIs and technologies and the network topology that would be used to develop the Ticket Store....

The assignment was enough to make any neophyte Java developer bolt for the door: to provide a remote method for use by an applet that invokes a native method that wraps a function in an existing legacy library. Mentally calculating the odds of making it to the parking lot, I discarded ...

In last month's e-Java we discussed the technologies and APIs offered by the Java platform that play specific roles in e-commerce solutions for the enterprise. We also took a high-level glance at how they fit in an n-tier commerce application. Java provides substantial support for e-co...

Multiplatform code isn't a new occurrence or concept in software development. C and even C++ are cross-platform languages if you only use the standard libraries and refrain from using the platform-specific options offered by your compiler vendor. A recompile is required, but the source...

In early 1998, Bruce Scott, one of the cofounders of both Oracle Corporation and Gupta Technology, opened the doors of his fourth start-up company. With this one, PointBase, Scott returned to his database roots with a simple but ambitious business plan: develop the next generation of d...

How do I disable a Frame's Minimize and Maximize buttons? How do I obtain the amount of a drive's free disk space? How do I retrieve the window handle of a Java Frame? How can I read the label of a disk drive? These and other similar questions are quite prevalent on the Java Usenet new...