Articles by Jason Westra

Visual Café Enterprise Edition For WebLogic

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 07:48:00 EST

When I started working with Java, I mentioned my move to a colleague of mine, a Microsoft devotee. He wasn't willing to move to the Java platform until supporting integrated development environments (IDEs) were as powerful and easy to use as Visual Basic. Although at the time nothing in the Java world was as simple or configurable as Visual Basic, I bit the Java bullet - and the bullet tasted like VisualCafé. Originally from Symantec Corp. (www.symantec.com) but now owned by an independent company created by Warburg, Pincus and BEA Systems, VisualCafé was the closest Java IDE in the industry that could compare to VB, and it remains on the bleeding edge of support for new Java technologies. This month in EJB Home I'll discuss what to look for in an IDE that supports EJB, as well as the support for Enterprise JavaBeans development that has been integrated into the VisualCafé Enterprise Edition for WebLogic.

Convergence - BEA eWorld 2003

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 00:00:00 EST

This year's BEA eWorld 2003 show is the center of attention for BEA's product announcements and vision for the upcoming year, exciting stuff indeed. The theme for this year's conference is 'convergence.' You'll notice that this theme is likewise ingrained in the articles in this issue of WLDJ to provide continuity with the show.

WebLogic Application Security

Mon, 20 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

My house has bars on its windows. Yes, bars. I am sure at some point in the life of the 110-year-old house, they served a functional purpose. Surely, if I were a robber, I'd be more motivated to look elsewhere for my next DVD player to steal, but the bars are more decorative, just ornamental now. If I were truly concerned about security, I'd get myself a modern home security system with all the bells and whistles like motion detectors and night vision cameras. Technology has really bolstered the security for homes in the past decade.

BEA WebLogic Workshop Kick Start

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 00:00:00 EST

I learned about WebLogic Workshop in December of 2001 while interviewing BEA CTO Scott Dietzen. At the time, it was code-named Cajun and, according to Scott, the tool would revolutionize Web services and J2EE development. Cajun has since been renamed BEA WebLogic Workshop and become an integral part of BEA's strategy, which focuses on making J2EE and Web services easy for beginners as well as experienced developers.

BEA Web Services

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 00:00:00 EST

It is the dawn of a new season as BEA WebLogic Developer's Journal moves into its second year. What better way to start the new year than with a focus issue on Web services? And it's not too early to do so; as we move closer to BEA's eWorld 2003 developer conference in March, I'm sure Web services will be a hot topic.

Monsters of the J2EE Gridiron

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 00:00:00 EST

My friends arrived in town (Denver, CO - U.S.) last weekend and to their surprise, I told them I had four football (American football, that is...) tickets to the Broncos game on Sunday. That morning, we proceeded to tailgate, drink, and eat merrily; and then we entered the new 'Mile High' stadium to watch our team trounce the unwitting opponent. My mind works overtime, as my wife would say, and as I watched the game it occurred to me that I was drawing comparisons to work-related matters rather than admiring the Broncos.

Looking Back to See the Future

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

I recently upgraded a small WebLogic 6.1 application to WebLogic 7.0. The process was really quite simple. I attribute this smooth transition to the application's standard use of J2EE components and to WLS 7.0's backwards compatibility! I really only had to do a few configuration changes to get it working. In particular, the JMS store and JMS paging store are no longer allowed to have the same JDBC persistent storage prefix.

Security and JMS Coverage Are Highlights of "Bible"

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

As good as product documentation gets, there is always room for more code samples, deployment descriptor samples, and tips on how to take advantage of undocumented tools. While integrating WebLogic Server 6.1 as a product offering for my company's hosting platform, I needed examples for configuring WebLogic JDBC and JMS that the standard documentation (or lack thereof) could not provide.

Managing Complexity of J2EE

Mon, 23 Sep 2002 00:00:00 EDT

There's no question about it - J2EE applications are tough, burly pieces of software. Often they require numerous servers, communicate over various protocols, and run on software from various vendors. Let's examine a simple J2EE application in which everything, including the database, runs on one machine. In this case, the Web server and application server are a single instance of WebLogic, and the database is the one bundled with your version of WebLogic. Sounds pretty easy to manage, right? You just put your applications in the /applications directory and WebLogic deploys them for you. Database connectivity to the bundled database came out-of-the-box. Could it get any easier? Actually, it's just the opposite. It could get a lot

Good News forWebLogic

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 00:00:00 EDT

I have two newsworthy items to talk about this month. One concerns the application server market; the other pertains to a newly announced partnership in the wireless space. Each tidbit dates from July, but as editorial schedules run a bit behind the times, I'll relay them to you now.

Scalability for the Masses

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 00:00:00 EDT

If you asked me what the theme for this month's WLDJ is, I'd have to say 'performance and scalability.' I was once asked, 'What is the most scalable way to build a J2EE application?' 'Let's just find the holy grail while we're at it!' I thought. The question is quite common among J2EE developers but not an easy one to answer, even with a stack of ECPerfs up your sleeve.

Partnering for Success

Mon, 20 May 2002 00:00:00 EDT

This month WLDJ focuses on third-party integration. We cover products that integrate at different levels of the BEA e-business platform, and have guest editorials from vendors who have successfully partnered with BEA to provide closely integrated solutions on top of WebLogic Server. Speaking of partnering...I am sorry for using the term 'partner,' as I think it's overused. It seems like every technology company in existence has at least one press release about a partnership with another firm to 'take advantage of synergies,' or 'to comarket products and services that complement each other.'

Migration Strategies for WebLogic Server

Wed, 17 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

'Migration,' in terms of J2EE, generally means good things for a project or application. It means bug fixes from a previous version, new features to make your life easier (whether you are a developer or a system administrator), and often it means performance, fault-tolerance, and scalability enhancements.

BEA eWorld 2002 Update

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:00:00 EST

The BEA eWorld conference was, in many ways, the same as every other conference I've attended. In other ways, it was quite different. The conference was held in the San Diego Convention Center, California, February 23-27, 2002. When I arrived, the hotel manager asked if I'd take a smoking room. 'No,' I replied. 'What's changed?' I thought. But hey, this was a subtle sign that the conference was packed (actually, BEA eWorld recorded over 2000 attendees)!

BEA WebLogic Platform: Enabling Complex Web Services

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:00:00 EST

Web services. Who needs them? You will. Indeed, I have. As a proof of concept for a wireless company, I wrote an application that allowed users to manage a fantasy football team from any WAP-enabled handheld. Users could set their lineup for the big day, or add and drop players from their roster. You know, the basics of running a fantasy team.

Introducing... "The Platform of the 21st Century"

Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:00:00 EST

Welcome to the eWorld issue of BEA WebLogic Developers Journal! Each year WebLogic developers and managers make a pilgrimage to eWorld to meet with vendors hawking wares in the exhibit hall, to listen to BEA visionaries in jam-packed sessions, and perhaps most of all, to see what new, cool stuff BEA will announce at the show! Well, comrades, many new products are coming our way, and if you miss the chance to hear about them at the show, make sure you read about them in this issue.

Building Skyscrapers with WebLogic

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 00:00:00 EST

In the mid 1990s, I worked with an application development environment (ADE) called Forte - essentially, PowerBuilder on steroids. It allowed for scalable, distributed applications to be developed, debugged, and deployed easily within a single environment. The technology was really cool. Sun Microsystems thought so too...and duly purchased the company, Forte Software, Inc., a few years ago.

Setting the Standards

Mon, 07 Jan 2002 00:00:00 EST

Welcome to the inaugural issue of BEA WebLogic Developer's Journal (WLDJ)! Anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past two years has seen J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) become the de facto standard for developing component-based, server-side applications. As a leading follower of that standard, BEA's WebLogic Server has become a standard in its own right. It is the most widely licensed application server in the world according to a recent independent study by Gartner Dataquest, which showed that BEA holds 41% of the new direct license revenue in the application server software market. The next closest competitor was IBM's WebSphere with approximately 31%. WebLogic Server has become the standard by which all others in the e-business infrastructure market compare themselves. Its suite of accompanying products, released as BEA WebLogic Portal 4.0 and BEA WebLogic Integration 2.1, also set the bar high for competitors.

JCP Defines the Roadmap for J2EE

Sat, 01 Sep 2001 00:00:00 EDT

I never bothered with roadmaps until I was of driving age and began to take trips on my own. Rock climbing drew me to my first trips and involved driving to remote areas of the U.S. It didn't take long to realize that a single wrong turn onto a road in the middle of nowhere meant hours of wasted time. Too many wrong turns soon earned you the nickname Clark Griswold. A wrong turn was especially a problem back in the days when Montana had no speed limit. You could really get nowhere fast back then.

JCP Defines the Roadmap for J2EE

Sat, 01 Sep 2001 00:00:00 EDT

Implementing J2EE Security With WebLogic Server

Tue, 01 May 2001 00:00:00 EDT

In the March issue of JDJ (Vol. 6, issue 3) we discussed the basics behind J2EE security, including coverage of role-based security for both the Web and EJB tiers. In Part 2, we provide an example of implementing J2EE security in the WebLogic Server.

Implementing J2EE Security With WebLogic Server

Thu, 01 Mar 2001 00:00:00 EST

This month's article is the first in a two-part series on J2EE security. In Part 1 we'll discuss basic J2EE security. Part 2 will provide you with a model to set up and deploy a functioning security-enabled application. Resident J2EE security guru, Chris Siemback, has been kind enough to join me in coauthoring this series to contribute in-depth examples of J2EE security at work.

How to Develop Message-Driven Beans

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 EST

This month in EJB Home I'll show you how to build a message-driven bean. Knowledge of this EJB will enhance your toolkit for developing asynchronous Enterprise Java applications - whether they're mission-critical or not.

UniqueID Generator: A Pattern for Primary Key Generation

Fri, 01 Dec 2000 00:00:00 EST

Several patterns exist for generating primary keys for your EJB application. This month I'll provide a pattern for generating PKs that's scalable, generic, and portable.

A Case Study: Extreme Programming with EJB

Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:00:00 EST

This month's EJB Home was originally a presentation at JC2 in Santa Clara, California, in September. For those of you who couldn't make the session, I thought it would be beneficial to transcribe it here and relay an experience in the successful implementation of an EJB application using XP.

Interview...with Paul Chambers of Gemstone part 2

Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 EDT

JDJ: Paul, what do you think about wireless and the state of the industry in five years? Chambers: There's certainly going to be a lot of change. The telecommunications industry is really going to go through a revolution over the next five years. Two markets we really need to look at are the North American market and the rest of the world, which really complies with another set of standards. Ultimately they're going to converge in about four years.

Transactions and Exception Handling in EJB 1.1

Fri, 01 Sep 2000 00:00:00 EDT

Many of you have been developing EJB applications since the 1.0 version of the specification. In the EJB 1.1 specification the approach toward EJB exception handling has changed slightly regarding the exceptions and transaction management responsibilities between bean providers and container vendors.

Interview...with Paul Chambers

Fri, 01 Sep 2000 00:00:00 EDT

JDJ: Paul, I'd like you to give us some technology trends and talk a little bit about GemStone's role in the wireless market. Tell us some of the key players in that market right now.

J2EE and WML: Holding a Royal Flush

Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 EDT

The buzz at JavaOne 2000, in my opinion, was definitely the solidification of Java in the wireless market. As radio host for SYS-CON Radio at JavaOne, I had the pleasure of interviewing CEOs and CTOs of leading application server vendors. Many of them focused, not on J2EE support, but on how their products are providing wireless solutions.

E-Commerce Market for EJB Solutions

Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 EDT

I'd like this month to offer some editorial thoughts on the e-commerce market for EJB solutions - but first let me just say 'Happy Birthday' to the EJB Home column and briefly recap the articles that have appeared here over the past year.…

PowerTiers 6's PowerPage

Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:00:00 EDT

Persistence Software, Inc., recently released the latest version of its EJB server, PowerTier 6. It's a little different from your run-of-the-mill EJB servers, though. This JavaOne 2000 special-edition issue of EJB Home will enlighten you about PowerPage, a hot feature that will put PowerTier 6 on every EJB evaluator's radar!

Developing Coarse Grained Business Components

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 EDT

Discussion groups have recently been abuzz with talk of "coarse-grained entity beans" - a slight misnomer deriving, I suspect, from the addition of mandatory entity beans in EJB 1.1. This month I'll examine the finer points of the Enterprise JavaBeans specification regarding coarse-grained entities, as well as my own, and provide an example for you - with plenty of comments to provide food for thought when you tackle the challenge yourself.

What do MTS and EJB Have in Common?

Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 EST

As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft was a pioneer in server-side component architectures. Its COM/DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) server-side component model for building and deploying components in the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) environment already had applications in production by the time the Enterprise JavaBeans specification was publicly released in March 1998.

Visual Cafe Enterprise Edition for WebLogic

Wed, 01 Mar 2000 00:00:00 EST

E-Business with EJBs

Tue, 01 Feb 2000 00:00:00 EST

I expect great things from Enterprise JavaBeans this year, one of which is dominating the e-business front as the component model of choice for server-side application development. E-business is multifaceted, encompassing e-commerce (monetary transactions over the Internet), business-to-business solutions and internal Web-based applications that provide flexibility and innovation in the services companies offer. E-business innovation has improved customer care and fostered repeat business for companies like Amazon.com, Dell and numerous online investment sites, to name a few.

Securing Your Company Data with EJBs

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 EST

Often we think of security as a burden, a time-consuming process that requires us to jump through hoops just to get through a doorway or view a Web page on the company intranet. My first real appreciation for (or frustration with) security came a number of years ago. I was a PowerBuilder consultant in Minneapolis, helping the Federal Reserve Bank build its first-ever client/server application. Each day it was a hassle just to get past the security desk in the lobby, and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York that year did nothing to ease the pain.

The Oracle at Boulder

Wed, 01 Dec 1999 00:00:00 EST

I was asked to stick my neck out and write on the future of Enterprise JavaBeans in year 2000. Just so you know, I was one credit away from a minor in the classics (you know, Greek mythology, ancient Rome and Egypt). However, since I didn't major in this field, nor even minor in it, don't hold me to anything I say for I'm no Oracle at Delphi. I'm just a soothsayer from Boulder, Colorado, and even then I'm only one of many (though most in Boulder foretell fortunes based on constellations, tarot cards or your sign!).

The Business Advantage of EJB

Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:00:00 EST

Last month, in EJB Home, I covered the business advantage of Enterprise JavaBeans' portability from a high level. First I discussed the various types of portability. Then I covered (1) the portability goals the creators of EJB had in mind when developing the specification and (2) how your business can achieve a competitive edge through EJB. This month I'll finish up the discussion of EJB portability from a developer's perspective.

The Business Advantage of EJB: Part One

Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 EDT

What's all this hype about portability? Portability has been a hot topic since Java's arrival just a few years ago, so I'm going to devote some space toward understanding portability issues centered around the Enterprise JavaBeans architecture and development. This month I'll discuss the various types of portability and Java's relationship to each; then I'll touch on the portability goals of the EJB specification and where EJB portability lacks maturity (and why not to worry). Next month I'll provide tips on EJB portability as well as code examples depicting how you can help achieve the promise of EJB portability through solid design and coding practices.

XML DTD for EJB Deployment Descriptors

Wed, 01 Sep 1999 00:00:00 EDT

To those of you familiar with Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), deployment descriptors are nothing new. Essentially, a deployment descriptor's purpose is to collect declarative information that can be modified during deployment of an enterprise bean. Deployment descriptors are a key element in the component-based development capabilities of EJB. They allow users to modify, link and deploy EJB in a graphical environment rather than having to perform low-level code changes to reuse a component. The latest public draft of EJB specification 1.1 includes sections on the XML DTD for deployment descriptors, an important step toward enterprise bean portability between EJB servers.