- Application Servers Aren't Difficul
- Application Servers Are Software Platforms
- Application Servers Are Component-Based
- Application Servers Provide Software Interoperability
- Application Servers Have High Levels of Abstraction
- J2EE Is Separate and Distinct from Sun's Application Server
- Application Servers: A Window on the Future of Software
- Conclusion
- References
J2EE Is Separate and Distinct from Sun's Application Server
This is a pretty basic point: J2EE is essentially an advanced API, but it does contain facilities that run in isolation from the application server environment. An example is XSLT, which allows translation from legacy data into XML, and vice versa. (XSLT and SAX APIs are discussed in my previous article; see Reference [3]).
The significance of J2EE continues to grow; some software architecture specialists (see Reference [2]) are even describing J2EE as the first major modifier of software engineering culture in the 21st century. This is similar to the way in which the World Wide Web changed the software engineering culture of the 90s—another reason for investing in understanding J2EE and its associated technologies. A further reason is the fact that Microsoft and Sun are now actively collaborating on making their products interoperable.