A hike through post-EJB J2EE Web application architecture. Part II

This is the second article in an occasional series on Web application development. The first installment, published in the September/October 2005 issue ("A Hike through Post-EJB J2EE Web Application Architecture," vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 80-88), focused on the upper tiers that comprise the user interface; here, the author focuses on the lower tiers. He started with a blueprint of a typical post-Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Web application architecture. Several functional and nonfunctional requirements drive such architectures, and they\´ve become relatively standard. Within this architecture, we looked at the core functionality of our running example - linear regression over a persistent set of points - and then hiked our way upward through successive user interface layers, including dynamic behavior, presentation, internationalization, navigation, layout, and visual styles. During the hike, we looked at typical technologies for each layer. In this article, we descend into our application\´s invisible innards. Specifically, the author examines business service objects, object-relational mappings, lightweight containers (for painlessly connecting the various pieces), security, and concurrency. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate the development of reliable, flexible, and efficient server-based Web applications