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I have been teaching web development for 14 years. I started with Perl. I can still
remember the behemoth programs that contained all the logic and HTML. I remember
using a text editor to write the program. Debugging consisted of a lot of print
statements. It was a fun time, full of exploration, but I do not miss them.
Nine years ago, I made the move to Java and Java servlets. Life became much
simpler with the use of NetBeans. It has been a critical component in developing
web applications using Java. Debugging a web application in NetBeans is just as
easy as debugging any Java application.
This book is meant for students who have a solid background in programming,
but who do not have any database training. Until six years ago, my students used a
glorifi ed HashMap to save data. Then, a former student gave me the word: Hibernate.
For anyone with a programming background in Java, using Hibernate to save data
to a relational database is a simple task.
I have always been a proponent of automating the common tasks that web
applications perform. There are many packages that can simplify the job of a web
developer: Log4j, BeanUtils and Hibernate. I have created additional classes that
can automate additional tasks.
The book uses HTML, HTML Forms, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XML
as tools. Each topic will receive an introduction, but the full scope of the area will
not be explored. The focus of the book is on Java servlets that use Java Server Pages
and connect to a MySQL database using Hibernate. No SQL will be covered in the
book, because SQL is not needed. A short section in the Appendix explains some
basic SQL concepts for those who want to see what Hibernate is doing.
Web services are useful tools for developers. Complex features can be added to
a web application by using web services. The development environments for Java
now have tools and wizards that simplify accessing a service, but there is still plenty
of work left for the programmer. |
