I've decided to write this book about the things I learned in the past working on Java enterprise systems of all kinds. My motivation is to show you what a modern Java EE approach looks like. This, of course, first of all aims toward developing enterprise applications themselves, and modern programming models. I try to build up an impression as to how Java EE is used in the age of EE 8 and where the platform shines. There are new design patterns and paradigms being used that have emerged from modern framework approaches. If you were familiar with the J2EE world, you will hopefully see the advantage of modern Java EE. I try to show which of the old paradigms, constraints, and considerations that made J2EE sometimes being disliked among developers are not true anymore and can be discarded. Besides this, the book is an attempt to spread some enthusiasm and explain why I am convinced that Java Enterprise serves the purpose of realizing enterprise applications well.
That said, you, the reader, don't need prior knowledge of the J2EE world and patterns and best practices thereof. In particular, the programming model so different that I'm convinced it makes sense to showcase today's approach from a green field.
It you have built and designed J2EE applications, this is great. You will see what the challenges with past J2EE design patterns were, particularly when in the modern world, our domain can focus on business demands first and not the technology used to implement it. This is especially true when we follow the approaches of Domain-Driven Design. You will notice how many cumbersome and painful aspects of J2EE systems in the past can be eradicated in modern Java EE. The simplicity and power of the Java EE platform may inspire you to rethink certain approaches that we have done so far. Maybe you can try to take a mental step back to have a fresh, unbiased view on the technology.
This book is meant for software engineers, developers and architects who design and build enterprise applications. In the book, I will mostly use the term developers or engineers. That said, I am convinced that architects should also, from time to time, the more the better, touch source code and get their hands dirty with technology. This is not only to support other developers in the team but also important for themselves to get more real-world experience. In the same way all developers should have at least a basic understanding of the system's architecture and the reasoning for the architectural choices. Again, the better this mutual understanding is, the better will the communication and development function in the projects.
Modern enterprise application development touches much more than just the sole development. As we are seeing, new demands of enterprise applications, engineers care about development workflows, cloud environments, containers, and container orchestration frameworks. We will cover whether and how Java Enterprise fits into this world and what approaches and best practices there are that support this. This will tackle the topics of Continuous Delivery and automated testing, why they have such importance, and how they integrate with Java EE. We will also cover container technologies, such as Docker, and orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes. In today's enterprise world it's important to show how a technology such as Java EE supports these areas.
Microservice architecture is a big topic, another of today's hypes. We will look at what microservices are about, and if and how they can be realized with Java EE. The topics of security, logging, performance, and monitoring will also be covered later in this book. I will point out what architects should know and be aware of in today's enterprise software world. The used choices of technology, especially when it comes to modern solutions that support applications; for example, in the areas of 12-factor or cloud native applications, serve as examples as to what would be chosen as of today. However, it is much more important to understand what the concepts and motivations behind these technologies are. Used technology changes day by day, principles and concepts or computer science live much longer.
For all of the subjects that I cover in this book, my approach is to show the motivations and reasoning behind solutions first, and then how they are applied and implemented in Java EE second. I believe that simply teaching a certain technology may certainly help developers in their daily jobs but they will not fully embrace the solution until the motivations behind it are completely understood. This is why I will also start with the motivations behind enterprise applications in general.
There is a lot of functionality included in Java EE, even more if you look into the past. This book does not aim to represent a full Java EE reference work. Rather, it is intended to provide real world experience as well as recommendations, call them best practices, tackling typical scenarios with pragmatic solutions. Now, please lean back and enjoy the journey through a modern enterprise software world.
