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Glassfish and JEE 5 vs. Tomcat and Servlets

 
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Related to this thread:
https://coderanch.com/t/320350/EJB-JEE/java/Java-EE-Development-GlassFish-Application

Does the book have a solid explanation what the differences between Java EE and Servlets are and the advantages Java EE (and Glassfish or JBoss) offers over Servlets (and Tomcat)?

Or in other words, will the book itself sell me on Java EE or will I need to be sold on JEE before I buy it? I work for a very small company that has our application running on Tomcat, and I'm wondering if a migration to Glassfish or something similar is warranted if (hopefully when) our userbase grows.

Thanks for your time, and may it sell well.
 
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Michael,

The book does not try very hard to "convert" you to GlassFish. It does have a small section on the first chapter listing the advantages of using GlassFish.

The book focuses on explaining how to develop Java EE 5 applications and deploy them to GlassFish.

The difference between GlassFish and Tomcat is that Tomcat is only a servlet engine, therefore applications deployed to tomcat cannot take advantage of Java EE technologies and APIs such as EJB's, JAX-WS, JPA, etc.

In other words, Tomcat offers only a subset of the functionality available in GlassFish.

David
 
Michael Swierczek
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David,
Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, I did not express the question adequately. I understand that the book does not sell me on Glassfish, you already explained that in the other thread.
I want to know if the book explains what makes "Java EE technologies and APIs such as EJB's, JAX-WS, JPA, etc..." a worthwhile investment.

So for example, does it describe a scenario using JDBC or some ORM and explain how a migration to EJB and/or JPA provides better performance or cleaner design or easier maintenance or whatever.

If a business has a custom protocol between hosts that exchanges information through secure ftp of configuration files or http posts across an https connection, does the book explain how moving to JAX-WS or JMS offers some clear advantages?

etc... etc...

Does that clarify the question? Hibernate In Action by Christian Bauer and Gavin King starts off with a good chapter explaining what Hibernate is, what ORMs are, and what advantages you get by using Hibernate instead of just writing your own custom JDBC code for each project. I want to see if your book does something similar. With Java EE.
 
David Heffelfinger
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Michael,

The book takes a "how to" approach. It doesn't really spend time explaining why a specific technology is better than an alternative. It simply explains how to use the different Java EE technologies.

The book doesn't explain advantages of standard APIs versus custom protocols, but I can give you a few. If you use a custom protocol, every time a new developer is hired to work on the project the developer needs to get familiar with said protocol. Also, the knowledge gained in such a custom protocol is not easily transferable to other projects (in a different company). When using standard APIs, it is possible to hire developers with experience in the API, and from the developer's point of view, the experience gained in the project is useful in a different project.

David
 
Michael Swierczek
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David,
Okay. Thank you for your response.
 
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