WebSphere Project Advice Needed

[John Alexander]

Hi there...
I have a few questions if you have the time.
Here's some background:
I am brand spanking new to IBM's WebSphere and I have a client that is definitely set on using it along with an Oracle 9i database for their web project. The project is a pretty standard web application that will need to persist data externally and possibly have 2-3 entry points to the database, including servlets and JSPs. My experience in the J2EE world is very minimal. I have read "More Servlets and Java Server Pages" and toyed with a few other J2EE technologies but haven't yet gone head first into using JDBC nor EJBs. I have 4 years experiece developing web applications using Java with the WebObjects application server from Apple. Since WebObjects was a pretty complete solution, there was no need to evaluate too many 3rd party tools or software packages. This includes the persistance layer (EOF was the built-in persistance layer), the IDE (ProjectBuilder was the built-in IDE), and the MVC model (WebObjects was very well adapted to the MVC model). So, here are my questions:
1. What do you recommend for an IDE with WebSphere? Can I simply use JBuilder or should I look into using VisualAge? Is there a major difference?
2. What about persistance layers? How good is Castor? What is everyone using these days for persistance with WebSphere, servlets and JSPS?
3. With respect to EJBs, how do they come into play?
4. What about Struts? Is it worth learning Struts and attempting to utilize it on my project or should I simply attempt to architect my own separation of business logic from user-interface logic?
Thanks!

[Kyle Brown]

(1) Read my book to get oriented in the WebSphere space, even though it is on the previous version of WebSphere (3.5) -- it gives you a lot of direction on application design that still applies.
(2) You can use any IDE you choose, but life will be easier for you if you use IBM's IDE -- the one to use for WebSphere 4.0 is WebSphere Studio Application Developer. VisualAge was the IDE of choice for the previous version (WebSphere 3.5).
(3) Castor might work if you're just doing Servlets -- it's worth a shot. If it's just one database, then you probably don't need EJB's... Of course just plain JDBC with a simple roll-your-own mapping layer might work too.
(4) I STRONGLY recommend you read Martin Fowler's Enterprise Architecture Patterns. This gives even more good design advice than my book. I also strongly recommend you read Alur et. al.'s "Core J2EE Patterns" book once you've read the previous. After having read through those, you should be able to orient yourself pretty well.
(5) Struts is great. I'd recommend it without hesitation. While you're at it, pick up and religiously use Log4J too...
Kyle

[Ren Li]

Kyle,
I like your book very much. I found that your book was helpful when I created CMP. You recommend WSAD instead of VAJ, could you please tell if WSAD has the same relationship mapping facilities as VAJ? Do you have any plan to publish some books related WSAD?
Ren

[Kyle Brown]

Ren, yes, WSAD does basically the same kinds of relationship mapping as VAJ -- however, the GUI is different. You might want to look at my WSAD articles on VADD (referenced below) to see how the innards of the WSAD code generation work. I would check the "Web Services Wizardry" redbook (at www.redbooks.ibm.com) to find out how to use the new WSAD EJB relationship features.
Kyle

[John Alexander]

Thank you for the suggestions Kyle. I will indeed check out your book and the other one you suggested. Onward we go...