moving from J2SE to the J2EE world? how?

[anonymous.coward.01]

This question goes to all the J2EE experts in this group...
I am a java desktop application programmer with about 5 years
experience.
I think it is time to move into the J2EE world, but don't know how.
I like to know how other programmers have done it.

The company that i work for won't send me to take a course since they
don't really do any J2EE work, and thus they won't benefit. I can't
afford a $2,500 course. I can't find a local univ. or community college
that offers J2EE courses.
Learning it by reading a book seems a little intimidating given the
complexity of the thing.

In addition, if i want to get another job where they use J2EE, they
always require the candidates to already have the experience.
I really like to know how professional J2EE programmers were able to
transition from J2SE to J2EE.

thanks
anonC

 

[Malte]

This question goes to all the J2EE experts in this group...
I am a java desktop application programmer with about 5 years
experience.
I think it is time to move into the J2EE world, but don't know how.
I like to know how other programmers have done it.

The company that i work for won't send me to take a course since they
don't really do any J2EE work, and thus they won't benefit. I can't
afford a $2,500 course. I can't find a local univ. or community college
that offers J2EE courses.
Learning it by reading a book seems a little intimidating given the
complexity of the thing.

In addition, if i want to get another job where they use J2EE, they
always require the candidates to already have the experience.
I really like to know how professional J2EE programmers were able to
transition from J2SE to J2EE.

thanks
anonC

The free tutorials at

http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/J2EE/

might be a good starting point. While your'e learning the basics, stay
away from EJB and concentrate on Servlets and JSP. Just my opinion, of
course. You might find that not dealing with EJB technology saves you a
lot of time. EJB's are probably (my opinion) not as widely used as just
Servlets/JSP.

 

[Roedy Green]

In addition, if i want to get another job where they use J2EE, they
always require the candidates to already have the experience.
I really like to know how professional J2EE programmers were able to
transition from J2SE to J2EE.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jwsdp.html

You can set up a little webserver even if the only person who looks at
it is you and you don't connect to the net.

Now give yourself a project. see
http://mindprod.com/projects/projects.html for inspiration.

 

[John C. Bollinger]

This question goes to all the J2EE experts in this group...
I am a java desktop application programmer with about 5 years
experience.
I think it is time to move into the J2EE world, but don't know how.
I like to know how other programmers have done it.

Set your sights more specifically. *Nobody* learns J2EE as a monolithic
block. I'm not confident that any single person, anywhere, is
proficient in all of J2EE. It's HUGE. Instead, choose a specific part
of J2EE that interests you, and learn that -- for me that first part was
servlets and JSP. Once you have a working knowledge of one part, you
may find that you want (or need) to become conversant with another part,
so then you go learn that. (My second J2EE chunk was EJB, but I picked
it up in bits and pieces for a year or two before I really dove in.)
Continue this process ad infinitum.

The specifics of how you learn a particular J2EE technology will be
particular to you. Some people take classes (and you may have better
finding classes in specific parts of J2EE), some rely on tutorials, some
read specifications, some grovel through code. Most do some combination
of the above. No one is successful without eventually bringing it home
by building their own programs.

 

[Roedy Green]

In addition, if i want to get another job where they use J2EE, they
always require the candidates to already have the experience.
I really like to know how professional J2EE programmers were able to
transition from J2SE to J2EE.

J2EE covers a lot of ground. See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/j2ee.html

here is a suggested learning order
JDK
Javamail
Servlets
JNDI
JSP
JDBC
JAAS
RMI
JAXP
JMS
EJB

 

[Luke]

Set your sights more specifically. *Nobody* learns J2EE as a monolithic
block. I'm not confident that any single person, anywhere, is
proficient in all of J2EE. It's HUGE.

It would be nice if recruiters and personnel departments knew this.
When I was looking for a job last year, time after time I would see
recruiters advertising for a J2EE expert and then listing every J2EE
technology and expecting the person to be an expert with each one.

 

[David Segall]

J2EE covers a lot of ground. See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/j2ee.html

here is a suggested learning order
JDK
Javamail
Servlets
JNDI
JSP
JDBC
JAAS
RMI
JAXP
JMS
EJB

Thanks Roedy, it is always useful when someone is prepared to specify
a list like that. I do find the location of JDBC in the list
perplexing. Have I misunderstood the meaning of EE? I don't see how
anyone could write the smallest business application without a
database. Similarly, I don't see why email ranks so high in your list.

 

[John C. Bollinger]

Thanks Roedy, it is always useful when someone is prepared to specify
a list like that. I do find the location of JDBC in the list
perplexing. Have I misunderstood the meaning of EE? I don't see how
anyone could write the smallest business application without a
database.

All the technologies on Roedy's list are relevant to J2EE, but not all
of them are properly parts of J2EE. The JDK is the general underpinning
of all of Java, and RMI, although standard fare in J2EE applications
(directly or indirectly), is not inherently a J2EE-specific technology.
Sun lists some other items on Roedy's list as J2EE technologies, even
though they have wider applicability and are present in the SE API:
JNDI, JDBC, and JAXP fall into this category.

Similarly, I don't see why email ranks so high in your list.

Javamail does not rank so high on my personal, very informal, list -- to
the extent that I have never studied or used that part of the enterprise
API (despite competence in the JDK, servlets, JNDI, JSP, JDBC, JAXP, and
EJB, plus some knowledge of RMI).

For what it's worth, Sun documents the technologies it considers to be
part of J2EE here: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/releases/

 

[Roedy Green]

Thanks Roedy, it is always useful when someone is prepared to specify
a list like that. I do find the location of JDBC in the list
perplexing. Have I misunderstood the meaning of EE? I don't see how
anyone could write the smallest business application without a
database. Similarly, I don't see why email ranks so high in your list.

I put the easy stuff first.

 

[Roedy Green]

here is a suggested learning order
JDK
Javamail
Servlets
JNDI
JSP
JDBC
JAAS
RMI
JAXP
JMS

The mistake I think newbies make is trying to swallow Servlets, JSP
and JDBC all in one bite.

My thought was to take them in the order Servlets, JSP, JBDC, but you
could go JDBC, Servets. JSP.

 

[Scott Ellsworth]

This question goes to all the J2EE experts in this group...
I am a java desktop application programmer with about 5 years
experience.
I think it is time to move into the J2EE world, but don't know how.
I like to know how other programmers have done it.

The very first thing I would do is figure out what you are willing to
spend, in terms of time, money, and anguish. This will inform your list
of possible actions. Be honest, but be brave - if you can afford two
hours a night for four work weeks, try not to pick something that will
take more than forty hours.

Assuming you are willing to blow a bunch of evenings, and that you have
a Mac, PC, or Linux machine lying about to work on, you can actually get
pretty far with just a few books.

Think up a small project. I would reccomend something like a checkbook
balancer, or a time tracker. Something that you can demo, that hits a
database, and that does well as a web app. This shows that you have the
chops, and will give you a laundry list of 'how do I' actions. Try to
get about a dozen - 'how do I create a login page', 'how do I track a
session', 'how do I do a database query', 'how do I accept user input to
update my database' are all about the right scope.

Then, I would _NOT_ start with pure J2EE. Start with something a bit
smaller, but that handles the web applications and databases. This will
give you a good idea of what J2EE adds. I have my own list of
favorites, but judging by what I see in the job adds, Struts and
Hibernate are probably where I would start.

Get a good book on each, and try to bang together a simple web app.
Once you know how well that works, you can move to JBoss and try a
for-real J2EE app, but you will already know the terminology, and you
will know what you could do with J2SE server side. Thus breaks the big
learning curve down into three smaller ones.

This first step should not take long. I had something working in Ruby
on Rails in two weeks of evenings, and it was similar in heft to
Hibernate and Struts, IMO.

Scott