Introduction

The Enterprise Application Developer's Guide explains how to use JBuilder to develop applications for the enterprise. It describes the features that are available only in JBuilder Enterprise.

The Enterprise Application Developer's Guide is divided into three parts:

The Team Development User's Guide describes the revision-handling features that make version management and team development much easier. JBuilder supports Concurrent Versions System (CVS), the widely-used version control freeware, and incorporates CVS command management and connection control into the JBuilder IDE.

The Distributed Application Developer's Guide explains how to develop both Web-based applications and enterprise applications using CORBA and RMI. JBuilder provides excellent support for distributed application development. The JBuilder development environment greatly simplifies the creation of distributed applications, generating many of the files necessary to create multi-tier, distributed applications. Once the application is generated, you can add the business logic you need to the generated code. All the while you are using JBuilder's superb development environment--distributed computing enters the rapid application development (RAD) world. Topics covered in the Distributed Application Developer's Guide include:

The Enterprise JavaBeans Developer's Guide explains how to create Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) with JBuilder and use them in building distributed systems. JBuilder has a set of wizards and tools that greatly simplifies the construction, debugging, testing, and deploying of enterprise beans. You can create enterprise beans for deployment to either the Inprise Application Server 4.1 or the WebLogic Application Server 5.1.

If you're new to EJB development, the Enterprise JavaBeans Developer's Guide explains what session beans, entity beans, and the home and remote interfaces are and how they work. You'll learn about writing enterprise bean clients, how deployment descriptors are used, and how to manage transactions using enterprise beans.

Even if you're an experienced EJB developer, you'll find JBuilder's EJB wizards and tools can shorten your development time considerably. JBuilder includes an Enterprise JavaBean wizard for creating session and entity beans. JBuilder's EJB Entity Bean Modeler can create entity beans for you based on existing database tables. As you use the EJB wizards to develop your beans, JBuilder creates the necessary deployment descriptors, which you can then edit using the Deployment Descriptor editor. Once you've created your bean, the EJB Test Client wizard quickly creates a client application you can use to test the bean's functionality. JBuilder's debugger fully supports debugging enterprise beans. Once you're ready to deploy your bean, the EJB Deployment wizard makes deploying to the Inprise Application Server quick and easy. You also have options to build beans for and deploy beans to the WebLogic Application Server.


Documentation conventions

The Borland documentation for JBuilder uses the typefaces and symbols described in the table below to indicate special text.

Typeface and symbol conventions

Typeface Meaning
Monospace type Monospaced type represents the following:
  • text as it appears onscreen
  • anything you must type, such as "Enter Hello World in the Title field of the Application wizard."
  • a key on your keyboard, such as "Press Esc to exit a menu."
  • file names
  • path names
  • directory and folder names
  • commands, such as SET PATH, CLASSPATH
  • Java code
  • Java identifiers, such as names of variables, classes, interfaces, components, properties, methods, and events
  • package names
  • argument names
  • field names
  • Java keywords, such as void and static
Bold Bold is used for java tools, bmj (Borland Make for Java), bcj (Borland Compiler for Java), and compiler options. For example: javac, bmj, -classpath.
Italics Italicized words are used for new terms being defined and for book titles.
[ ] Square brackets in text or syntax listings enclose optional items. Do not type the brackets.
< > Angle brackets in text or syntax listings indicate a variable string; type in a string appropriate for your code. Do not type the angle brackets. Angle brackets are also used for HTML tags.
... An ellipsis in syntax listing indicates code that is missing from the example.

JBuilder is available on multiple platforms. See the table below for a description of platform and directory conventions used in the documentation.

Platform conventions and directories

Item Meaning
Paths All paths in the documentation are indicated with a forward slash (/).
For the Windows platform, use a backslash (\).
Home directory The location of the home directory varies by platform.
  • For UNIX and Linux, the home directory can vary. For example, it could be /user/[username] or /home/[username]
  • For Windows 95/98, the home directory is C:\Windows
  • For Windows NT, the home directory is C:\Winnt\Profiles\[username]
  • For Windows 2000, the home directory is C:\Documents and Settings\[username]
.jbuilder directory The .jbuilder directory, where JBuilder settings are stored, is located in the home directory.
jbproject directory The jbproject directory, which contains project, class, and source files, is located in the home directory. JBuilder saves files to this default path.
Screen shots Screen shots reflect JBuilder's Metal Look & Feel on various platforms.