MC365 Introduction to Class

Today We Will: Go over the goals of the class. Review the syllabus. Introduce ourselves. Break up into teams to exchange contact information.

Goals of the Class This class will cover the general principles that all software engineers use including the software development life cycle. –Specifically, we will discuss the various phases of software development. In addition, we will concentrate on software engineering using J2EE technologies.

Why J2EE? There are dozens of different technologies that developers can use to develop large-scale enterprise systems. Some examples of the more popular ones include: –Microsoft.Net technology. –Oracle developer tools. –Customizable vendor products like PeopleSoft. –Older, traditional technologies like mainframe applications written in COBOL, PL/1, etc. –Distributed applications using languages like C++. –J2EE technologies.

What Is J2EE? So why choose J2EE technologies of the others? To answer this we need understand what J2EE is. Sun describes J2EE as a technology that “provides a component-based approach to the design, development, assembly, and deployment of enterprise applications. The J2EE platform offers a multitiered distributed application model, the ability to reuse components, integrated extensible markup language (XML)-based data interchange, a unified security model, and flexible transaction control. Not only can you deliver innovative customer solutions to market faster than ever, but your platform-independent J2EE component-based solutions are not tied to the products and application programming interfaces (APIs) of any one vendor. Vendors and customers enjoy the freedom to choose the products and components that best meet their business and technological requirements.”

What Is J2EE? So, what exactly does that mean? –J2EE stands for Java 2 Enterprise Edition. –It is a specification developed by a consortium of various businesses and academics headed by Sun Microsystems. –It defines a standard by which software developers can build components to work together in an enterprise-wide architecture.

So Again Why J2EE? The biggest benefit J2EE offers over other technologies is interoperability. –J2EE is open-standard meaning the specifications are published and known to all developers. –Developers know that any component (developed now or in the future) that meets the J2EE specification can be used in their enterprise system. –This is a huge advantage over proprietary systems like Oracle and other vendor-driven applications. –This offers much more flexibility in system design. We will use J2EE in this class because more and more companies are choosing this technology to develop their enterprise systems. Also most of the technologies are free

The Overall Goal of the Class To prepare you for a career in software engineering by: 1)Making sure you understand the software development life cycle, 2)Developing your understanding of the J2EE architecture, and 3)Developing your skills with some of the more popular tools used by software engineers today. Note: We could spend an entire semester on any one topic we are going to cover in this class. Instead, the goal here is to give you enough of an overview so that you have a working knowledge of the tools and concepts.

How the Class Will Be Structured With that in mind, let’s look at the syllabus: