B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

244 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
To the client and component, the distributed calls are totally
transparent. The client never has to change how it calls the component.
To the component it does not even know that its client is on another
machine.
COM and DCOM use a binary specification to provide language
neutrality. A COM/DCOM component can be created with Java, C++,
MS Visual Basic, Delphi, PowerBuilder, etc. This is one of the advantages
COM+ provides over J2EE which is locked into Java. DCOM
allows the organization or developer to choose a language which he/she
is most familiar with.
8.4.5. J2EE — EJB
Sun Microsystems released the Java platform in 1995 and touted it as a
way to create applications that would run on any computer, regardless
of the operating system and deployment environment. The battle cry for
Java was 'write once, run anywhere'.
Building upon the success of the Java language, Sun leveraged the
capabilities of Java with an eye on the enterprise framework of CORBA
to develop a new enterprise Java model.
J2EE platform
The J2EE platform is the current version of enterprise Java. There are
actually three editions of the Java 2 platform: the Java 2 Platform,
Micro Edition (J2ME) for small devices and smartcards; the Java 2
Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) for desktops; and the Java 2 Platforms,
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for creating server-based applications and
services. It is the J2EE platform which provides an enterprise framework
for distributed components. J2EE is a set of coordinated specifications
and practices which enable solutions for developing, deploying and
managing multi-tier server-centric applications.
The primary technologies in J2EE include (see Figure 8.12):
• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB);
• Java Server Pages (JSP);