To address new demands in business computing, software vendors are introducing application server toolkits. The concept is to create clusters of low-cost computers that support one specific business area, then connect these clusters to the corporate network. By using the network as the computer, one piece of software can support desktop computing, electronic commerce, and communication with traditional mainframe software. Building Application Servers is a practical guide to application server technology, explaining the theory of network computing and providing practical techniques that use these tools to produce effective business solutions. Rick Leander includes practical examples and program code that use UML, Java, RMI, and JDBC to illustrate design problems and programming techniques. The development framework offered spans a variety of platforms, vendors, and middleware architectures. Software developers who are familiar with traditional client/server technology but want to learn how to move to distributed client/server computing will find this book invaluable.

Table of Contents

Part I. Application Server Architecture: 1. What is an application server and why do I need one ?; 2. Anatomy of an application server; Part II. Design Issues: 3. Designing application servers; 4. Service interface design; 5. Designing business objects; 6. Designing the persistent object layer; 7. Integrating existing systems and legacy software; Part III. Programming: 8. Implementing an application server; 9. Using Java to build business objects; 10. Interfaces and client side communication; 11. Enforcing business rules; 12. Persistent objects - communicating with databases; 13. Concurrency, synchronization and lifecycles; 14. Testing, performance and deployment; 15. Creating an enterprise application architecture.