JEE Intro

I know you have been waiting a long time to understand what is there in the world of J2EE and
why we must learn it.

You may be wondering that you know core Java, not only that, you now know how to take a core
java program and connect it to a database using the concepts of JDBC.

Is this not enough for me to develop real-world applications? My friend yes, it is enough,
but there are certain limitations concerning these features

What are the limitations?

Let us assume using these features you develop an application and right now this application
that you've developed is on a certain computer. The computer where you typed the code, stored
the code, compiled the code, is on the same computer, you have to execute it and you execute
it using the console or the command prompt. Through the console, you type in your commands,
and then the program begins execution and a program which you access via a console is only
called a Console Based Application or another word for it is Standalone Application.

Now, you may be wondering, why is it called a standalone?

It is called a standalone because it is such an application which can only be accessed from the
computer in which the application is present. For example, Let's assume you have written a
Java program and it is present on your computer. If you want to execute your Java program, you
need access to your computer, no one else can access it.

Let us assume there's another computer. Can your friend from his computer access the
application present on your computer? Not possible. But some of you are thinking that there is
something called as your remote computer access application such as your TeamViewer,
AnyDesk and there are many such applications where your friend can install it and then through
his computer, he can access your computer, but then again I want you to understand it is still
standalone only because first of all, he is not accessing his computer's application through his
computer he is accessing your computer and while he is accessing your computer, only he can
access it. Even if you want you cannot access it because it is a standalone application. If he is
moving his mouse and you move your mouse there will be a conflict when he is typing and you
also type there will be a conflict.

So, an application is called a standalone application when,

● The software is present in the computer.

● It can only be accessed by a single person at any given point in time.
● It can only be accessed on the same computer and nowhere else.
And many beautiful standalone applications have made our life that much more productive and
that much more efficient. To give you some examples. A few of my most famous standalone
applications come from the Adobe suite of applications such as your Photoshop, Premiere
Pro, After Effects, Illustrator using which I'm able to create such amazing content for you
guys.

Another set of applications that I use daily which is standalone is Microsoft's Office suite of
applications, which includes your Word, PowerPoint, Excel.

Now, these applications have to be installed on my computer, and only through my computer, I
can access them which means by nature they are standalone. But as days passed, when the
internet began a revolution in the world, when the entire world started to get interconnected
because of the invention of the internet. Now, software companies realized that if in the internet
world, they must make it large, a different kind of application must be born, a different breed of
applications must be created.
Now, what is this application?

These applications are called web applications. Now, the concept of a web application is very
simple, there is a computer called the Server, and in the server computer is where the code is
present, your software is present, your application is present. Of course, if you want, you can
open up the terminal in the server and you can execute it there, no doubt about it, you can
execute it. But the beauty is that through the internet, this server can now be connected to
1000s of computers somewhere else in the world.

Now let us focus on a single computer.

Now, this computer wants to access the application present within the server. Now how is it
going to do that? Well, I am not going to install any remote access application like any desk, or
TeamViewer. But, I am now going to install a software called the browser. And you know, there
are a variety of options for browsers, different companies come with different browsers.

I'm going to install a browser and through the browser, using a concept called a URL[Uniform
Resource Locator]. I am now going to request to:

● Find this computer on the internet.

● And once the request reaches this particular computer,
● This computer must now respond to the request by sending a response through
the internet back to the browser.
And whatever response is sent. The browser must render that response to display that
response.

For example, if it is a Facebook application or a Facebook server that I'm requesting, the login
page of Facebook will be visible.

However, these big names like Zomato, BookMyShow, etc., that you hear about are web
applications, which anyone from anywhere in the world can access provided they have an
internet connection and a browser. But the beauty is you may ask how is this different from me
taking remote access to my friend's computer and accessing it?

It's very different because remote access if you would have taken at any given point of time only
one person can request to access the application. But the beauty is through this
request-response protocol, which we call HTTP[Hypertext Transfer Protocol] and by
making use of advanced software tools such as the browser, lakhs of computers, at the same
time can request the server and the server can respond to them. That is why when you are
watching a movie on Netflix, so can I, my neighbor, your friend, your mom, your dad, millions of
people in the world can access it at the same time. Why all that when you guys are using the
learning management system here at TapAcademy when you are executing your software or
your programs, there are 1000s of other students also executing at the same time.

How is it possible?

Because even that is a web application and you did not install it on your computer.

You are connecting to a server that is executing and sending you back the output operable to
think. So, web applications are the need of the world today. And it has been the need of the
world for the last close to two decades now.
So clearly coming back. If you look at Java, Java and JDBC put together can only and only
create standalone applications for me but for me, the need of the world is not standalone
applications, it is web applications, but web applications cannot be created using these
concepts. This means there, Java's capabilities must increase, such that using Java code, I can
create web applications.

Now, how, you may ask me?

Well for that, developers sat, worked overtime, and added new features into Java, such as a
Servlet, JSP. And using these things, they said, you can now work on web applications using
Java, you can now work on the request-response protocol using Java. And all these concepts
which allow you to do those two together are what people refer to as the second version of
Java.

And EE stands for web applications and web applications are also known as Enterprise
Applications. Enterprise is just another word for business, you want to create such applications
which help you to do business online, they're called enterprise applications and hence, they call
it Enterprise Edition. Some people, in short, remove the 2 and call it JEE, which means
naturally, if you and I want to become an all-rounder kind of Java programmer who is capable of
not only working on standalone but also web applications, we must now invest sufficient time in
understanding J2EE (or in short JEE)
These are the things which we must first learn:

● Web Server
● Web Container
● Servlets
● JSP
● Modern View Controller
● Hibernate
● Spring