Preface

When we considered writing this book, the main objective was to present the new features of Java EE 7 platform. But while writing, we came to realize that it would be interesting to make a clear and concise presentation of the relevant specifications and how to implement them. This led us to imagine a project that will help present almost all the specifications affected by Java EE 7 and how to put them together in order to build a large-scale application.

In short, this book does not aim to show how to implement the different aspects of each Java EE 7 specification or list the best practices. Rather, it positions itself similar to the yellow pages for a city that has been built recently. In other words, this book will help you discover the innovations introduced by Java EE 7 and give you ideas to build solid applications.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, What's New in Java EE 7, gives an overview of the improvements made in the Java EE 7 platform.

Chapter 2, New Specifications, explains concepts concerning the new specifications that have been added in Java EE 7 and shows how they can be used.

Chapter 3, The Presentation Layer, demonstrates the implementation of the improvements brought by the Java EE 7 platform for the presentation layer specifications.

Chapter 4, The Java Persistence API, shows how your Java application can store and retrieve data from the database in a safe way and explains the innovations that have been made in the relevant specifications.

Chapter 5, The Business Layer, begins by giving a presentation of the improvement in the business layer and then demonstrates how various Java EE 7 specifications can be put together for the realization of an application.

Chapter 6, Communicating with External Systems, demonstrates how a Java EE 7 application can interact with heterogeneous systems.

Chapter 7, Annotations and CDI, explains how annotations and CDI can be used to improve the quality of applications.

Chapter 8, Validators and Interceptors, shows how the validation and interception of data can be implemented in a Java EE environment to ensure the quality of the data handled by an application.

Chapter 9, Security, demonstrates the implementation of security and setting up a personal module for security in Servlet and EJB containers.

What you need for this book

To implement the various examples present in this book, you will need the following software:

• NetBeans IDE 7.3.1 or higher

• JDK 7

• GlassFish Application Server 4, at least b89

• MySQL 5.5 or higher DBMS

Who this book is for

Given the main objectives, this book targets three groups of people who possess knowledge about Java. They are:

• Beginners in using the Java EE platform who would like to have an idea about the main specifications of Java EE 7

• Developers who have experimented with previous versions of Java EE and want to know what Java EE 7 has brought as novelties

• Budding architects who want to learn how to put together various Java EE 7 specifications for building robust and secure enterprise applications

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

@NameBinding
@Target({ ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD })
@Retention(value = RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface ZipResult {})

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Expand the server-config menu."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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