Java Reference
In-Depth Information
For a detailed history of NetBeans, see:
http://www.netbeans.org/download/books/definitive-
guide/html/apis-c_history.html
The NetBeans IDE supports several programming languages, but because of its
roots as Java-only IDE, it is a lot more popular with Java language. As a Java IDE,
NetBeans has built-in support for Java SE (Standard Edition) applications, which
typically run in the user's desktop or notebook computer; Java ME (Micro Edition),
which typically run in small devices such as cell phones or PDAs; and for Java EE
(Enterprise Edition) applications, which typically run on "big iron" servers and can
support thousands of concurrent users.
In this topic, we will be focusing on the Java EE development capabilities of
NetBeans, and how to take advantage of NetBeans features to help us develop Java
EE applications more efficiently.
Some of the features we will cover include how NetBeans can help us speed up web
applications using the Servlet API and JSPs by providing a starting point for these
kind of artifacts, and how we can use the NetBeans palette to drag-and-drop code
snippets into our JSPs, including HTML and JSP markup. We will also see how
NetBeans can help us generate JPA entities from an existing database schema (JPA is
the Java Persistence API, the standard Object-Relational mapping tool included with
Java EE). We will see how NetBeans allows us to visually create web applications
using the JavaServer Faces framework via its visual web development tool.
In addition to web development, we will also see how NetBeans allows us to add
business methods to a stateless or stateful session bean in one shot, without having
to add the method both to the bean and to its business interface, and how to easily
develop web services. We will also cover how to easily write both EJB and web
service clients by taking advantage of some very nice NetBeans features.
