Enterprise Application

Architecture
 Intro
• Java is used to build two types of applications; standalone and
internet based applications.
• All the Java programs we learned and developed until now are
standalone applications.
• These applications are either console based applications that
spit the output to the console, or GUI based applications like
word processors, paint tools etc where funky windows show
up to display information.
• These applications are like independent applications that are
used by several users and every user will have a copy of the
application.
• Such Java applications are no different from applications built
using other languages like C, C++ etc, except being platform
independent.
• This is one side of Java that we all know about.
• The other side of Java is that it can be used build Internet
based applications that can be used by millions of users at the
same time.
• This is the true power of Java.
• Such internet applications are popularly known as enterprise
level applications, as they form the faces of today’s modern
enterprises on the internet.
• So, from now onwards, we will use Java to build enterprise
level applications that run on internet.
 What is Enterprise Application?
• An enterprise or e-commerce application is an application that an
enterprise or an organization uses to do business using Internet.
• The advent of internet has completely changed the world of
communication. With the widespread usage of internet, businesses
quickly realized a whole new market had opened up to exploit and
started taking advantage through e-commerce.
• With almost all the businesses going online, the information assets
of a company became more and more valuable.
• In order to sustain the competition, adoption of sophisticated
technologies has become the key factor in exploiting the
information assets of a business.
• J2EE is one such technology that helps businesses to build better
and flexible e-commerce applications by securing the critical
business data.
 Key challenges of enterprise
application
• Performance: Since the application is now exposed to millions
of users, its very important that it responds faster enough to
user requests. This is one of the most important aspects that
play a key role in the success of a business.
• Reliability: The application must be reliable in terms of
processing the business transactions successfully and
accurately.
• Availability: It’s very important that the application be up and
running all the times with almost zero downtime. Few
seconds of downtime can result in losing thousands of $$.
• Security: The application must be able to provide a secure
environment during the exchange of information between
customers and businesses.
 Core J2EE Technologies
• J2EE technologies are standard helper technologies that we
use to build enterprise applications.
• Here is list of important technologies that every J2EE
application server supports:
Technology Name Description
JDBC Used for easy interaction with various Databases

Servlets/JSP Used for building dynamic web applications in Java

JNDI Used for interacting with Naming and Directory Services

JMS Used for interacting with Messaging Systems

EJB Component technology for building distributed

components

Javamail Used for sending Emails

 Enterprise Application Architectures
• Since we are building enterprise applications in Java, we need
to know the architecture of a typical enterprise application.
• Before we look into it, let’s learn something about the various
enterprise architectures that we currently have
 2-Tier Architecture

• In this architecture, all the business logic and presentation

logic of the application is embedded in the clients computer
itself.
• Therefore if my application has 100 clients, I need to install
the application on all the 100 client computers.
• However the database will still reside on a separate computer
that will be shared by all the clients.
 PT BT

Client 1

PT BT
DB
Client 2

Fig: Typical 2-Tier Architecture

Advantages
• Simple and easy to build 9 Low cost
Disadvantages
• Even a small change to the application requires a reinstall of the
application on all the client computers.
• If some clients are not ready to take the changes, then multiple
versions of the application will prevail, thereby causing
maintenance nightmares.
• The performance of the application is dependent on the
performance of client computer.
• Heavy network traffic due to multiple requests to the database
from all the client computers.
The disadvantages of this architecture outweigh the few
advantages making it less useful.
 3-Tier Architecture

• In this architecture, the presentation logic, business logic and

data are logically distributed in three tiers.
• The main difference is that the business logic is permanently
isolated from all the client systems and moved to centralized
middle tier.
• The presentation logic on the client systems will query the
business logic in the middle tier which in turn accesses the
data from the database.
• This architecture overcomes all the cons of 2-tier system.
 PT

Client 1
BT

DB
PT

Client 2

Fig: Typical 3-Tier Architecture

Advantages
• Centralized business logic will offer more flexibility. Business
logic is only required to be changed at one place there by
eliminating the installation process of the application on client
systems.
• Less network traffic, thereby improving the performance of the
application.
• Application performance is no longer dependent on client
computer due to the business logic isolation. 9 No more
maintenance nightmares.
Disadvantages
• Any update to the business logic must be accepted by all the
clients even if they are not ready for updates.
 N-Tier Architecture

• In this type of architecture, the application logic is divided

based on the functionality rather than physically like in 2-tier
and 3-tier architectures.
• A typical n-tier architecture contains the following elements:
• User Interface: This is something like a web browser that
handles the client interactions.
• Presentation Logic: This defines format using which the
information will be displayed.
• Business Logic: Encapsulates all the business rules by
interacting with data sources.
• Infrastructure Services: These are utility services that the
presentation and business logic makes use of.
• Breaking the application logic based on functionality offers
several benefits like flexibility, better maintenance, improved
performance, reusability of code and may more.
• This architecture is also referred to as Model-View-Controller
(MVC) architecture.
 Enterprise Architecture
• An N-tier architecture is applicable to a single application in
an enterprise.
• However, an enterprise application is a collection of several
applications within the enterprise with all the applications
working in tandem and interacting with each other through
well defined interfaces a shown in the following figure.
• Simply stating, enterprise architecture is a combination of
several n-tier architectures.
• With this basic knowledge of various architectures, let’s now
try to understand somethings about application servers.
 J2EE Application Servers
• Unlike simple Java programs, we don’t use java command to
execute the J2EE applications.
• We use a special program called application server to run the
applications.
• However, we still use the same old javac command to compile
the applications.
• An application server is the heart of any J2EE application.
• This is the one that runs the enterprise application on the
internet.
• So, we can’t even move a step forward without knowing what
this is.
• A J2EE application server is a ready made sophisticated
application that will host and run all the J2EE applications.
• There are several free and commercial application servers
available in the market today that are developed by noted
companies like Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM, BEA and many
more.
• What is the purpose of all these companies developing the
same application server?
• Here is the deal. Sun Microsystems first came up with the
notion of J2EE platform that can be used to build large scale
enterprise applications in Java. To simplify the development of
such applications, they felt the need for the following two
things:
1. A Server that runs the applications
2. Helper technologies to build the applications.
• They did the hard work and came up with the specifications for
the above.
• These are popularly known as J2EE specifications.
• Having just the specifications is not good enough. We need
someone to convert the specifications into workable realities.
• Therefore, Sun Microsystems decided to distribute the
specifications to companies who can implement them.
• This is how IBM, BEA, Apache and several other companies
came into picture.
• These companies used the J2EE specifications from Sun
Microsystems, and built the two workable components listed
above using their expertise.
• Once they built the application server along with the helper
technologies, they started selling it.
• A company to build and host enterprise level applications in
Java needs a J2EE application server.
• It will therefore hunt for those who sell the J2EE servers and
come across several companies like SUN, IBM, BEA, JBoss and
many more.
• After serious negotiations with the companies, it finally
chooses the company who sells it for less $$ and more value.
• Once you have a J2EE application server, you can start
building and running enterprise applications.
• All the companies that built the J2EE Application Server gave
funky names to their product shown in the following table:
“A J2EE application server runs enterprise internet
applications that are built using standard J2EE technologies”.