December From the Pages Features
SPECIAL FEATURE
The Top Products of 2000
Java Report's Annual Writers' Choice Awards
John K. Waters
Coordinated by our Product Review Editor, our columnists and feature writers have cast their votes for the top three choices of Java products in a variety of categories. This year our master list includes 1,120 Java products. Contributors from the U.S. and abroad responded. Every product listed, whatever its ranking, is doing something right and is well-worth a look!
TECHNICAL FEATURES
ENTERPRISE JAVA
Invoke Servlet Methods From Java Apps
David Tayouri
One of the best ways to connect Java apps is through RMI. But what about when using servlets? Java offers many ways to connect remote applications. The natural way for two objects to communicate is invoking each method, and this is what RMI enables for remote objects.
ENTERPRISE JAVA
Bridging the Gap Between Java Clients and EJBs Using XML
William Louth
William describes a solution that enables the development of superior UIs that obtain their information needs from EJBs. The solution shows how to develop EJBs and their Java clients while not corrupting each implementation to meet the needs of another. He also shows how to achieve a consistent visual representation of domain objects while at the same time reducing repetitive code.
COMPONENT JAVA
AWT Styled Text Component
Budi Kurniawan
Budi discusses how to build StyledTextArea, a non-Swing component that can run on applets in a Web browser. Unlike the "plain" AWT TextArea, which can only display text in one specific color, font, and size, the StyledTextArea can display text in different fonts, colors, and sizes at the same time. This component supports text wrapping and has one method—append—but can easily be extended to cater to individual needs.
JAVA PRIMER
JCommands: A Flexible Undo Framework for Java
Andreas Bäcker
Support for undoable operations is an essential feature of modern interactive software systems. The JCommands framework presented by Andreas greatly simplifies the implementation of undoable operations because it focuses on composing undoable operations out of predefined command objects rather than on deriving command subclasses.
POWER JAVA
URL for Smarties: How to Invent New URL Formats and Be Happy
Cristiano Sadun
URLs are a common tool to locate an entity on a network. While Java provides a URL class and more in the java.net package, the standard library offers built-in support only for the common types of URL. Cristiano explains what can be done to make Java recognize and use arbitrary URLs, while building an example that allows posting an article on a newsgroup from Java code.