Java has become a confusing world. Five years ago, there were few decisions to make once
you started programming in Java—you used AWT for graphical user interfaces, sockets for
network programming, and hacked together everything else you needed. Since then, though,
the APIs available for the Java language have grown, and grown. . . and grown. Now you can
dabble in Swing, servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), JavaMail, and more. Additionally,
there are now packages of APIs, like the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) and Java 2 Enterprise
Edition (J2EE). While these packages seem to be nicely wrapped bundles of useful APIs, they
don t help the average developer figure out how to piece together the APIs contained in these
packages. Though it s simple to find documentation on the individual APIs, getting the "big
picture" is difficult, at best. One of the most interesting, but difficult, aspects of Java today is
building Java enterprise applications using the J2EE package.
