Developing J2EE applications can be time-consuming and error prone, and deploying them for execution on an application server only adds to the complexity. Even a simple "Hello World" Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) requires multiple files to be created and maintained in the correct locations. To the developer, this can mean frustrating complexity during the iterative development and debugging of the application. To the business, this complexity can cause delays in mission-critical or customer-facing applications.
For IBM WebSphere users, many of these problems have been addressed in the latest release of WebSphere Application Server, Rational Web Developer for WebSphere Software (RWD) and Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software (RAD), announced in October. These products contain a new feature called WebSphere Rapid Deploy, which accelerates application deployment and simplifies system testing on WebSphere Application Server version 6. If you're unfamiliar with RWD and RAD, they are the newest versions of WebSphere Studio Site Developer and WebSphere Studio Application Developer, respectively. An impressive set of new features helps enhance the quality of your code and simplifies the development of J2EE and portal applications. These products are now part of the IBM Rational division that took on their development staff and mission over a year ago. Despite the name change, RWD and RAD continue to be optimized for deploying applications to WebSphere, as shown by the addition of WebSphere Rapid Deploy.
WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) provides advanced wizards and editors to help you create and manage the artifacts within the development environment. The complexity of the J2EE infrastructure is still evident. Even a simple stateless session bean requires a bean implementation class, a home and remote interface, and a deployment descriptor, all of which must be kept in sync during development. WSAD also contains an integrated test environment that can automatically deploy applications to the embedded WebSphere Application Server with a single menu item click. This test environment has a number of limitations though, including the inability to deploy your application to a "staging server" that is shared among a number of developers. These issues are all addressed in the new products via the "WebSphere Rapid Deploy" (WRD) feature.
WRD introduces a new annotation-based programming model that greatly simplifies development. The annotations take the form of javadoc style comments in the code, allowing complex component-based applications such as EJBs to be represented within the development environment using only a single Java class. This class contains annotations that indicate the actual J2EE artifact type that is desired (e.g., a stateless session bean) and then generates the infrastructure (e.g., the remote and home interface). The resulting application is fully-formed and J2EE-compliant, so you only need to maintain one simple class and all of the complex aspects become derived deployment artifacts.
