As readers of JDJ know, J2EE is a standard platform for developing enterprise applications using reusable components, standard APIs, and popular software design patterns. The J2EE Blueprints is a Sun initiative that's meant to aid developers trying to get their arms around the wide gamut of J2EE technologies and APIs, and the Pet Store Demo is a part of this initiative. They provide a combination of J2EE design guidelines and a sample application for building distributed applications on the Java platform. This month JDJ brings you an exclusive interview with Lawrence Freeman, the manager of the J2EE Blueprints team.
JDJ: The last year has seen some major developments in the J2EE Platform. Were there any targets Sun wanted to achieve in this time?
Freeman: There are four deliverables for J2EE: the specification, the reference implementation (RI), the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), and the reference application, that is, the J2EE Blueprints.
JDJ: What is the Pet Store Demo?
Freeman: The Pet Store Demo is the reference application for J2EE that showcases the main features of the J2EE platform. It's part of the Blueprints program that seeks to provide best practice guidelines for J2EE application development. J2EE Blueprints includes a Web site, a best-selling book, design patterns, and reference applications. In the future, J2EE Blueprints will include other demo applications besides the Pet Store. The Pet Store is currently being used in the Deployathon, an event in which a J2EE application is deployed and run on multiple application servers to demonstrate J2EE portability.
JDJ: Could you briefly describe what role you've had in the design and "disbursement" of the Pet Store Demo application?
Freeman: I'm the manager of the J2EE Blueprints team, and my team designed and wrote the code for the Java Pet Store. As J2EE's Application Programming Model group, we're responsible for making best-practice recommendations to application developers. The Java Pet Store was designed to illustrate these guidelines. The J2EE Blueprints team will be speaking at this year's JavaOne.
JDJ: The Pet Store demo is an unusual application. How did it emerge?
Freeman: The application began as part of an effort to write a book on the J2EE application programming model. A sample application was needed to go with the book.
The original application was a wine store; however, the images that represented the different wine bottles all looked the same. Two members of our team who are pet lovers thought a pet store with its variety of animals would make a more interesting demo.
The important idea is that an online store is one of many application scenarios that can be built using the design guidelines presented by the Blueprints team.
JDJ: Could you broadly describe how the Pet Store application can be used to build and deploy real-world applications?
Freeman: I think the key here is the design guidelines and patterns that are presented on the Blueprint Web site, http://java.sun.com/j2ee/blueprints. The goal is to help developers and architects make design decisions when writing a J2EE application.
