Better, Faster, Lighter Java

Sometimes the simplest answer is the best. Many Enterprise Java developers, accustomed to dealing with Java's spiraling complexity, have fallen into the habit of choosing overly complicated solutions to problems when simpler options are available. Building server applications with "heavyweight" Java-based architectures, such as WebLogic, JBoss, and WebSphere, can be costly and cumbersome. When you've reached the point where you spend more time writing code to support your chosen framework than to solve your actual problems, it's time to think in terms of simplicity.

In Better, Faster, Lighter Java authors Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland argue that the old heavyweight architectures are unwieldy, complicated, and contribute to slow and buggy application code. As an alternative means for building better applications, the authors present two "lightweight" open source architectures: Hibernate--a persistence framework that does its job with a minimal API and gets out of the way, and Spring--a container that's not invasive, heavy or complicated.

Hibernate and Spring are designed to be fairly simple to learn and use, and place reasonable demands on system resources. Better, Faster, Lighter Java shows you how they can help you create enterprise applications that are easier to maintain, write, and debug, and are ultimately much faster.

Written for intermediate to advanced Java developers, Better, Faster, Lighter Java, offers fresh ideas--often unorthodox--to help you rethink the way you work, and techniques and principles you'll use to build simpler applications. You'll learn to spend more time on what's important. When you're finished with this book, you'll find that your Java is better, faster, and lighter than ever before

Table of Contents

Preface 

1. The Inevitable Bloat

      Bloat Drivers 

      Options 

      Five Principles for Fighting the Bloat 

      Summary 

2. Keep It Simple

      The Value of Simplicity 

      Process and Simplicity 

      Your Safety Net 

      Summary 

3. Do One Thing, and Do It Well

      Understanding the Problem 

      Distilling the Problem 

      Layering Your Architecture 

      Refactoring to Reduce Coupling 

      Summary 

4. Strive for Transparency

      Benefits of Transparency 

      Who's in Control? 

      Alternatives to Transparency 

      Reflection 

      Injecting Code 

      Generating Code 

      Advanced Topics 

      Summary 

5. You Are What You Eat

      Golden Hammers 

      Understanding the Big Picture 

      Considering Technical Requirements 

      Summary 

6. Allow for Extension

      The Basics of Extension 

      Tools for Extension 

      Plug-In Models 

      Who Is the Customer? 

      Summary 

7. Hibernate

      The Lie 

      What Is Hibernate? 

      Using Your Persistent Model 

      Evaluating Hibernate 

      Summary 

8. Spring

      What Is Spring? 

      Pet Store: A Counter-Example 

      The Domain Model 

      Adding Persistence 

      Presentation 

      Summary 

9. Simple Spider

      What Is the Spider? 

      Examining the Requirements 

      Planning for Development 

      The Design 

      The Configuration Service 

      The Crawler/Indexer Service 

      The Search Service 

      The Console Interface 

      The Web Service Interface 

      Extending the Spider 

10. Extending jPetStore

      A Brief Look at the Existing Search Feature 

      Replacing the Controller 

      The User Interface (JSP) 

      Setting Up the Indexer 

      Making Use of the Configuration Service 

      Adding Hibernate 

      Summary 

11. Where Do We Go from Here?

      Technology 

      Process 

      Challenges 

      Conclusion