Laying the foundation of a Web application
Now it's time to start putting together a Web application. Actually, two
Web applications. The first one does not use Ajax with XQuery. The
second application does. This way, you'll be able to see the advantages of
the latter.
What follows is a brief overview of the technologies used in these Web
applications so that you can compile, deploy, and execute them in your
local environment.
Java technology
You'll use the latest version of the Java programming language (Version 6)
in these applications. This is done for two reasons: First, the Java
software development kit (JDK) is available at no charge, and second, if a
certain technology is free, why wouldn't you want the latest of it?
XQJ
XQJ is DataDirect's implementation of XQuery. This fabulous library is a
must for anyone requiring XQuery functions within a Java
development environment. Although this is a commercial product, the company
offers a free trial download. As of this writing, the trial period ends 15
days after installation.
Apache Tomcat
Tomcat is a Web application server compliant with Java enterprise
standards, brought to the development community by The Apache Software
Foundation. The good folks at that foundation have created some of the
finest technical products and made them available at the best price
possible: US$0. For purposes of this tutorial, you use Version 6 of the
Tomcat server.
The Spring Framework
One of the latest (and probably one of the greatest, in my opinion) Java enterprise
frameworks is the Spring Framework. For purposes of this tutorial, you'll
use Version 2.5 of this framework for dependency injection (automatic
instantiation and insertion of dependent objects into their respective
hosts) and implementing the MVC pattern.
Other: please specify
The other technologies used in this tutorial are implicit. For example,
JavaScript code is automatically processed when the Web pages are served
through the Tomcat server. So no other downloads should be required.
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