Chapter 1. Introduction

Topics in This Chapter

• The Enterprise JavaBeans™ Architecture

• How This Book Is Organized

• Our Vision

• Reader Audience

• About the Examples

• Source Code Online

Distributed computing has always had tough problems to solve: security, concurrency, database transactions, data integrity, and performance requirements, to name a few. How does the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) address these issues and what is the role of the Enterprise JavaBeans architecture?

As we describe the Enterprise JavaBeans component architecture, let's define where we hope to go, how we hope to get there, and who we hope to take with us. The software industry has exciting offerings right now and in the near future. The architecture of loosely coupled components promises to offer flexibility, scalability, and portability. There is no better time than now to delve into the world of distributed component computing!