An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer: A Guided Tour

by Valentina Birsan, Jane Fung, Christina Lau, Ellen McKay, Colin Yu

Overview

IBM Rational Application Developer is a very important tool for developers, but it is also a complex product. An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer, A Guided Tour is designed to jumpstart the learning process with its focus on interactive hands-on learning through a wide variety of useful, practical, end-to-end tutorials. Hands-on exercises and in-depth explanations form chapter "modules" within the book, thereby providing a complete step-by-step guide to each specific topic while allowing readers to pick and choose which tutorials they want (or need) to study without necessarily going in chapter order. And, because of its modular structure, each tutorial's sample code is independent of any earlier tutorials, freeing readers to skip from tutorial to tutorial, based on their specific knowledge requirements. Because of this design, this book continues to be a useful reference as a reader's "need to know" increases. Using this book's method, readers quickly learn IBM Rational Application Developer—regardless of their previous level of experience or inexperience. For beginners, there are tutorials that teach how to create Web, EJB, JMS, and Web Services applications using Rational Application Developer. For the more advanced readers, there are tutorials on security, publishing, testing, team development, profiling, and logging. Written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, the tutorials run on common databases, including IBM Cloudscape, IBM DB2« Universal Database, Microsoft« SQL Server, Sybase« Enterprise Systems, and Oracle« Database.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931182331
Publisher:	Mc Press
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	650
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jane Fung is a staff software developer at IBM Canada where she is responsible for developing the Business Process Debugger in WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Integration Edition. She previously worked in the WebSphere Studio technical support team. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Christina Lau is an architect on the WebSphere Business Scenario development team responsible for analyzing customer scenarios and improving integration and consistency across the WebSphere platform. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Colin Yu is a technical designer with the WebSphere business scenario development team at the IBM Software Solutions Toronto lab. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Valentina Birsan is an advisory software developer at the IBM Toronto lab where she leads a team developing user interfaces for profiling, tracing, and logging tools running on the Eclipse platform. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Yen Lu is an advisory software developer at IBM Canada where he is responsible for the architecture and development of the Web Services Explorer in the IBM WebSphere Studio suite. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Peter Walker is an advisory software engineer and developer of the WebSphere Studio Visual Editor for Java. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Joe Winchester is a senior advisory software engineer and developer of the WebSphere Studio Visual Editor for Java. Ellen McKay is an information developer for the IBM WebSphere Studio family of tools. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Dr. Gili Mendel is the technical lead for the Visual Editor for Java project and a member of the IBM WebSphere Tools software development team. Timothy deBoer is the team lead for the deployment and publishing of tools found in the WebSphere Studio family of products. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Gary Flood is an advisory IT specialist who works with a number of J2EE technologies, including JMS and EJB, through the Patterns for eBusiness initiative and the WebSphere platform solution test team. J Jane Fung is a staff software developer at IBM Canada where she is responsible for developing the Business Process Debugger in WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Integration Edition. She previously worked in the WebSphere Studio technical support team. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Christina Lau is an architect on the WebSphere Business Scenario development team responsible for analyzing customer scenarios and improving integration and consistency across the WebSphere platform. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Colin Yu is a technical designer with the WebSphere business scenario development team at the IBM Software Solutions Toronto lab. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Valentina Birsan is an advisory software developer at the IBM Toronto lab where she leads a team developing user interfaces for profiling, tracing, and logging tools running on the Eclipse platform. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Yen Lu is an advisory software developer at IBM Canada where he is responsible for the architecture and development of the Web Services Explorer in the IBM WebSphere Studio suite. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Peter Walker is an advisory software engineer and developer of the WebSphere Studio Visual Editor for Java. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Joe Winchester is a senior advisory software engineer and developer of the WebSphere Studio Visual Editor for Java. Ellen McKay is an information developer for the IBM WebSphere Studio family of tools. She lives in Markham, Ontario. Dr. Gili Mendel is the technical lead for the Visual Editor for Java project and a member of the IBM WebSphere Tools software development team. Timothy deBoer is the team lead for the deployment and publishing of tools found in the WebSphere Studio family of products. He lives in Markham, Ontario. Gary Flood is an advisory IT specialist who works with a number of J2EE technologies, including JMS and EJB, through the Patterns for eBusiness initiative and the WebSphere platform solution test te

Read an Excerpt

An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer

A Guided Tour

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By Jane Fung, Colin Yu

IBM Press and MC Press

Copyright © 2007 International Business Machines Corporation
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-931182-33-1

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When IBM acquired Rational Development Corporation, it seemed only natural to move the WebSphere Studio Application Developer family of tools under the IBM Rational brand. This integrates the great capabilities of Rational Application Developer with the quality tools in Rational to provide a seamless development environment. IBM Rational Application Developer is a follow-on product for WebSphere Studio Application Developer and includes many of the best development features of the Rational products.

This introduction contains:

* A brief description of the other chapters in this book

* An overview of Rational Application Developer

* A summary of the help and support information for Rational Application Developer

* An overview of the Product Updater tool that can be used to update and add new features to Rational Application Developer

Who This Book Is For

This book is aimed at beginners who want to quickly and easily learn to use Rational Application Developer. Rational Application Developer is a very complex product, and the learning curve involved in using it can be quite steep. Although this book helps introduce you to Rational Application Developer, it will be helpful if you already have some familiarity with it or its predecessor, WebSphere Studio Application Developer. Also, some of the tutorials are written with the expectation that you have at least some knowledge of Java coding.

To help you get started using Rational Application Developer quickly and effectively, tutorials in this book cover the key components in Rational Application Developer. These tutorials give you a hands-on feel for Rational Application Developer and let you learn interactively. As you work through the tutorials, you will start to understand how to use Rational Application Developer to create practical applications without going through pages and pages of background material. We have tried to use real-world examples that reflect the kind of everyday tasks you need to perform.

Many other books use only one database as the basis for their examples. We know that everyone uses different databases; therefore, this book covers five: IBM Cloudscape, IBM DB2 Universal Database, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase Enterprise Systems, and Oracle Database. If you do not already have a database, you can use the embedded Cloudscape database that ships with Rational Application Developer.

How to Use This Book and CD

Each chapter in this book covers one concept, such as Java applications or Web development. Every chapter starts with a short introduction that covers some basic background material on the concept. Then, one or more tutorials help you explore Rational Application Developer and learn more about the concept.

Each chapter in this book stands alone; that is, you do not have to complete the tutorials in one chapter to complete those in the following chapters. Also, you generally do not need to complete the first tutorial in a chapter before you do the second or third one. In other words, you can immediately proceed to any tutorial you want.

The chapters in this book are organized as follows:

* Chapter 1, which you are currently reading, provides a brief introduction to Rational Application Developer.

* Chapter 2 explains how to develop, run, and debug a simple Java application.

* Chapter 3 covers Web development, including developing Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java servlets, and running them in the WebSphere Application Server.

* Chapter 4 introduces you to database development, and covers topics such as creating database tables, accessing data using Java programs, using a datasource, and calling stored procedures.

* Chapter 5 introduces you to XML development, and covers topics such as creating XML, XML schema, and XSL files. It also discusses connecting XML to database data and using the Java API for XML processing.

* Chapter 6 covers Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), including how to use entity EJBs, session EJBs, session bean facades, and message-driven beans.

* Chapter 7 covers the Java Messaging Service (JMS) and message-driven beans (MDBs). This chapter provides detailed background information and explanations of terminology, as well as tutorials that teach you how to write a JMS application and develop MDBs.

* Chapter 8 covers Web services, including how to create a Web service and its corresponding client, and how to test the client proxy and publish the Web service.

* Chapter 9 covers advanced topics on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), including WebSphere Application Server v6.0 development, annotation-based programming, enhanced EARs, J2EE and EJB security, and J2EE class loading.

* Chapter 10 covers creating visual Java applications, including how to use the Java editor to create an application and set up a layout for it, and how to bind a user interface to a data source in order to access server information.

* Chapter 11 covers team development with Concurrent Versions System (CVS), including how to install CVS, and how to share and merge files changes.

* Chapter 12 introduces you to the Rational Application Developer Profiling and Logging tool. You learn to use it to perform tasks such as finding performance problems, tracing memory leaks, and tracing application execution.

* Chapter 13 introduces you to the visual modeling capabilities available in the product. This chapter explains the capabilities for architectural and application analysis through visual modeling. You learn how to visually model key design elements in an application and how to use the Rational Unified Process for J2EE.

The CD bundled with this book includes all of the applications created in the chapters' tutorials. You can follow the instructions in the tutorials to create the applications, or you can import the completed applications from the CD and read along. The files on the CD are named according to chapters. For example, Ch1Applications.zip contains the completed application for chapter 1.

To import the applications from the CD, follow these steps:

1. From the workbench, select File => Import => Project Interchange. Click Next.

2. Browse to the zip file and click Select All to import all the projects.

3. Click Finish.

The CD also includes a Cloudscape database that contains all the schemas and tables used and created throughout the book. You do not have to use this database if you follow along with the steps in the tutorials, but it is included for your convenience.

To use the completed Cloudscape database, unzip the DefaultDB.zip file anywhere. For those chapters that use a datasource (chapters 4, 6, 12, and 13), you need to modify the datasource's database attribute from the EAR deployment descriptor (on the Deployment page) to your Cloudscape database location.

Overview of Rational Application Developer

Rational Application Developer is a new development tool for applications destined for WebSphere Application Server. Support is provided for developing J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 applications, and for deploying to WebSphere Application Server versions 5.0, 5.1, and 6.0.

Rational Application Developer is based on the Rational Software Development Platform. This platform contains the common components for Rational version 6.0 products and is based on Eclipse 3.0.

The development platform is installed only with the first Rational version 6.0 product. If any other Rational version 6.0 product is installed, only the plug-ins (components) that make up the product will be installed. In this way, all of the products on the system have the capabilties of the development platform with the benefit of a reduced installation size. Also, for maintentance, a single installation of the development platform is much easier to update.

The Rational Application Developer tools are designed to provide the following benefits:

* Broaden appeal — Rational Application Developer provides improved user assistance and ease of learning. It includes samples, examples, and other information that enables developers to quickly begin building enterprise-class applications. It also has a progressive disclosure of tools and capabilties. Many of the components and tools included with Rational Application Developer are initially hidden. When one of these is selected, its full capabilities are loaded, including views, perspectives, and icons.

* Increase productivity — Rational Application Developer provides rapid application development. Many wizards and editors provide a visual development experience to simplify design and development, through the generation of underlying components. Rational Application Developer also provides rapid deployment to WebSphere Application Server version 6.0.

* Extend integration — Rational technology has been integrated to enhance the application-development life cycle and increase productivity. You can use Rational Applicaton Developer to visually generate a component, analyze it, view the analysis results, and then debug it. In addition, WebSphere Portal Toolkit's features are now included by default in Rational Application Developer and have been integrated with Web, Struts, and JavaServer Faces tools.

* Maintain standards and middleware currency — Rational Application Developer provides enhanced support for the J2EE 1.4 specifications, as well as for WebSphere Application Server version 6.0.

Help and Support Information

This section contains information on:

* The Rational Application Developer help system

* Support information in the online help

* The Log and Trace Analyzer tool

* Log files

Rational Application Developer's Help System

The product documentation helps you find information about Rational Application Developer's tools and how to use them to achieve your development goals. The online help system lets you browse, search, and print online documentation for the product.

To access the online help, click Help => Rational Contents in the main workbench.

Rational Application Developer also includes context-sensitive help. To access the help, select an item (such as a button or field) and press F1. An infopop will open, containing a description of the item and links to related help files.

Support Information in the Online Help

To open Rational Application Developer's online help, select Help => Rational Help from the workbench main menu. You will see a book called Troubleshooting and Support. This documentation is designed to serve as a self-help tool to resolve any problems you might encounter. It contains information on the following:

* Getting fixes — If you encounter a problem, a product fix might be available to resolve it.

* Troubleshooting checklists — Detailed checklists help you eliminate possible problem areas and find solutions for problems occuring within Rational Application Developer.

* Searching knowledge bases — You can search both the Internet and the online help included with Rational Application Developer to determine whether the resolution to your problem is already documented.

* Contacting IBM Software Support — Use this information to assess your problem, provide background information on it, and contact IBM Software Support.

The Troubleshooting and Support book also mentions the IBM Support Assistant. This tool helps you search IBM's knowledge bases to see whether your problem is already documented. To access it, select Help => IBM Support Assistant from the main workbench menu.

The Log and Trace Analyzer Tool

Rational Application Developer includes a Log and Trace Analyzer tool that enables you to import various log files and symptom databases, against which the log files can be analyzed and correlated.

When attempting to isolate problems, one of the main problems is that you cannot easily determine the relationship of events captured by one product with the events captured by another. The Log and Trace Analyzer tool addresses this problem. It allows you to import and analyze log files (or trace files) from multiple products, as well as to determine the correlation between the events captured by these products.

Correlation is the process of analyzing and determining a set of related events, based on a set of rules that are used to interpret the data contained in the events. The Log and Trace Analyzer tool provides several ways of correlating information within a single log file, such as ordering the events in a log by time stamp, or filtering for only events with a specific thread ID. For more information about the Log and Trace Analyzer tool, refer to the online help.

Log Files

There are two main log files: .log and LoggingUtil.log. Both are ASCII files and can be easily read with any text editor. Both are located in the .metadata directory of your workspace directory. To locate your workspace directory, you can either search for the .metadata directory, or shut down and re-start Rational Application Developer. If you choose the second option, you will be prompted to specify your workspace, and your current workspace location will be listed.

The .log file is used to capture notifications, errors, and any uncaught exceptions from Rational Application Developer plug-ins. It is cumulative in its behavior — each new session of Rational Application Developer appends its messages to the end of the .log file without deleting any previous messages. This enables you to see a history of past messages over multiple Rational Application Developer sessions, each one starting with the !SESSION string.

The LoggingUtil.log file contains information about the actions of the Log and Trace analyzer and the events that plug-ins send to the Log and Trace analyzer for recording. A new LoggingUtil.log file is created each time Rational Application Developer is started. The previous LoggingUtil.log file is renamed and saved by appending a unique string, such as a time stamp, to its file name. At any given time, the <workspace>\.metadata directory contains one .log file, one LoggingUtil.log, and any additional LoggingUtil.log.* files that exist from previous Rational Application Developer sessions.

Events in both the log files are recorded by appending to the end of the file, so the files are in chronological order, with the oldest event at the beginning of the file and the most recent event at the end.

Product Updater

Rational Application Developer is structured as a collection of plug-ins. Each plug-in contains code that provides some of the product's functionality. The code and other files for a plug-in are installed on your local computer and activated automatically as required.

Rational Application Developer's plug-ins are grouped together into features. A feature is the smallest unit of separately downloadable and installable functionality.

It is easy to install additional features and plug-ins into Rational Application Developer, as well as to update the product's existing features and plug-ins. The simplest way to do this is to use the Rational Application Developer Product Updater.

The Product Updater keeps track of all Rational software development products installed on your system and searches for and installs product updates and optional new features. The Product Updater is installed automatically with Rational Application Developer. Using the Product Updater, you can search for and automatically install the following kinds of updates:

* Product updates, such as fix packs, refresh packs, and interim fixes

* Optional features that provide new functionality

To locate and install product updates and optional new features with the Product Updater tool, follow these steps (which require Internet access):

1. Click Start =>Programs =>IBM Rational =>Rational Product Updater to launch the Product Updater. An inventory of installed products is displayed.

2. Click the Find Updates button to search for available updates or the Find Optional Features button to search for available optional new features.

3. For product updates, the Updates page shows the type and number of available updates for each installed product or feature. Click each update to display its description and detailed information about it. Select the list of updates you want to install, and click Install Updates. When the installation is finished, the installed updates are removed from the Updates list and added to the Installed Products list.

For optional features, the Optional Features page shows the name and version of any new optional features that are available. Before installing any new feature, you can click its name to review the detailed information. Select the list of features you want to install, and click Install Features. When the installation is finished, the new items are removed from the Optional Features page and added to the Installed Products page.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer by Jane Fung, Colin Yu. Copyright © 2007 International Business Machines Corporation. Excerpted by permission of IBM Press and MC Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Dedication,
About the Authors,
Foreword,
1 - Introduction,
2 - Developing Java Applications,
3 - Introduction to Web Development,
4 - Introduction to Database Development,
5 - Introduction to XML Development,
6 - Developing Enterprise JavaBeans,
7 - Java Messaging Service and Message-Driven Beans,
8 - Web Services,
9 - Advanced J2EE Topics,
10 - Creating Java Visual Applications,
11 - Team Development with CVS,
12 - Introduction to Profiling and Logging,
13 - Visual Modeling,