Description:
Written with the Information Systems professional or general reader in mind, Not Just Java: A Technology Briefing provides an introduction to today's Internet, gives an overview of what's best in Java (though with a distinctly anti-Microsoft spin), and stresses the growing importance of Java technology. The book begins with a tour of today's major software and hardware corporations and their strategies regarding Java. (Predictably, Sun fares well, while Microsoft is portrayed as the enemy who wants to "kill" Java, which is probably an oversimplified view of the matter.) Introductory material on the basics of the Internet, from the basics of HTTP and hypertext, follows. Author Peter van der Linden then covers programming within today's browsers, discussing plug-ins, JavaScript, Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and Java. Throughout Not Just Java, he uses brief case studies to illustrate Java in action. Next, he discusses e-commerce, obviously an area with tremendous potential, and then security on the Internet. Here again, Microsoft technology fails to measure up. A tour of Java as a better object-oriented programming language follows, including additional multimedia Java APIs and JavaBeans (including Enterprise JavaBeans). Later sections in the book look at today's multitiered distributed architectures and what Java offers for the enterprise, including network and distributed computing. Readers who don't mind strong opinions will appreciate Not Just Java's argumentative approach to what Java is and how it might well transform computing as we know it within the next few years. --Richard Dragan
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