J2EE BluePrints in NetBeans IDE

Abstract: Teaching by example. This is the main theme behind the Java?? BluePrints Solutions Catalog, a new project from the Java BluePrints program. It consists of a set of guidelines and best practices and small applications to illustrate these guidelines on the J2EE 1.4 platform.

Originally, you had to download the catalog from java.net and deploy it to your local Sun Java System?? Application Server, or view a slimmed-down version online. Starting with NetBeans 4.1, however, the Solutions Catalog is integrated right into the IDE.

To open the Solutions Catalog, choose Help> Java BluePrints Solutions Catalog. The catalog viewer opens in the Source Editor.

Select any chapter in the combo box at the top of the viewer to open it. You can then click the Example tab to install an example on your computer and open it as a NetBeans project. You can install as many instances of the examples as you want. This is good if you want to use the examples as templates that you then tweak for your own uses. Of course, each example project is all set up and ready for deployment to the application server.

Not all of the examples available in the full Solutions Catalog have been converted into NetBeans projects yet. Presently, the following chapters are available:

Web Applications
- Handling Command Submissions
- Creating Tabbed Views
- Server-Side Java Server Faces Validators
- Implementing Client-side Validation
Web Services
- Accessing Web Services from J2EE Components
- Accessing Web Services from a Stand-Alone Java Client
- Designing Document Oriented Services
- Using a Schema-Defined Type to Represent an XML Document in a Service Interface
- Using String to Represent an XML Document in a Service Interface
- Updating Service Locator to Support Web Services