Technology Overview: Development Platforms and Tools

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Course Name: Technology Overview: Development Platforms and Tools.

Brief Course Description: An exhaustive overview of current technologies relevant to Information Technology professionals, including all the important major topics for this year and next year.

Duration: 2.5 Days

Format: Instructor-led, Seminar

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of the IT industry

Assumed Audience: Appropriate for business application sponsors, project leads, training managers and others whose role is primarily business-oriented. This 2˝ day course is aimed at those professionals who need to demystify the current set of technology offering available to build business applications.

Course Materials: J2EE Book, .NET Book, Resource Pack

Course Description Summary: This course will provide a detailed overview of the current set of technologies and their place in the current IT Industry. The topics discussed will be J2EE, .NET, Integrated Development Environments, Tools, XML and Web Services.

The Outline

1. Day 1 - Morning
   1. Student Arrival
2. Day 2 - Afternoon
   1. Understanding the Changing Development Landscape
   1. Problems
   1. Understanding Terms and Words: the ever changing terminology challenge
   2. Understanding Competing Vendors: spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
   3. Understanding Competing Standards: the real battlefield for vendors.
   4. Understanding the Building Blocks (appservers, webservers, tools)
   5. Understanding the interrelationships between all the technology available
   2. Solutions
   1. Clients and Servers
   2. Client side technology vs. Server Side Technology: ask yourself, is this server-side or client-side technology I am looking at?
   3. Server Side Overview
   4. Web Servers(Microsoft: IIS; BEA: Weblogic; IBM: Websphere)
   5. Application Servers (Microsoft: COM+/MTS; BEA: Weblogic; IBM: Websphere; Sun: J2EE)
   6. ‘Middleware”….what it is, how to identify it
   7. Standards for data (XML) parameter passing (XML, SOAP) intercommunication between apps (COM+, SOAP)
   2. Details: Understanding the Java Platform
   1. J2EE, J2SE, J2ME – Major pieces of the overall Java Platform and how they fit into today’s corporate world.
   2. J2EE – Java 2 Enterprise Edition
   1. Understanding Java Server Pages (JSP), Servlets and Enterprise Java Beans (EJB).
   2. What are Java Server Pages and Servlets and what types skills does a development staff require to use this set of technologies successfully.
   3. What are Enterprise Java Beans and what types skills does a development staff require to use this set of technologies successfully.
   4. What is JNDI, RMI and other enterprise level Java technologies.
   5. Understanding J2EE Architectural strategies and criteria to use when deciding which strategy is right for your organization.
   6. Application Servers – What do they do and why do we need them?
   7. Application Server Vendors and their products
   8. IBM and the Websphere Application Server
   9. BEA and the Weblogic Application Server
   10. Sun and the iPlanet Application Server
   11. Open Source Software
   1. Apache Software Foundation
   2. Tomcat and the Apache Web Server
   3. Why does Open Source Software make sense for some companies?
   3. J2SE – Java 2 Standard Edition
   1. What is the J2SE and what comes with it?
   2. What is the JDK and how is it different from the JRE
   3. Is Java a rapid application development tool?
   4. Criteria for determining if moving to the Java Platform is right for a particular company if they haven’t moved to it already.
   4. J2ME, JXTA, JAXP and other Java Initiatives
   5. Development Tools for Java
   1. IBM and VisualAge for Java
   2. Borland and JBuilder 4
   3. Sun – Forte and NetBeans
   4. Symantec and Visual Café
   5. Oracle
   3. Details: Understanding the Microsoft Platform – The Old and the New
   1. Where are we at now?
   1. Current State of Windows NT 4.0
   2. Moving to and utilizing Windows 2000 if you haven’t done so already
   3. Should we move to Windows 2000 if we haven’t done so already?
   4. How much longer is Windows NT 4.0 going to be supported?
   2. Current Programming Languages
   1. Current Languages and Development Tools and Platforms in Use Today
   2. Visual Studio 6.0
   1. Visual Basic 6.0 – Where is it and where is it going?
   2. ADO 2.6
   3. Visual C++ - Where is it and where is it going?
   4. Visual Interdev 6.0
   5. Internet Information Server 4.0 and 5.0 and should you move to IIS 5.0 and ASP 3.0 if still using IIS 4.0 and ASP 2.0.
   6. Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) 2.0 NT 4.0and COM+ Services on Windows 2000 and should you be migrating from MTS to COM+.
   7. Understanding the Relationship between Visual Basic 6.0 DLL’s, Internet Information Server and MTS/COM+
   3. The .NET Platform
   1. C# - What is this new language and is this a replacement for C++?
   2. Common Language Runtime (CLR)
   3. How does the CLR work and how does it accommodate different languages like C# and VB.NET
   4. If one is thinking that this CLR seems familiar to them, that’s because it is.
   5. VB.NET – What happened to good old Visual Basic?
   6. Is Visual Basic as we know and love, dead?
   7. Does it make sense to stop using Visual Basic 6.0?
   8. Is Visual Basic dead – Revisited.
   9. Is the learning curve really that high and is there something my organization can do now to decrease this perceived learning curve?
   10. What is ADO.NET and is it really that different from ADO 2.x?
   11. ASP.NET
   12. How is this different from ASP 2 and 3
   13. How large is the learning curve for ASP.NET if I already have an experienced staff on IIS and ASP 2 or 3?
   14. Conclusion – Looks like there is a lot of work to do.
   15. What steps should be taken now to prepare?
   16. Is there anything developers should be aware of now to ease the migration to .NET?
   18. In performing a cost benefit analysis of moving to .NET, what types of factors should we be looking at?
   19. What if we’re happy right where we are with Visual Studio 6.0 and NT 4.0 and/or Windows 2000?
   4. Details: XML – A Demystification
   1. What are DTD’s and Schemas and which one should we choose?
   2. What is the difference between DOM and SAX parsers and when is the appropriate time and place to use each one?
   3. Recommended uses for XML in your applications.
   4. Don’t go overboard – how XML should not be used in applications (Do NOT use it to replace an RDBMS).
   5. Why is XML sometimes compared to EDI and can they really be compared?
   6. Is XML really less expensive than EDI if it was used for this purpose right now?
   7. Product Vendors and Software Providers: IBM, Sun, Microsoft and Open Source.
   5. Details: Relational Database Management Systems - RDBMS
   1. Choosing and Re-evaluating the purchase of an RDBMS
   2. What are my choices?
   3. Comparing IBM’s DB2, Oracle 9i, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Sybase Adaptive SQL Server.
   4. Are there any Open Source databases and do they compare in terms of quality and performance to commercial products like the one’s just mentioned?
   6. Details: Web Services – Why do we care?
   1. What are Web Services and why is everyone always talking about them?
   2. Are you kidding – it’s just XML over HTTP?
   3. Demystification of terms – SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, ebXML
   4. Isn’t this a replacement for DCOM, CORBA and RMI?
   5. Understanding Web Services in Microsoft’s world. Did you just say that SOAP can be used with VB 6.0 and ASP?
   6. Understanding Web Services on the Java platform.
   7. We have a lot of disparate platforms in our company, wouldn’t this set of technologies allow those platforms to communicate in an easier fashion?
   7. Application Architecture and Develop Processes
   1. MVC Architecture and a Layered Approach – Understanding the differences between Model 1 and Model 2. Which one is right for our organization?
   2. 3 Tier and n-Tier Architecture – What are common pitfalls to this approach and how can I avoid them?
   3. Understanding the use of Design Patterns and how development staff can improve the design, code and maintainability of software applications.
   4. Design Do’s and Don’ts.
   5. Testing your applications for both Usability and Performance.

3. Day 2 - Morning
1. Overview of J2EE Enterprise Application Development
1. Overview of Object Oriented Programming
2. Gaining Developer Productivity
3. Meeting Product Demand
4. Object Oriented Langauges and Platforms
2. Architecture of J2EE Applications
1. Java Platform Technologies Overview
2. Container-Based Component Management and Application Servers
3. Architecting Multi-tier Applications
4. Overview of EJB Architecture
5. Understanding Web Development
3. Getting Started with Java
1. Why/when was it developed, comparison to other programming languages
2. Advantages and Disadvantages of Java™
3. Java Versions and the Sun Java Development Environment (JDK)
4. Choosing an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
5. Working with specific Operating Systems
4. Understanding Java Basics
1. Writing for Platform Independence
2. Overview of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
3. Byte code vs. Native Code
4. Deploying Java Applications
5. Components of Java Applications
1. Overview Objects and Classes
2. Java Packages: Creating your own API
3. Designing and creating Reusable components: inheritance, polymorphism
4. Overview of Data Access options: JDBC, JDO
5. Fitting XML into your application
6. Understanding Multi-Threaded Applications
4. Day 2 – Afternoon
1. Web Development
1. Understanding Web Architecture
2. Review of J2EE Servlets and the Servlet Architecture
3. Overview of JSP: Simplifying Servlet Development with JSP
2. EJB Architecture
1. What are Enterprise JavaBean Applications?
2. Advantages and Disadvantages of EJB
3. Should all applications use Enterprise JavaBeans?
4. Understanding the Bean Types
5. Managing Transactions and Security
3. Package and Deployment
1. Understanding Deployment Options
2. Tools for packaging applications
3. Java Archive files (JAR)
4. Enterprise Archive Files (EAR)
5. Web Archive Files (WAR)
6. Understanding Application Server Options
5. Day 3 - Morning
1. Overview of .NET Enterprise Application Development
1. Overview of Object Oriented Programming
2. Gaining Developer Productivity
3. Meeting Product Demand
4. Object Oriented Languages and Platforms
2. Architecture of .NET Applications
1. .NET Platform Technologies Overview
2. Using the Visual Studio IDE Design tools
3. Architecting Multi-tier Applications
4. Component Based Architecture
5. Understanding Web Development
3. Getting Started with .NET
1. Why was it developed, and how does it compare to other programming languages
2. Advantages and Disadvantages of using .NET
3. A closer look a the languages
4. Which language should you choose???
4. Understanding the .NET Framework Basics
1. Overview of the Common Language Runtime (CLR)
2. Intermediate Language (IL)
3. Metadata
4. Assemblies and Manifests
5. Compiling and deploying .NET Applications
6. Day 3 – Afternoon
1. .NET Components
1. Overview Objects and Classes
2. Understanding the Base Class Libraries
3. Designing and creating Reusable components: inheritance, polymorphism
4. Overview of Data Access options: ADO.NET
5. Fitting XML into your application
6. Understanding Multi-Threaded Applications
2. Web Development
1. Understanding Web Architecture
2. Overview of ASP.NET
3. What are the new features of ASP.NET
4. Components for building a web application with the .NET Framework

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