Working with J2EE Tools 

The SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio provides tools for developing and deploying standard J2EE applications. This part of the documentation concentrates on the procedures associated with those tools. It assumes that you know what you want to do and tells you how you can do it. For more  information regarding the use of the tools in the context of development, see Developing Enterprise Beans and Developing J2EE Web Applications. However, if you want a gentler introduction to the tools, a better starting point is with the tutorials. These are relatively quick to work through and cover the essential features. You can find the tutorials under Getting Started.

The J2EE tools support you whether or not you are using the Development Infrastructure. If you are working without the support of the Development Infrastructure, you will use normal J2EE projects. If you are working with the Development Infrastructure, you will create your J2EE projects as development components (DCs).

Project Organization

Working with Normal Projects

You use various types of J2EE projects to organize your development objects. Wizards create the project frameworks, which are displayed in the J2EE Explorer view of the J2EE Perspective. A complete J2EE application is typically formed from several projects. For example:

Working with Development Components

You use various types of J2EE DC projects to organize your development objects. Wizards create the project frameworks, which are displayed in the J2EE DC Explorer view of the J2EE Perspective. A complete J2EE application is typically formed from several projects. For example:

Project Types

The various types of projects fall into the following categories:

·        Source projects (EJB Module projects or Web Module projects) are where you create and edit enterprise beans and Web resources such as JSP pages, servlets, and so on. They also offer standardized deployment descriptors. One or more enterprise beans can be bundled with the appropriate descriptor in an EJB JAR file. Similarly, you can bundle Web resources with the appropriate descriptor to form a Web archive (WAR).

·        Enterprise Application projects are combinations of WARs and EJB JARs to form a complete J2EE application, which can be deployed as an EAR file onto the J2EE Engine.

An Enterprise Application project can reference several EJB Module and Web Module projects, but each of these should only be referenced by one Enterprise Application project.

Creating Projects and Resources

Procedures for creating projects and resources are grouped under Basic Functions.

Deployment Descriptors

Deployment descriptors are XML files. There are multipage editors for editing each type. For more information, see Editors for Deployment Descriptors.

Graphical Editor

Usually, you will use the wizards and the normal editors for your work. A graphical editor, the Diagram view, is also provided for visualizing your projects and provides a more limited range of editing functions.