The J2EE Standard Tools (JST) project is an effort by the Eclipse development team to provide users of the Eclipse Platform a standardized framework for the creation of tools for the development of enterprise applications based on the J2EE Specification. The JST project together with the Web Standard Tools (WST) project, discussed in the next chapter, make up the Web Tools Platform (WTP) and jointly provide developers an arsenal of tools produced from the frameworks created by the respective projects. These tools are useful for the development, testing, and management of Java-based enterprise applications. The JST and WST projects are closely related because Java-based enterprise applications often rely heavily on non-Java technologies for core functionalities. The editing of XML-based deployment descriptors, which play an important part in the deployment of J2EE components, is one such example of this close relationship.

The development tools supplied by the project provide users of the ubiquitous Eclipse Platform with a cohesive set of plug-ins integrated into the Eclipse development environment to allow developers to create, debug, test, and deploy multitiered J2EE applications. Some of the tools are provided for use in the creation and maintenance of J2EE source artifacts such as JavaServer Pages (JSP), servlets, EJBs, and other deployable assets. Other tools are meant for activities that provide support to the development process such as the packaging of artifacts into deployable modules, the exploring of available Web Services, and also the management of application servers.

JST limits its scope to providing support for J2EE technologies even though, as we have earlier indicated, many non-Java technologies are often found within an enterprise application. Support for many of these non-Java technologies falls within the scope of the WST project. Expectedly, not all enterprise Java technologies are supported by JST. Support is provided for the standards that comprise the J2EE 1.4 Specification as well as a few other JCP-approved standards. XDoclet, a popular technology for annotating source artifacts, is also supported, even though it is not a JCP standard. Other popular enterprise Java technologies such as Hibernate and Velocity, which are not based on JCP standards, are, however, unsupported.

It is important to bear in mind that JST goes significantly beyond the provision of tools for enterprise development and additionally provides a framework from which further tools of usefulness to Java enterprise development can be created. A brief example of this is that Struts, the popular web development framework which is not supported by JST, could have support provided for it by tool extenders using the framework provided by JST. This way, the new plug-in seamlessly coexists with those provided by JST.

We begin this chapter by describing the scope of the JST project; we will also explore the benefits provided by this project. Discussion of the foundation provided by JST for the creation of J2EE-focused tools will follow, and we will conclude the chapter with an extensive overview of the tools provided by JST. We will be demonstrating the use of these tools more comprehensively throughout the entire book.

JST Scope

JST provides Eclipse with a comprehensive suite of tools for the development of Java-based enterprise applications conforming to the J2EE 1.4 Specification. Due to J2EE support being its core purpose, JST limits its scope to Java-based technologies. Many of the supported technologies, however, such as JavaServer Pages, have a dependence on open standards such as HTML and CSS. In these cases, the open standards fall within the scope of the WST project.

JCP standards, which lie at the core of the J2EE Specification, feature heavily in the list of supported technologies, though some newer JCP standards that are not a part of the J2EE 1.4 Specification are not supported. Notable items in this list include JDO (JSR 243-Java Data Objects 2.0), which defines Java object persistence, and JSF (JSR 252-JavaServer Faces), which provides standard APIs and tag libraries for web interface development.

Additionally, many non-JCP technologies are beyond the scope of JST, including such popular frameworks as Struts, Velocity, and XMLC. XDoclet, as we noted earlier, is supported, however, largely due to the absence of a JCP standard for J2EE annotation.