Frequently Asked Questions

WebJavenue is a resource that presents a simple no-nonsense approach to the web development process for the Java platform, based on the view that there is nothing particularly complex that would make creating online presence in Java more difficult than in any other language. Terms and conditions apply.

WebJavenue is basically run by one person, Bruno Boehr. For more information about the guy behind this project please check out the author's page.

I can think of three main reasons one would want to choose Java for his/her web projects.

1. You will master a set of highly marketable skills that are always in demand in the corporate IT world.
2. The Java community has created an astonishing wealth of excellent open-source products and libraries that cover many areas and are available for free.
3. And most importantly, understanding the design-by-contract paradigm inherent in the Java OO philosophy will help you design better software in the future.

It is my hope that the organization, structure and choice of topics in this tutorial will make for an enjoyable learning experience while covering enough ground to make it possible for anyone who meets the prerequisites described below to reach, upon the completion of the study, a level of confidence in the subject sufficient to be able to pull off any reasonably complex web project.

My general assumption is that you have at least some knowledge of programming. It will definitely help if you have had previous experience with Java and/or web development, but, again, that is not necessary. The only case in which I would not recommend using this tutorial is if you have never done any programming at all.

Depending on how comfortable you are with Java (the language itself, its numerous APIs, development and runtime environments, etc.), you may choose between the following options:

• Leave the code intact and only modify the templates, SQL scripts and configuration files to meet the needs of whatever kind of website you have in mind.
• Leave most of the infrastructure code the way it is and extend the base functionality by adding your own data object types and providing a set of Manager and Worker classes specific to your application's domain.
• Pick up some helpful ideas and move on to more powerful, albeit requiring a steeper learning curve, industrial-strength frameworks such as Spring, Turbine, WebWork and others.

Puffies is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please check out the text of the license or find out more about it at the GNU official website.

Well, the answer largely depends on your definition of "good enough". In terms of performance it is pretty fast and can handle quite a lot of traffic (my ballpark estimate would be up to 100,000 hits a day). Security-wise, though, it may be prone to a range of malicious attacks, so if security is a concern you might consider applying additional layers of protection.

Although Puffies' internal framework is fairly robust and sound, it was not designed with reusability in mind, since creating a general-purpose web framework would be way beyond the scope of the tutorial. As a result, there is virtually no functionality that can be reused in compiled form, such as a library. Which means, for every new web project of yours you will have to start with a copy-paste of the entire codebase. This is not a problem if you are planning to maintain only one website, but in reality people often end up wanting more.

By the time you are ready for another web project, you will be likely to find yourself very attached to what you have already done for the previous one, and it may be frustrating to discover that you cannot reuse your work other than by way of copy-paste.

Bottom line: do not use this codebase for your second and all subsequent projects — grab a general-purpose framework instead. For your first one, though, it should be OK.

No way!

I must explicitly state this: never, ever even think of using Puffies as a base for developing any kind of business application. The thing is, business web applications are in a number of ways very different from regular, content-oriented websites. They have different requirements, use different assumptions, are geared towards different use case scenarios, etc.

This is not to say that what we discuss in the tutorial is completely inapplicable to the enterprise world. In fact, if you are in the J2EE business, there is still a good chance that you can borrow an idea or two from reading the tutorial. But that's about it.