The JBoss Integration Plug-in for the IntelliJ
IDEA, Part 2.
Douglas Lyon, Fairfield University, Fairfield CT, U.S.A.
Martin Fuhrer, President of Furher Engineering AG, Biel, Switzerland
Thomas Rowland, Pitney Bowes, Shelton CT, U.S.A.
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COLUMN
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Java is your friend.
PL/1 is your crazy friend.
ADA is your crazy friend who juggles porcupines.
- DL
Abstract
This paper is the second in a series of papers that describe a new
plug-in for enabling the integration of the IntelliJ IDEA IDE with
the JBoss application server. The JBoss plug-in was first conceived
and implemented by Martin Fuhrer at Fuhrer Engineering.
Part 1 discussed how to download and install the new JBoss plug-in,
allowing the JBoss application server to integrate into the IntelliJ
IDEA IDE development environment. It showed how to create a project
with EJBs and web modules.
This paper continues with our project created in Part 1 by describing
how to add a stateless session bean. It is stateless because we
are not concerned with remembering values of attributes between successive
calls from the client. This paper also demonstrates that our session
bean can be either remote (i.e., a bean with a remote interface)
or it can be local (a bean with a remote interface).
1 CREATING A SESSION BEAN WITH REMOTE INTERFACE
This section describes the procedure for creating a session bean with
a remote interface in the IntelliJ IDE. The examples in this section
were performed on a Linux machine using IntelliJ IDE version 4.5 and
JBoss version 4.0.1 RC1.
Right-click on the EJB module (or control-click, on a Mac) to select
the session bean menu item, as shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Creating a new Session Bean
In the New Session Bean dialog, shown in Figure 1.2, enter in the
name of the session bean and the package. Select Enable Remote Interface.
Figure 1.2 The New Session Bean dialog with remote
interfaces enabled
Select OK and the Session Bean dialog General panel will be displayed.
Figure 1.3 The Session Bean dialog showing remote interfaces
Now
select the JBoss Server tab and type in the Remote JNDI (Java Naming
and Directory Interface) Name, “hello”.
Figure 1.4 The Session Bean dialog showing the Remote
JNDI Name Close the Session Bean dialog. The project JTree will now show the new session bean class and interfaces that you just
created, as shown in Figure 1.5.
Figure 1.5 The new session bean showing class and interfaces
2 CREATING A SESSION BEAN WITH LOCAL INTERFACE
This section describes the procedure for creating a session bean with
a local interface in the IntelliJ IDE. In the [EJB
2.0] specification,
local interfaces were added in order to optimize calls between
beans residing in the same container. Local interfaces are more efficient
because
they
do not rely on the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) mechanism,
but their use is a tradeoff with flexibility, and they can only be
used in certain
situations. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the
differences between local and remote bean interfaces. The steps in
creating a
session bean with a local interface, and the servlet which invokes
methods in the
session bean, are much the same as in the previous sections that
use the remote interface. However, we are showing it here at length
to illustrate the capabilities of the IntelliJ IDE.
The examples in this section were performed on a Windows 2000 machine
using IntelliJ IDE version 4.5.4 and JBoss version 4.0.1 SP1.
Right-click on the EJB module (or control-click, on a Mac) to select
the session bean menu item, as shown in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 Creating a new Session Bean
In the New Session Bean dialog, shown in Figure 2.2, enter in the name of
the session bean and the package. Select Enable Local Interface. IntelliJ
will prefix the home and component interface names with local.
Figure 2.2 The New Session Bean dialog with Local interfaces
enabled
Select OK and the Session Bean dialog General panel will be displayed.
Figure 2.3 The Session Bean dialog showing Local interfaces Now
select the JBoss Server tab and type in the Local JNDI (Java Naming and Directory
Interface) Name, “hello”.
Figure 2.4 The Session Bean dialog showing the Local JNDI
Name
Close the Session Bean dialog. The project JTree will now show the new session
bean class and interfaces that you just created, as shown in Figure 2.5.
Figure 2.5 The new session bean showing class and interfaces
3 ADDING METHODS TO THE BEAN CLASS
Open the HelloBean class from the project JTree and add the two methods, sayHello and getDate, as shown in Figure 3.1. Placing the cursor
on the sayHello and getDate method names will bring up light bulbs
to the left
of them.
Figure 3.1 Adding new HelloBean methods
Click on the light bulbs and accept the offer from the popup (shown in
figure 3.2) to add the specification for each of your new methods to the
HelloBean ’s component interface.
Figure 3.2 Popup offering to Synthesize Code Accepting
the offer to synthesize code causes the specifications to be automatically
generated in the interfaces, as shown in Figures 3.3 and 3.4. Notice the
difference between the local component interface and a remote
component interface, instead of extending EJBObject, a local component interface extends
EJBLocalObject. There is also no need for it to throw a RemoteException.
Likewise, the local home interface extends EJBLocalHome instead of EJBHome,
and again there is no need to throw a RemoteException.
Figure 3.3 Synthesized Methods in the (remote) bean interface
Figure 3.4 Synthesized Methods in the (local) bean interface 4
CONCLUSION
This paper discussed how the new JBoss application server integration
plug-in makes it easy to create EJBs within the IntelliJ IDEA IDE
environment. It showed that both remote and local bean interfaces
are supported.
Now that you have created your EJB, you are ready for the next step,
the creation of a servlet to interface to the EJB. This will be
the topic of Part 3.
The use of plug-in technologies has become increasingly prevalent
in the IDE industry. This is understandable, as there are too
many frameworks for the IDE manufacturer to support at any given
time. A plug-in
also gives
third parties the ability to support frameworks that are not high-priority
for the IDE manufacturer. Further, they enable the IDE to be leaner,
incorporating support for only those features that users care
about. Thus, we see the
plug-in to be a popular trend in the IDE world and we see no slow-down
in this trend. The question of how plug-in producers can make
money from their
plug-ins, remains open.
LITERATURE CITED
[EJB 2.0] Enterprise JavaBeans[tm] 2.0 Specification, available from
http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/2.0.html.
[Cavaness] Special Edition Using EJB 2.0, Chuck Cavaness and Brian
Keeton, February 2002. Chapter 3, EJB Concepts, can be downloaded
from http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/ejbtechnology.
About the authors
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After receiving his Ph.D. from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Lyon worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
He has also worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California
Institute of Technology. He is currently the Chairman of the Computer
Engineering Department at Fairfield University, a senior member
of the IEEE and President of DocJava, Inc., a consulting firm in
Connecticut. E-mail Dr. Lyon at Lyon@DocJava.com. His website is
http://www.DocJava.com. |
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Martin Fuhrer has a degree as engineer
in computer science from the School of Engineering and Information
Technology in Biel/Switzerland. He is founder and president of
Fuhrer Engineering Inc., a software development company located
in Biel/Switzerland. He's mainly working in the field of web-based
financial services and the online processing of realtime stock
exchange data. He can be reached at info@fuhrer.com or through
http://www.fuhrer.com. |
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Thomas Rowland has a B.S. in Electrical
Engineering and an M.S. in Software Engineering. He has been consulting
as a Software Engineer for the past four years, working for Pfizer
Pharmaceutical, Travelers Life & Annuity, and currently at
Pitney Bowes. He has also worked for Hyperion Solutions for over
5 years. Mr. Rowland has also had some teaching stints along the
way. He is listed in the National Register’s 2005-2006 edition
of the Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals. He resides
in Connecticut and can be reached at rowlandtf@netscape.net. |
Cite this column as follows: D. Lyon, M. Fuhrer and T. Rowland: “The
JBoss Integration Plug-in for IntelliJ IDEA, Part2”, in Journal
of Object Technology, vol. 4, no. 7, September-October 2005, pp. 25-34,
http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2005_9/column3
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