17-Nov-15 CS 521 About This Course

2 CIS 521 The formal title of this course is “Advanced Web-Based Java Programming” The emphasis will likely be on “Web technologies” Some of these technologies are specific to Java Most of the technologies are language-independent This course, however, uses Java Prerequisite: CIS 421 or proficiency in a high-level language Translation: you had better already be a good programmer!

3 What this course is about The explosive growth of the Web has greatly changed the face of computing Before, we wrote programs under these assumptions: We could use whatever language was convenient We could write programs for the computer we happened to have available at the moment We could design our own data formats and database schema We did not have to interact with the rest of the world Today, all of these assumptions are wrong! Sun’s slogan, “The network is the computer,” is becoming true Platform independence is no longer a luxury, but a necessity There is a large and growing need for information interchange

4 Platform independence The Internet has become indispensable It connects millions of computers together This network of networks runs on all kinds of computers, with all kinds of operating systems Interoperability of programs and data has become a crucial issue There are two possible solutions: Microsoft’s preferred solution: Force everyone to use Windows Much of Microsoft’s software is designed with this end in mind If this happens, it will not happen quickly Develop platform-independent languages and systems This is what all the other software developers (including Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java) are working on

5 Java, HTML, XML, etc. Java is (?) the most platform-independent language we have This is one of the reasons for its popularity (there are many others) HTML is not as feature-rich as MS Word, but it nevertheless serves an important purpose HTML is the language of the Web Most software documentation these days is distributed in HTML, PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format), or plain text We will look at ways to create HTML from Java XML is a platform-independent way of describing data We may look at ways to process XML from Java SQL is the most widely accepted database language We will look at ways to access SQL databases from Java Client-server architecture is used to communicate across the Web We will look at creating server-side and client-side applications

6 Technologies This semester you will learn a little bit of some of a large number of technologies: HTML, XHTML, XML, XSLT, XPath, SAX, DOM, Servlets, JSP, SQL, JDBC, others You will get experience with some of these, and thereby gain a better understanding of many things you’ve already likely used These technologies build upon one another--each topic is not, in general, a new beginning You don’t have to be an expert in all of them, but you are expected to learn where to find out more

7 Software All the software you need is on the Web If you use your own computer, you need to install this software Everything you really need is free (except RAM and disk space!) You can avoid much proprietary (Windows-only) software Recommended IDE: Netbeans

8 Textbook Our textbook this semester is Advanced Java TM : Internet Applications by Art Gittleman Additional instructional material is on the Web The Web is full of great (and some not-so-great) tutorials and specifications We will sometimes use links to online tutorials and resources, and you are expected to use them If you find better links, please let us know! The instructor’s web page has some links of interest