J2EE™ Platform Design

Patterns for Enterprise

Applications

Inderjeet Singh
Mark Johnson
J2EE BluePrints
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Why Design Patterns?

A good scientist is a person with

original ideas.

A good engineer is a person who

makes a design that works with as
few original ideas as possible.

—Freeman Dyson

2 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Goal of This Presentation

To explain several software design patterns

that help a designer use the J2EE platform
most effectively

3 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

 Who Is Inderjeet?

• Architect, J2EE BluePrints, Sun

Microsystems
– Investigates application design issues and
their solutions for the J2EE platform
• Contributing author to "Designing
Enterprise Applications with the
Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition,
published by Addison-Wesley.
• http://java.sun.com/j2ee/blueprints
• Java Pet Store application
4 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
 Who Is Mark?

• President, Elucify Technical Communications

• JavaWorld™ magazine J2EE platform
(formerly JavaBeans™ technology) columnist
• Contract technical writer with J2EE
Blueprints group
• Technology trainer (with Artima Training)

5 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Learning Objectives

• Following this presentation, you will

understand:
–What Design Patterns are
–How and why to use them with J2EE
technology
–Several specific patterns that maximize
the value of the J2EE platform
–How to fit these patterns together in
an application

6 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Agenda

• What are Design Patterns?

• Benefits of Design Patterns
• What are J2EE Design Patterns?
• Presentation of J2EE BluePrints™ patterns
• Future work, Summary and Questions

7 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

What Is a Design Pattern?

• Generalized solution to a recurring problem

in a particular context
• Product of community experience
• Four basic elements
– name: a “handle” for the pattern
– problem: the problem and its context
– solution: elements, responsibilities,
and collaborations
– consequences: benefits and tradeoffs

8 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Design Pattern Benefits

• Capture expertise
• Form a common design vocabulary
• Make designs more transparent
for newcomers
• Facilitate restructuring of existing systems

9 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

What Is a J2EE Design Pattern?

• Effective use of J2EE technology to solve

a recurring problem
• Experiences of the J2EE technology
community
• Name consistent with “traditional” patterns
• Solution in terms of J2EE technology
• Consequences include both benefits
and liabilities
• Also Implementation Strategies
10 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Model View Controller

• Problem: highly-interactive system requires

extensibility, maintainabilty, and multiple
user views
• Solution: Use MVC to decouple presentation,
user interaction, and system model
• Popular architecture for systems with GUI
• Recommended by J2EE BluePrints™
design guidelines
• Adopted by many open-source web-tier
frameworks (Struts, webmacro, etc.)
11 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
MVC Philosophy

12 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

MVC (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Clarifies design by separating class roles
– Enables multiple data views/multiple users
– Simplifies system extension, impact
analysis, and deployment
– Enhances extensibility and testability
– Eases maintenance by decreasing
code replication
– Can partition developer responsibilities

13 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

MVC (Cont.)

• Implementation Strategies
– Carefully analyze communication volume
and latency to ensure scalability
– Potential maintenance problem if Model
API is in flux
• Controller usually written in terms of Model
• Consider applying Command or Facade
pattern to decouple Controller from Model
– Abstract components can not use each
others’ implementation details, so
efficiency may be suboptimal
14 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Front Controller

• Problem: Complex interactions between

View and Controller
• Solution: Implement Controller with
Command pattern at a single access point
– Translates View requests to logical events
– Manages View navigation (response
generation)

15 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Front Controller

Webpage1 GET Webpage1 POST Webpage2 POST

receives input,
FrontController dispatches events,
selects views

Account Catalog Shopping Cart

Model Object Model Object Model Object

16 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Front Controller (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Separates request processing logic
from response generation logic
– Centralizes request processing
– Simplifies security and logging
– Unsuitable for small applications or for
web sites with a lot of static content

17 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Front Controller (Cont.)

• Implementation strategies
– In Web tier, implement as a servlet
– Use Command pattern to effectively
organize request processing and
manage complexity
– Use with XML-based GUI templates

18 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Session Facade

• Problem: complicated interactions between

collaborating business classes
• Solution: apply Facade pattern
– Session bean presents unified API
– Facade hides Entity bean details

19 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Session Facade (Cont.)

SessionFacade

Account Order Shopping Cart

Entity Bean Entity Bean Session Bean

20 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Session Facade (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Centralizes application interface
– Decouples tiers and developers
– Supports thin client development
– Hides data model complexity from clients
– Single point of control for security, logging
– Adds an additional level of indirection
– May duplicate API
– Possible complexity hazard
21 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Session Facade (Cont.)

• Implementation Strategies
– Implement as a session bean in the EJB™ tier
– Create a web-tier proxy for the session bean
– Prefer stateless session bean where possible
– Use Session Facade for a set of Use Cases

22 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Data Access Object (DAO)

• Problem: data source access complex

or vendor-specific
• Solution: implement access in a DAO
class, and defer to that class
• Especially useful for BMP
• Can be generalized to any resource type
• Enhances resource and vendor independence

23 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

DAO (Cont.)

accesses
BusinessObject DataAccessObject

inherits inherits

Oracle DAO Sybase DAO

adapts adapts

Oracle Database Sybase Database

24 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

DAO (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Resource type independence
• Database, directory server, connector, etc.
– Resource vendor independence
• CloudscapeDAO, OracleDAO, etc.
– Enhanced extensibility
– Easier migration to CMP
– Increased complexity: Extra classes
• Can be generated by tools

25 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

DAO (Cont.)

• Implementation Strategies
– Apply Factory pattern to create DAO instances
– Make them pluggable by using deployment
descriptor entries or Java Naming and
Directory Interface™ (JNDI) names
– Generated DAO layer improves reliability

26 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Value Object

• Problem: high network traffic and latency

when accessing data values across tiers
• Solution: exchange data between tiers
in coarse-grained objects that group
related values

27 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Value Object (Cont.)

remote, coarse graines access

EJBObject

instantiates
WebComponent

local, fine-grained access

ValueObject

28 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Value Object (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Reduce network traffic and improve response
time for coarse-grained, read-only data
– Can be cached
– Extra classes add complexity
– Need to handle stale value objects

29 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Value Object (Cont.)

• Implementation Strategies
– Serializable
– Provide immutable and mutable versions
– Should be relatively small

30 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Fast Lane Reader

• Problem: application requires transactional

access in some situations, efficient access
in others
• Solution: accelerate read-only data access
by not using enterprise beans

31 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Fast Lane (Cont.)

read-only data access

WebComponent FastLaneReader

remote access
EJBObject

32 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Fast Lane Reader (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Provides efficient access to read-only
data, transactional access for updates
– Duplicates functionality, increases
complexity
– Nontransactional reads inappropriate
for data that change often

33 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Fast Lane Reader (Cont.)

• Implementation Strategies
– DAO must contain all methods that
require efficient access
– Prefer declarative transaction control

34 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Page-by-Page Iterator

• Problem: need access to pages of items

from large remote list
• Solution: create server-side interface that
returns specified sublist of remote list
• Example: query results

35 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Page-by-Page Iterator (Cont.)

iteratively
accesses PageByPage accesses
ClientObject EntityList
Iterator

accesses all items at once

36 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Page-by-Page Iterator (Cont.)

• Consequences
– Efficient access to large lists on the server
– Potentially higher number of server hits

37 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Page-by-Page Iterator (Cont.)

• Implementation issues
– Trade-off between network transmission
load and server hit frequency
– Page size may be client-dependent
– Pages must be serializable
– Caching can improve user experience
and decrease network load
– Apply with Fast Lane Read pattern

38 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Using Session Facade and
Front Controller Together

Account
Order
Profile
Shopping
Cart

Session Facade

Front Controller

WebPage 1 WebPage 1 WebPage 2 WebPage 2

POST GET POST GET

39 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Using Fast-Lane Reader and
Page-by-Page Iterator Together
Catolog
DAO

Fast Lane Reader

Page by Page Iterator

Catolog Browser
Web Component

40 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Using DAO and Value
Object Together
Customer
DB Table

Customer Data
Access Object

Customer
Entity Bean

Address Profile Order History

Value Object Value Object Value Object

Display Address Display Profile Order History

Web Page Web Page Web Page

41 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Patterns in Java Pet Store
Encapsulate
Model access
DAO Database

DAO
(web-tier) EJB EJB EJB EJB

Fast Lane
Reader Session Facade
Controller
Efficient read only access Simple
Value API
EJB Controller
Page-by-Page Object
Iterator
Coarse Front Controller
Navigate large GrainedObject
result sets View
Navigation
Web-Tier Single Point
of entry
View
Browser

42 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Futures

• Refinements of the Design Patterns

– Improvements of the design and applicability
– Detailed code examples
– UML models
– Success stories
• More design patterns
– Focus on a small set of high-quality patterns
– Patterns for the J2EE™ 1.3 release
and web services
– Patterns applicable to the View of MVC
43 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
Summary

• Design Patterns for the J2EE™ platform

and their benefits
• MVC Architectural pattern
• Several specific patterns
• How patterns work together in the
Java Pet Store demo
• Future work

44 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Resources

• Visit our website at

http://java.sun.com/j2ee/blueprints
• Send comments to
http://j2eepatterns-interest@java.sun.com
• See also Sun Java Center, “J2EE patterns”
http://developer.java.sun.com/
• Patterns in general:
http://www.hillside.net/patterns
• Your feedback is welcome

45 2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications

Closing Thought

There are two ways of constructing a software

design.

One way is to make it so simple that there are

obviously no deficiencies.

And the other way is to make it so complicated

that there are no obvious deficiencies.

The first method is far more difficult.

—C. A. R. Hoare
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2333, J2EE Platform Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
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