In this two-part article series by Dave Newton, we'll look at the ways in which we can document our applications, coding styles that can aid in understanding, tools and techniques for creating documentation from application artifacts, different types of documentation for different parties, and so on. This part of the article deals with ways to document Javacode and how to self-document our code.

This is the second part of a two-part article series by Dave Newton on documentation of Java applications. In the first part we covered self-documenting code, the use of Contract-oriented programming in documenting applications, and ways of generating targeted Javadocs. In this part of the article, Dave focuses on documenting web applications.

In this article we will introduce Hibernate, which is the de facto standard object-relational mapping framework for Java applications. The Hibernate galaxy is quite large and needs a book of its own to be fully explored. Our mission will be to take over one sector of this galaxy, especially where Hibernate applications are managed by JBoss AS.

When working in enterprise environments, it is often necessary to interact with multiple resources in a single atomic unit of work - a distributed transaction. The ideal way to accomplish this is by leveraging JTA to manage the distributed transaction. However, in transaction scenarios where one or more resources do not support XA transactions JTA cannot be used. Justin McCarter and Travis Alvey describe a method of interacting with non-transactional resources in a pseudo-transaction.

This article looks at various interoperability issues between the Java and .NET platforms.

This article outlines the 13 reasons why Java programmers should learn Flex and BlazeDS. It talks about why Flex with BlazeDS is one of the best choices for developing rich Internet applications (RIAs)—from highly interactive websites to enterprise applications with Java back ends. Most importantly, it shows the high return on investment (ROI) that this combination provides, both for developers and for enterprises.

ou might be familiar with profiles, but did you know that you can use them in Maven to execute specific behaviors in different environments? This installment in the 5 things series looks beyond Maven's build features, and even its basic tools for managing the project life cycle, delivering five tips that will improve the productivity and ease with which you manage applications in Maven.

Some Java™ tools defy categorization and are frequently collected under the rubric of "things that work." This installment of 5 things offers up a collection of tools you'll be glad to have, even if you end up storing them in your kitchen drawer.

Many Java™ developers never think beyond the basics of JARs — only using them to bundle classes before shipping them off to the production servers. But a JAR is more than just a renamed ZIP file. Learn how to use Java Archive files at their fullest capacity, including tips for jarring Spring dependencies and configuration files.

JDBC, or Java™ Database Connectivity, is one of the most frequently used packages in the entire JDK, and yet few Java developers use it to its fullest — or most up-to-date — capacity. Ted Neward offers an introduction to newer JDBC features like ResultSets that automatically scroll and update on the fly, Rowsets that can work with or without an open database connection, and batch updates that can execute multiple SQL statements in one fast trip around the network.