Sebastopol, CA--Praise for the newest Mac operating system has ranged from mildly glowing to unbridled hyperbole. Regardless of the choice of words, there is general agreement that Mac OS X is elegant, powerful, visually pleasing, and virtually crash-proof. Even those who are not under its spell can observe the willing migration of users to Mac OS X. And end-users are not the only ones making the transition; the new OS is drawing developers, too, including a steadily increasing number of Java developers. The reason for this? Novelty and a pleasing countenance, while appealing in their own right, may not provide impetus enough to lure Java developers from their current development platform. But, as Will Iverson, author of Mac OS X for Java Geeks (O'Reilly, US $39.95) explains, "Mac OS X is finally a developer's platform. With the melding of BSD, a killer user interface, and unprecedented stability, code can finally be written on the Mac OS X platform and deployed to Windows, Linux, Unix, or other Mac OS X Servers."
Iverson, an experienced Java developer who has been working in Java since Java 1.0 shipped, considers Mac OS X one of the best Unix-based application development workstations available. "The broad support for Java and a wide variety of open source technologies make Mac OS X an extremely rich, powerful environment."
The onetime product manager for Java at Apple Computer who left the company in part because he thought there was no adequate investment in Java on the classic operating system has again become a believer. "The release of Mac OS X and the corresponding improved JDK made me return to the platform," Iverson says.
"Mac OS X for Java Geeks" delivers a complete and detailed look at the Mac OS X platform, geared specifically toward Java developers. The book is a must-read for new and experienced Java developers evaluating Mac OS X as their primary development platform. The first book to cover the Mac OS X JDK 1.4 implementation, it provides an overview of the Java application development world.
The book begins by laying out the Mac OS X tool set, from the included Java Runtime Environment to third-party tools, IDEs, and Jakarta Ant. Readers will be brought up to speed on advanced, Mac-specific extensions to Java, including the Spelling Framework, the Speech Framework, and integration with QuickTime. In addition to providing clear explanations of these extensions, the book teaches Java developers how to write code that falls back to non-Mac specific code when it runs on other platforms to keep applications portable.
After exploring the fundamentals of the Mac OS X Java platform, readers will learn how to get the Apache web server running and supplement it with the Jakarta Tomcat JSP and servlet containers. The book covers JSPs and servlets running on Mac OS X, including installation and connectivity to a database. Once their web applications are up and running, readers will learn how to interface them with EJBs via the JBoss application server on Mac OS X. Finally, the book covers the latest developments in web services, including XML-RPC and SOAP.
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Mac OS X for Java Geeks
Will Iverson
ISBN 0-596-00400-1, 282 pages, $39.95 (US), $61.95 (CAN), 28.50 (UK)
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