Chapter 1. A Multi-Vendor Standard for Distributed Enterprise Applications

This book is about business and computing, and about the success of a new standard for business computing in the networked economy.

At its core, business is about relationships and transactions. Business computing is also about relationships and transactions. While they may seem distinct, the meanings are complementary. Business relationships are about customers, vendors, and the products and services they buy or sell—the kind of information that relationships in a computer database are designed to track. Transactions in business are about the exchange of monetary value, goods, and services. These are the same processes that transactions on a computer database must perform with complete integrity.

The point is that these days, business and business computing are inextricably intertwined. As business evolves, the nature of business computing evolves—and vice versa.

Today, business and business computing are evolving together into a networked economy. This book explores efforts to deal with that evolution, from both the business side and the computing side. It does so with a focus on how the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), provides a new standard for supporting the business and technical needs of companies operating in today's economy.