The Java™ 2 Platform,
Enterprise Edition (J2EE), reduces the cost and complexity of developing
multi-tier services.
In today's global business environment, organizations need to extend
their reach, lower their costs, and lower their response times by
providing services that are easily accessible to their customers,
employees, suppliers, and other business partners. These services
need to have the following characteristics:
- Highly available, to meet the requirements of global business
environment
- Secure, to protect the privacy of the users and the integrity
of the enterprise
- Reliable and scalable, so that business transactions are accurately
and promptly processed
In most cases, these services are provided with the help of multi-tier
applications with each tier serving a specific purpose.
J2EE achieves these benefits by defining a standard architecture
that is delivered as the following elements:
- J2EE Application Model, a standard application model for developing
multi-tier, thin-client services
- J2EE Platform, a standard platform for hosting J2EE applications
- J2EE Compatibility Test Suite for verifying that a J2EE platform
product complies with the J2EE platform standard
- J2EE Reference Implementation for demonstrating the capabilities
of J2EE, and for providing an operational definition of the J2EE platform