E-business application development with Java technology and Oracle: The Fortune Invest Inc. case

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2003 by Wang, Ming

ABSTRACT

Due to the popularity of E-business applications, Web-based database application development has become an important topic in the information systems curriculum. There is a need to explore ways to teach such a topic effectively. This paper presents a teaching case on the development of an e-business application for Fortune Invest Inc. using Java server technology with Java Database Connectivity to Oracle databases. The teaching case has the following features: 1) complete coverage of the fundamentals of e-business application development. 2) systematic integration of the knowledge in database design, implementation, programming languages, networking, Web development and system analysis. 3) script execution independent of any platforms. 4) accessible web sites on the Internet with sample code provided. The teaching case was tested in upper division CIS courses in three academic quarters during the past two years at California State University, Los Angeles. The teaching approach emphasizes learning by doing in order to motivate the student and to produce an effective learning outcome. The paper is accompanied by comprehensive teaching notes as well as executable programming scripts.

Keywords: IS Curriculum, IS Education, Web Development, Database applications, E-business, Java language

1. INTRODUCTION

The proliferation of database-based e-business applications has had a profound impact on the way business is conducted. These applications provide a mechanism for delivering large volumes of information at low cost and are not affected by distance. More and more e-business application programming is based on databases rather than traditional data files. Changing business processes often require modification of these applications. Therefore, it is essential that an IS curriculum prepare graduates to function in today's e-business environments where the integration of computing and communication technologies is reshaping organizations and their fundamental processes. Unfortunately, very few teaching cases with teaching notes for complete development of an e-business application have been reported, though some teaching methodology for e-business applications (Westfall, 2001) has been published in the IS curriculum literature.

This paper attempts to fill that gap by presenting a teaching case with teaching notes for step-by-step development of an online investment portfolio company named Fortune Invest Inc., using JavaServer Page (JSP)/Java Servlet technology with Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to Oracle. So far neither textbooks nor instructor manuals have achieved both purposes. Current textbooks cover topics in either database systems or concepts of e-business application development, but very few books cover both topics. Furthermore, it is even harder to find any teaching case to demonstrate the development process of an e-business application starting from database design to e-business application deployment (see Section 4 for proposed project development solution).

E-business database applications are vital to any company's information systems. To remain competitive, a business has to deploy web-based database applications to provide services via the Internet and an Intranet. There are two major trends for developing e-business applications in the e-business industry. One uses JSP/Java Servlet with a JDBC driver in Database Management Systems (DBMSs) such as Oracle or IBM DB2 on the Unix, Linux and Windows platforms. The other is using the Microsoft products such as .net platform or Visual BASIC with an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) driver connected to SQL Server. Today, JSP/Java Servlets and JDBC are a popular choice for building interactive database based e-business applications to replace traditional Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs. It has been widely accepted because of business scalability and implementation on multiple platforms. Third-party servlet containers are available for both Apache Web Server and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

JSP/Java Servlet is Java server technology newly developed in Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for Web services utilized in e-business application development. JSP technology allows Web developers and designers to rapidly develop and easily maintain information-rich, dynamic web pages that leverage existing business systems. Java Servlet technology provides Web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism for extending the functionality of a Web server and for accessing existing business systems. JSP technology is an extension of the servlet technology to support authoring of HTML and XML pages. When the client requests the JSP page by means of a URL containing the .jsp file name via HTTP, the JSP engine calls, compiles and executes a servlet embedded in the .jsp file for the result. This servlet (JSP instance) will then process the HTTP request, generate an HTTP response, and return the response to the client via HTML. Servlets have access to the entire family of Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), including the JDBC API to access any vendor's enterprise databases. JDBC is one of the most prominent and mature approaches for accessing relational DBMSs. JDBC contains Java classes and interfaces that provide low-level access to databases. The value of the JDBC API is that an application can access any source and run on any platform with API. As part of the Java family, JSP, Servlet and JDBC technology enable rapid development of web-based applications that are server and platform independent. They provide a component-based, platform-independent method for building e-business applications on the Internet.