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finance application for Cisco Systems. "We spent six months building a transaction framework for Java," says Alex Kalinovsky, enterprise Java practice manager for IonIdea, a consulting firm in Fairfax, Va., that builds Internet applications for large companies. Today, all that infrastructure work is provided as part of J2EE, including transactions, security, middleware, database connectivity, and messaging.

From the largest, long-established businesses to the newest dot-coms, companies are turning to Java for their Internet applications. Netnumina used Java to build a foreign-exchange system for Citibank. It put the business logic into an Enterprise JavaBean and used Java Messaging Services to add workflow. For an insurance-industry client, it built an online insurance-purchasing application. "One transaction kicks off multiple transactions and multiple workflows," Grasso says.

A recent study bolsters what E-business proponents have been saying about the spread of Java. In a survey of major companies, the Standish Group found that Java beat out C++ for the first time as the language of choice for critical applications. When asked about standards adoption, respondents in the same survey ranked Enterprise JavaBeans, the Java component standard, second behind Open Database Connectivity, while ActiveX and COM+, Microsoft's component standard, tied for sixth place, says executive VP Karen Boucher.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition is built on top of Java 2, the latest version of the object-oriented programming language. Java 2 brings a number of enhancements to Java, including policy-based security and a new set of graphical user interface components called Swing. Along with improvements in Java virtual machines and more powerful desktop systems, Java 2 may even spark some revival of Java on the desktop.

But for now, the Java 2 action is squarely centered on server-side development. For example, Sparks.com Inc., a San Francisco marketer of greeting cards and gifts over the Internet, turned to J2EE to build its own online E-commerce application after it outgrew the packaged E-business system used to launch the company. In the build-vs.-buy question, packaged solutions have had the upper hand, but J2EE changed the equation for Sparks by providing a prebuilt infrastructure for its E-business development. "Packaged solutions lack flexibility, but building an entire E-business application from scratch was too big a job and would take too much time," says Jason Monberg, Sparks' chief technology officer.

Instead, the company opted for J2EE, which Monberg sees as a middle ground between a packaged solution and a complete, custom-built application. It would let the company build exactly the functionality it wanted without having to construct the underlying transaction and application-support infrastructure. "We didn't want to have to build the foundation of the application," he says. A year ago, the company chose the WebLogic application server, which implements the full J2EE specification. At that time, a few other vendors offered J2EE implementations, but they were incomplete. Today, Sparks would have a larger choice of J2EE options.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition consists of the components that make up the application-development and deployment environment. The key components include the Java Database Connectivity API for database access; Java IDL for Corba interoperability, which is used mainly for integration with existing enterprise resources; and a new multilevel security model. In addition, J2EE provides full support for EJB components, a Java Servlets API for server-side code, Java Server Pages (JSPs) to create dynamic Web pages, and support for XML technology. J2EE also provides naming and directory services through the Java Naming and Directory Interface, transaction services, and Java Messaging Service. For EJB, J2EE supports both entity beans, which offer persistence or state, and session beans, which handle the application business logic.

Developers have generally embraced J2EE. "We like Java 2 Enterprise Edition because it addresses the server-side issues--scalability, portability, and transaction management," says Jason Westra, chief technical officer of Verge Technologies Group Inc., a Boulder, Colo., custom-development shop. Verge has used Java to build a real-time investment quote system for a global financial services company, core business components for a dot-com radio site, and an EJB foundation for a business-to-business site. Specifically, Verge makes extensive use of the APIs that support EJBs, particularly the transaction APIs, Java Database Connector, and Java Naming and Directory Interface.

IonIdea takes advantage of Java Server Pages, J2EE's answer to Microsoft's Active Server Pages. "Java Server Pages is a great technology. Instead of using server-side script, we can simply embed Java in an HTML page," Kalinovsky says. The company finds JSP particularly useful for building dynamic Web pages, which change based on the results of the query.

Java Server Pages could also be used to build business logic into Web pages, but Grasso warns about using JSP for anything other than the display of dynamic Web pages. "JSP is a great technology to present a dynamic Web page, but any extra logic you need should go into a servlet or EJB," he says.

Sparks turned to Java Messaging Service to connect its E-commerce application to back-office production and logistics systems, where "each system has its own funky interface," says Monberg. But Java Messaging Service lets the company pass messages back and forth between Java applications and the back-end apps regardless of the differences between the systems.

Despite the improvements J2EE brings to Java development, the technology still suffers from its relative youth. Portability remains a concern, but the problem appears to be quickly diminishing. "A year ago, you had to do some serious work to move an EJB to another container. Now you can go across a number of containers without changing a line, provided you don't use any of the value-added services of the particular container," Grasso says. With J2EE, application servers typically function as the containers. Quinn expects the portability problem to evaporate as Sun ramps up compliance testing.

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