From its humble beginnings to powering a large share of today’s digital world, Java offers a vast ecosystem of tools, libraries, frameworks, and literature. Java has a reliable platform upon which many services and applications are built while it continues to design new, innovative products and digital services for the future to rely on. Indeed, Java remains such a popular development platform, and how it accelerates projects and supports a wide range of emerging technologies.
How Does Java Work?
Java consists of both a software platform and a programming language. A Java Development Kit (JDK) must be downloaded to create an application using Java, which is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. While writing the program in the Java programming language, a compiler turns the program into Java bytecode, which is the instruction set for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that is a part of the Java runtime environment (JRE).
Additionally, Java bytecode runs without modification on any system that supports JVMs, allowing the Java code to be run anywhere. In fact, the Java software platform consists of the JVM, the Java API, and a complete development environment. Not only that, the JVM parses and runs (interprets) the Java bytecode.
On the other hand, the Java API consists of an extensive set of libraries that includes networking, basic objects, and security functions; Extensible Markup Language (XML) generation; and web services. Furthermore, the Java language and the Java software platform create a powerful, proven technology for enterprise software development.
What Are The Four Different Types Of Java Applications?
Below are mainly the types of applications that can be created using Java programming, including:
Standalone Application
Standalone Application has other names, which are desktop applications or window-based applications. As a matter of fact, this is traditional software that needs to be installed on every machine.
Examples of standalone Applications are Antivirus, Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Media player, etc. In addition, AWT and Swing are used in Java for creating standalone applications.
Web Application
The web application runs on the server side and creates a dynamic page. Servlet, JSP, Struts, Spring Framework, Hibernate, JSF, etc., are used to develop Java web applications.
Enterprise Application
An application distributed in nature, such as banking applications, etc., is called an enterprise application. It has advantages like high-level security, clustering, and load balancing. In Java, EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) is used for creating enterprise applications.
Mobile Application
An application created for mobile Java ME Sare is used for creating mobile applications.
What Are The Important Skill Sets Required To Build Java Applications On Heroku (JEE, Spring, etc.)?
Basic Java Skills
Basic Java skills involve building various software, from desktop and web applications to cloud systems and mobile apps. In fact, Java’s capabilities stretch to Big Data apps along with Python. A Java developer can consider the Java technologies list below:
- OOP (Object-oriented programming) principles since Java is an OOP language.
- MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB are relational databases. Correspondingly, Writing MySQL queries will be helpful.
- Git and BitBucket, which are popular version control systems
- Working with an IDE or integrated development environment (IDE), such as IntelliJ IDEA.
- HTML, CSS, and JQuery, which are web frontend technologies
Microservices
A skillful developer should learn microservice applications, like Docker Container, since it’s in demand. Specifically, Docker Container is used for creating and compiling Microservice applications in various environments.
With regards to Microservice architecture, the Java programmer must be conversant with authentication, authorization, data security, network security, and deployment.
DevOps Tools
DevOps is a must among the top Java skills. In fact, a skillful developer must be familiar with continuous integration (CI), continuous deployment (CD), and Jenkins’ role in both processes. For senior-level developers whose responsibilities often include implementing coding best practices and creating manuals and scripts, a solid knowledge of popular DevOps tools like Docker, Chef, Kubernetes, Maven, and Jenkins is even more critical.
APIs
APIs like JSON processing APIs, XML processing APIs, Collection APIs, Logging APIs, and Date and Time APIs are what Java developers must learn. In addition, Java Libraries for XML processing APIs are Stax and JAXB. JSON processing APIs that Java programmers should also learn to include JSON-io, Jackson, Genson, and Gson.
JSON-p package comes in standard Java libraries. Many Java Collection APIs exist, such as PriorityQue, HashSet, LinkedHashSet, ArrayList, LinkedList, ArrayDeque, Vector, and Stack.
Cloud Environments
Research conducted in 2018 shows that 90% of organizations would eventually migrate to the cloud. In this case, incorporating this skill to develop cloud-based applications is advantageous. One cloud platform known today is Heroku, which lets companies build, deliver, monitor, and scale apps.
Web Frameworks
Of course, knowledge of Java Web Frameworks is an advantage. Mainly, Java Web Frameworks have web services, web resources, and web APIs to build and deploy web applications on the World Wide Web.
In addition, Java Web Frameworks allow developers to build mobile applications studded with features but using limited code. Among the Java Web Frameworks are Spring MVC and Play.
Java EE and Spring Framework
Java EE and Spring Framework are advantageous and come in handy for Java developers. To specific, the Java Enterprise Edition or Java EE provides libraries, APIs, tools, and services to build large-scale server-side applications. Also, it is suitable for managing web-based clients because it gives JavaServer Pages and Servlet APIs, which enable logging using cookies.
On the other hand, Spring Framework is also popular among companies because it is open source which reduces the costs of license.
The Bottom Line
Java has become a widely known programming language and development platform that helps reduce costs, shorten development timeframes, drive innovation, and improve application services. Adaptid offers Heroku, a cloud platform that lets companies build, deliver, monitor, and scale apps — the quick way to go from idea to URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that bypasses all those infrastructure headaches. Ultimately, Adaptid can help you leverage Heroku to extend your Salesforce data where you need it, may it be from working with large data sets to externally facing applications.
