New to J2EE and web development in java

Hi folks,

I have been developing desktop app in C# for the past two years. But now I am taking my masters and I am learning in Java. I am also interested in J2EE and wanted to develop web apps in Java. The problem is, I am very much confused with the tools, classes and etc Java uses. For example people say to me, you have to know Struts, Spring, JSP, Ant, Tomcat, Apache Tomcat, Hibernate, and etc. I tried to search every one of those and got some clue but not that much detail and now I am really confused.
Before I go to coding (which is my interest), I wanted to know what tools to know and why and how they are used, at least the basics. Once I get some idea, I will keep on searching by myself. Can any body please tell me or give me a link of what tools I have to start with as a begineer web developer? Can any body give me a brief description about them?I downloaded Eclipse and I am almost familier on how to use it and I also write some code on it. These days, I downloaded J2EE, Struts, and Hibernate but I dont know how to use them and where to use them. No clue. Help me guys.


Thank you.

J2EE is the standard Java library for server-side programming, and it's core classes are generally used by frameworks such as Struts that are intended to provide convenient wrappers for web developers.

Hibernate is a library intended to simplify the use of relational databases in your code. It is strongly integrated with the Spring framework, which is a series of modules providing all the server-side features & services you're likely to need, nicely integrated. You can use Spring and Hibernate together, or separately. Because it's so modular you can use Spring and Hibernate modules with other frameworks, such as Struts (although personally, I'd only do this if I had prior investment in Struts).

If you want to learn about them, go browse the appropriate web sites (e.g. SpringSource, Hibernate, Struts).

Choose the tools most suited to your requirements.

The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities...
E. Dijkstra

Thank you for your reply. My main question is, which developments tool should I have to use as a beginner? Which tools you recommend me, that will help me to easily understand web development in Java?

As a beginner the only tool you should have is J2EE until you understand what is happening and how Servlets and such work. You should try creating a basic Web application where you modify the web.config yourself and set up the servlet mappings. This will teach you how to understand how JSP pages communicate with the back end. Just jumping into something like Struts, Spring or JSF is a bad idea. You really should learn what is happening behind the scenes first.

I'd second ProgramThis - you need to understand how J2EE works if you want to get best value from frameworks that sit on top of it, so start with J2EE. It's a lot simpler than it used to be, and once you understand it, you'll be able to see how the frameworks use it.

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand...
Chinese proverb