What does "mastering J2EE" mean?

Question

Often i hear people say, "I know J2EE", or "I've mastered J2EE".

What does that mean: when I can say that, or what would I need to learn to know J2EE?

Answer 1

J2EE is the Java Enterprise Platform, or officially "Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition". The naming convention was changed by Sun some time ago and the most recent versions are now called JEE 5 and 6.

The Java Enterprise Edition is an extension to the Java standard library which is composend of a number of components and application as well as security models to provide a ready-to-use framework for building complex and distributed Java applications. It also introduces the concept of a "container", which is usually an application server providing all or a subset of the standard J2EE components, to allow the transfer of J2EE applications between servers without rewriting the complete application (there are obviously some caveats here in practice, though).

"Knowing J2EE" could be interpreted as being aware and understanding the concept of all J2EE components and having used some of them in an application design already.

Obvioulsy different people will have different ideas here, but I'd say if you have used Servlets, JSPs, EJBs and other data access components and grasp the concept of JMS, JNDI, the underlying XML technologies and web services, you should be able to claim knowledge of J2EE.

If you want to learn more about the different components, Sun has a quite comprehensive tutorial available.

For a complete overview of all technologies involved in the Java Enterprise Platform, there is a full list at Sun's website, even though that one only refers to the latest versions JEE 5 and 6, not J2EE to be precise.

Answer 2

If you want to master J2EE, you should at least read through the "J2EE Tutorials" and "J2EE core patterns". Knowing J2EE means you have ideas of the J2EE components and concepts as Chris said. Perhaps you should get through the Sun certification of J2EE too if you want to master the J2EE.

By the way, software building is a practical activity. You can't master it well unless you have rich real engineering experience.