What do I use for a J2ee website?

Question

Not sure if I asked this correctly. I am trying to see what I need to create an website that uses MVC and that connects to legacy multiple databases, brining back those database info into one page. I wanted the site to be MVC but am not sure where to begin. Do I use Spring? What do I use for an server? Jboss and apache? Hibernate?

I'm just kind of lost on how to proceed. It's not a straight forward a asp.net mvc or a php framwork.

A major concern is the collection of data from multiple legacy databases and bringing that data back into one page.

Thanks.

Answer 1

All that you really for MVC in Java is basic servlets and some JSPs.

The servlets are the controllers, which get some model data and stuff it into the request object, then forward execution on the the view.

A quick google to refresh myself of how this works brings this up:

String nextJSP = "/searchResults.jsp";
RequestDispatcher dispatcher = getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(nextJSP);
dispatcher.forward(request,response);

Once you start working with basic servlets and JSPs, you'll start to see why you might want a framework to start handling some patterns for you. At that point, I'd just look at a few try them out, and pick one.

As this is also my first time through using MVC in Java I'm still using barebones servlets and JSPs and am actually fine with it right now.

Mark