About This Course
11-Apr-20

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The formal title of this course is “Programming
Languages & Techniques III”
A better title would be “Web technologies”
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Some of these technologies are specific to Java
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Most of the technologies are language-independent
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This course, however, uses Java
 Prerequisite: CIT594 or equivalent proficiency in Java
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Translation: you had better already be a pretty good Java programmer!
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 The explosive growth of the Web has greatly changed the face of computing
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Before, we wrote programs under these assumptions:
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We could use whatever language was convenient
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We could write programs for the computer we happened to have available at the moment
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We could design our own data formats and database schema
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We did not have to interact with the rest of the world
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Today, all of these assumptions are wrong!
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Sun’s slogan, “The network is the computer,” is becoming true
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Platform independence is no longer a luxury, but a necessity
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There is a large and growing need for information interchange
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 The Internet has become extremely popular
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It connects millions of computers together
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These computers run all kinds of programs, with all kinds of operating systems
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Interoperability of programs and data has become a serious issue
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There are two possible solutions:
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Microsoft’s preferred solution: Force everyone to use Windows
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Much of Microsoft’s software is designed with this end in mind
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If this happens, it will not happen quickly
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Develop platform-independent languages and systems
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This is what all the other software developers (including Sun
Microsystems, the creator of Java) are working on
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Java is the most platform-independent language we have
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This is one of the reasons for its popularity (there are many others)
HTML is not as feature-rich as MS Word, but it nevertheless does a pretty good job
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HTML is the language of the Web
Most software documentation these days is distributed in HTML, PDF
(Adobe’s Portable Document Format), or plain text
We will look at ways to create HTML from Java
XML is a platform-independent way of describing data
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We will look at ways to process XML from Java
SQL is the most widely accepted database language
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We will look at ways to access SQL databases from Java
Client-server architecture is used to communicate across the Web
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We will look at creating server-side and client-side applications
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may
HTML
HTML Forms
JavaScript
XHTML & CSS
Ajax
Java servlets
JSP Java
SAX
DOM
JAXP
Perl PHP
XML
DTD
XML Schemas
RELAX NG
Java
Java
JDBC
But underneath...
HTTP
TCP/IP
Sockets maybe RMI
Apache
Tomcat
SQL
XSL
XSLT
XPath
CSS
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 We will be using Java, JUnit, Eclipse, Tomcat, and
MySQL, and several others
 The CD that comes with the textbook has older versions of some of this software
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In general, we want the newest versions available
 Newer versions are freely available on the Web
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An early assignment will be to install this software and keep a log of any problems and solutions you encounter
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I avoid proprietary (Windows-only) software
I can’t provide a lot of help with installation
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 Our textbook this semester is Murach’s Java
Servlets & JSP
 Additional instructional material is on the Web
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The Web is full of great (and some not-so-great) tutorials and specifications
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In some cases, I will provide links to additional online tutorials
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If you find better links, please let me know!
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 We will have approximately one assignment per week
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Assignments will frequently build on previous assignments
Assignments may say something like, “plus five features not covered in class”
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This is to make sure you explore the resources available to you
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Note: To make it practical to grade your assignments, it is your responsibility to point out these extra features
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Appearance and content will be factors in grading
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Late policy: 5% off for each day late
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Assignments will be due by midnight
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We will have a short quiz approximately every two weeks
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Quizzes will be announced in advance (at least on the web site)
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Quizzes will concentrate on recently covered material, but may include earlier material if appropriate
Quizzes may include material that was not covered in class
If we have at least six quizzes, your lowest quiz grade will be dropped
There will be no final exam
Assignments and examinations will be weighted as follows:
50% assignments, 50% quizzes
Grades will be curved: 90% (or any other number) is not necessarily an A
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I will not, in general, provide specific extra credit assignments
Small amounts of extra credit will be given for helping to improve this class; for example:
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Finding new Web sites that I think are really useful (just finding relevant
Web sites is easy; there are thousands)
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Pointing out serious problems in my assignments (early enough to help others!)
I may allow significant extra credit for a project of your own devising, if you first get me to agree and then do a good job on it
Extra credit will be used to adjust grades upward, after they have been calculated for the entire class
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 You may:
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 discuss the assignments with one another help others debug their work use, without attribution, anything I post to the Web
 You may not:
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 share code with anyone but your assigned partner (if any) copy another’s code, or allow your code to be copied lend your code to someone else, or leave it lying around where someone else may copy it use any code from textbooks or the Web without my permission
 If you think you may have accidentally broken a rule, come and talk to me about it
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--Source unknown
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