The Return of Blog: JEE tutorial begins

3 minute read

Ok so I’ve finally decided to continue blogging. I must apologize for the dearth, and for leaving on such a hope-filled note. Alas, I’ve never gotten around to doing that FB Search project. I now have a new project I’m dreaming up… (Another family history one, I’ll probably get around to blogging about it too sometime). Right now, the project I am currently undergoing is thoroughly going through the JEE 6 tutorial, and getting my new laptop setup (I got a relatively expensive Windows 7, Samsung i7 processor, with 8G ram, 1 terabyte of space… it’s more expensive, considering that I use it for on-the-side contract work.)
So, first thing I learned while doing the tutorial: JEE actually came after J2EE. Apparently, the maker of Java put out a 2nd big release of Java, called Java 2. Unfortunately, they started calling updates of Java 2 versions 1.1, then Java 2 version 1.2, etc… No idea why they didn’t just name it Java 2.1, then Java 2.2, etc., but they didn’t.
Anyways, when they came out with the Enterprise Edition (EE) of Java 2, they decided to call it J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition). Great. However, things continued to get messy, as they released new versions of J2EE and new versions of Java (also, not necessarily at an even pace). So I suppose they started getting J2EE versions 1.7 simultaneously with Java 2 version 1.3… I suppose it also didn’t help when they came out with J2EE version 4.0, etc. Anyways, they decided it was just too confusing, and ditched the “2” in J2EE, to give us JEE version 6, version 7…
ANyways, as part of the process of reading the tutorial, it seemed like a very good idea to actually try and build and run the tutorial code. So, for that, on my new computer, I needed a whole slew of things.
Most notably, I needed the Java Development Kit (JDK), which was an easy install. Because this was a new computer, I also needed to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), which comes packaged with the JDK. BUT BUT BUT, when they install the JDK, which technically includes the JRE, it doesn’t configure it for you. I suppose they assumed if you’re technical enough to want the JDK, you’re technical enough to know how to manually tweak the necessary PATH variable settings on your windows machine…
Anyways, I installed the JDK and JRE. Next came the JEE SDK installation. A simple download, and running of the installation program, right? Wrong: I got an error stating

Error: Could not find the required version of the Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment in'(null)’

So apparently the JEE SDK installation program depends on Java’s own JRE… That’s fine but weird that I got the error: I just installed the JRE. So I googled that problem a few times, and eventually found the root of the problem. Sure I had successfully isntalled teh 64 bit JRE (whcih made sense because my computer is a 64 bit computer), but I HADN’T INSTALLED THE 32 bit JRE! And OBVIOUSLY the 64 bit JRE depends on the 32 bit JRE! (Actually I’m just gesting, it still doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve never seen or heard of that before…
Anyways, once I installed the 32 bit JRE, then the JEE SDK installed fine.
Well, except for the ‘updatetool’ configuration. When finished the installation, I got some nasty red text saying that it wasn’t configured. I was provided with a nice error log (which was totally not helpful) and some links to a huge manual on JEE SDK installation. YuuuUUuck! So I had a thought, which is normally a very lazy and innacurate thought: “Maybe this error message is wrong, and the updatetool installed just fine…” Really it was nothing more than wishful thinking. So I followed the steps suggested in the tutorial, and just opened up the windows command line, and typed the command “updatetool”. And behold! It said the updatetool was not isntalled, but that it would be automagically installed for me if I so desired. I did. (What was odd was getting all this misleading, error-looking messages, when it was all quite alright…)
Anyways, and that’s where I’m at right now. I’ve got the tutorial example code downloaded, and am about to start running it.