Have a good one." We hear this expression often these days. I find myself wondering what exactly it means. Have a good...what? But think about it. What it really means is that the speaker is unwilling to make a commitment. Someone might be offended or annoyed if you said something that actually contained any meaning. Remember "Have a nice day"? That expression actually carries some small amount of content. But pretty soon anyone using it was ridiculed and berated for being trivial. Commitment, even on a modest level, can sometimes be dangerous.

Commitment takes courage. With EAServer 4.0, Sybase shows they can and will make a commitment. In the areas that matter to developers, EAServer 4.0 extends and improves on the features that made version 3.6.1 such a standout.

J2EE compliance continues to be a cornerstone of the EAServer feature set. EAServer 4.0 complies with the J2EE 1.3 spec and includes a host of useful and exciting new features as a result.

Why is the J2EE specification so important? It's a standard in the application server world. It promotes portability of components, interoperability among different application servers, and scalability of your applications. And it provides a feature list that a J2EE-branded application server such as EAServer 4.0 can use to simplify enterprise development.

J2EE 1.3 Enhancements in EAServer 4.0
EAServer 4.0 provides full support for the Java Servlet 2.3 API, including filters - standard actions that occur both before and after execution of a servlet. Other new features of Servlet 2.3 include listener interfaces, validation of dependencies during deployment, and the ability of Web components to pass a security identity to an EJB.

EAServer 4.0 also supports the JSP 1.2 API. A new feature of this specification is that JSP pages can be written using XML tags in place of equivalent JSP tags. Pages are validated when they're compiled during development rather than each time they're executed. Multiple tag libraries are supported in one JAR file. You'll also find a new TryCatchFinally interface.

EAServer 4.0 fully supports Java Message Service (JMS)1.0.2. The EJB 2.0 API is also supported, including home methods for entity beans, local interface (passed by reference) for beans in the same container, message-driven beans (MDB), interserver operability, and a new container-managed persistence (CMP) model. The Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP) 1.1 specification supports SAX, DOM, and XSLT. The J2EE Connector architecture provides a standard architecture for integration with enterprise information systems.

This long, acronym-laden list of J2EE 1.3 features supported by EAServer 4.0 means improvements in code portability, interoperability, and scalability.

Sybase has also committed resources to improving the already excellent performance, reliability, and usability of EAServer.

• Performance improvements include items like the Java Server Hotspot compiler, in-memory failover for stateful components, CMP, and caching for objects and JSP/servlets.
• For reliability you can now run C++ components in a separate external process.
• Usability features include Jaguar Manager GUI improvements and Web server redirector plug-ins. These plug-ins allow you to forward HTTP requests for servlets and hosted Web applications from a Web server to EAServers behind the firewall.

Sybase has shown their continued commitment to their customers, the developers. EAServer 4.0 contains new features that cater to the OEM developer, including a new licensing model for OEMs that allows selective deployment of EAServer components and a silent install capability that allows EAServer installation to be embedded within a larger installation process. The result is a cleaner, more controlled, and more robust installation of applications with an embedded EAServer.

What it all means is that you can be assured that EAServer 4.0 will advance the art of development in positive ways, ways that will improve your productivity as well as the reliability and reusability of the components and applications that are your contributions to the art. Put another way, when somebody inevitably advises you to "Have a good one," you can reply, with an air of commitment: "No thanks. I think I'll have a good 4."