Real-World Java for Business: The IBM SanFrancisco Application Business Components

by Paul B. Monday and Anders Nilsson

The IBM SanFrancisco Application Business Components have been commercially available for over a year, with the third release arriving in the hands of developers in the fourth quarter of 1998. When you first attempt to understand exactly what the product offers, it is easy to get carried away with the technology and infrastructure that SanFrancisco delivers using the Java language. The foundation of SanFrancisco provides application platform independence through Java, built-in object distribution mechanisms, object locking, transaction support, and more. Although SanFrancisco deserves credit for its technical achievements, it is more important to application designers and programmers that SanFrancisco hides many of these complex technologies within its Foundation layer. By hiding the details of object distribution, object persistence, language neutrality (through Java) and other technologies, application providers can focus on business logic and processes for their applications.