Oracle® Technology Network (OTN), the technical resource for building applications on the Oracle platform, launched "Mastering J2EE Application Development Series," a 12-week series of technical articles providing expert advice and best practices on how developers can simplify the J2EE application development life cycle in 12 easy steps.

Open standards drive the current trends for information technology (IT) software infrastructures and J2EE plays an ever-increasingly important role in this arena - making it necessary for application developers to stay up-to-speed with the latest J2EE enhancements and challenges. The "Mastering J2EE Development" series will equip developers with the tools needed to address a full spectrum of technical issues related to the J2EE development lifecycle, beginning with project conception and continuing through to deployment and release process.

The series will kick off with an article from Ted Neward, a leading Java author and consultant. Each Friday, developers can access articles from the "Mastering J2EE Application Development" series at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/masterj2ee/index.html. The complete schedule includes:

• Step 1: Slicing and Dicing J2EE

Ted Neward, consultant and author, Effective Enterprise Java

• Step 2: Managing Projects

Julien Dubios, J2EE expert

• Step 3: Designing and Modeling

Scott W. Ambler, senior consultant, Ronin International

• Step 4: Building on Frameworks

Andrei Cioroianu, founder of Devsphere

• Step 5: Building More Usable Software

Jonathan Boutelle, Rashimi Sinha, Ph.D, principal, Uzanto Consulting

• Step 6: Mastering Server Side Java

Rod Johnson, co-author, Spring Framework; and James Clark, Oracle TopLink Development

• Step 7: Mastering Server Side Java (Part 2)

Venkat Tipparam, Oracle Java Developer of the Year 2004

• Step 8: Designing Better User Interfaces

Hans Bergsten, member JCP expert groups and author of JavaServer Faces (O'Reilly)

• Step 9: Designing Better User Interfaces (Part 2)

Craig McClanahan, creator of Struts and JavaServer Faces

• Step 10: Mastering the Art of Debugging

Satadip Dutta, software architect, Hewlett-Packard

• Step 11: Optimizing and Profiling

Benjamin Livshits, Ph.D candidate, Stanford University

• Step 12: Deploying

Lonneke Dikmans, senior consultant, Transfer Solutions