IBM Rational Application Developer is a very important tool for developers, but it is also a complex product. An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer, A Guided Tour is designed to jumpstart the learning process with its focus on interactive hands-on learning through a wide variety of useful, practical, end-to-end tutorials. Hands-on exercises and in-depth explanations form chapter modules within the book, thereby providing a complete step-by-step guide to each specific topic while allowing readers to pick and choose which tutorials they want (or need) to study without necessarily going in chapter order. And, because of its modular structure, each tutorial’s sample code is independent of any earlier tutorials, freeing readers to skip from tutorial to tutorial, based on their specific knowledge requirements. Because of this design, this book continues to be a useful reference as a reader’s need to know increases. Using this book’s method, readers quickly learn IBM Rational Application Developer #8212;regardless of their previous level of experience or inexperience.For beginners, there are tutorials that teach how to create Web, EJB, JMS, and Web Services applications using Rational Application Developer. For the more advanced readers, there are tutorials on security, publishing, testing, team development, profiling, and logging. Written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, the tutorials run on common databases, including IBM Cloudscape, IBM DB2® Universal Database, Microsoft® SQL Server, Sybase® Enterprise Systems, and Oracle® Database.