Need guidance in choosing the appropriate technology

[mstaszew]

Hi there. I'm new to J2EE, EJB, and most things Java. Other than Java programming in college, I've done nothing with it in the past decade.

The basics:

I am working on creating a simple server application that connects to an Oracle database and exposes various methods via a web service. It needs to support SOAP or REST and I'll be connecting to it using applications written in Delphi and other languages. I have my application mocked up in Delphi and using IIS I'm able to access it remotely. However, I need platform independence so I'm looking at Java.

The specs:

+ Communicate with Oracle
+ Platform independence
+ Support SOAP or REST for communicating with client apps
+ Must have GUI for administrator to tweak settings or the management console could be exposed by a web page that accepts login credentials.

What Java technologies should I be investigating? I have the Java EE Tutorial which I'll read today, but Java seems to be absolutely littered with buzzwords and technologies that I don't want to get started down the wrong path. Then I see that there are various application servers and that Eclipse has built-in drivers for different ones. Does this mean that my application will need to be tailored to one particular application server? Is there a way to make it fully independent so that I can deploy this to anyone using any platform and web server of their choosing and have it just work?

I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. Any help is appreciated.

<edit>I should add that I've already played with Oracle XDB and APEX and used its utilities for setting up a web service and using PL/SQL to accomplish my goals. This works well, but has the undesired side effect of requiring newer implementations of Oracle. I've opted instead to just use Oracle as a repository and place all of the web service work and data processing in my server application so that older versions of Oracle would be no problem.</edit>

Thanks,
Michael

[kulangotski]

micheal you got some responsibilities here. I suggest you scan through this - The Java EE 6 Tutorial hope it helps