Java EE versus Java SE for web application development

Question

What has me going is the degree of web application development we are talking about.

There are different levels of web application development. For example, if I was asked to develop a web application to deal with housing customer information for a small mom and pop bakery (definitely not a enterprise situation), is there anything wrong with using Java EE as opposed to Java SE if I really want to.

I know you might say that it would be overkill, and I can understand that, however, am I going to run into development issues that I would not run into using Java SE? In other words, I am trying to determine when does a small business web application turn into a enterprise web application. It seems to me that I should be able to use Java model that I want.

Am I wrong in my thinking here?

Need clarification here if you can help me.

Answer 1

There seems to be some confusion over the usage of Java EE and Java SE terminologies. Just because EE expands to Enterprise Edition, it does not mean that it is used only by enterprises.

Java EE happens to be a set of specifications that are bundled together to form a platform. The moment you need to write a web application, you need to use the Servlet + JSP specifications at a bare minimum, which is a subset of the Java EE specification.

Java SE, on its own is usually used to write standalone applications. It is better to refer to Java SE more as an API or a library, rather than an as specification, in contrast to Java EE. It can be considered as a platform for the "non-enterprisey" applications.