RESUMEN

Apache's Ant tool, like Make, helps automate the code-building process. The authors use XML not only to compile source files but also to build and deploy applications. The tool's use of Java classes and XML make it simple, portable, and powerful. The authors summarize Ant's most important features and offer a wealth of recommended practices.

Over the past decade, this university's academic management system evolved from a mainframe environment to a Windows-based client-server architecture and then to a Web environment. Aiming for independence from vendors, these developers adopted open-source solutions for their Web applications and were delighted with the results.