I know something about Java but completely new to Enterprise Java. I\'m trying my hand with NetBeans 6.1 and GlassFish Application Server. Please guide me to some resources whi
The Java EE 5 Tutorial - read online or as pdf
EJB 3 in Action - great book that covers everything you need to know
I have also recently started with Java EE and I have only used Glassfish/Sun Application Server so far, but from what I understad from my colleagues at work and what I have seen so far Glassfish seems to be the the best choice at the moment.
I always like to start with wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edition
Mastering a good IDE like Eclipse is worthwhile.
Last but not least, YouTube has nice how-to vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-IDpzC0n9Y
"what java enterprise applications are, how they are different from normal java classes etc"
Well they are normal classes. They are ran by an application server. The "application server" is often just a JVM, but sometimes enhanced or modified or extended by the vendor. But that shouldn't be any concern to you. The application server (ie: JVM) uses a class loader (probably customized by vendor) to load your servlet (any class that implements the HttpServlet interface). Any other classes (not just J2EE classes, but all classes) will be loaded by the class loader. From there on it is your same java code. I hope this gives you the kind of answer you want. Reading J2EE documents (even aimed towards developers) usually entails meaningless buzzwords.
I would recommend that you look over the J2EE Tutorial from Sun. It's free, and goes over the basics that you should know before moving onto a framework (Struts for example). And of course must need to know if you are just going to use just straight J2EE.
You may wish to familiarize yourself with some of this:
A couple of helpful facts:
Glassfish on Linux is an excellent choice.