IBM developerWorks posted the first tutorial on their network introducing AJAX application development using Google Web Toolkit and Apache Derby. In this first tutorial Noel Rappin, Senior Software Engineer, Motorola, Inc. introduces the first steps to aquire GWT, create a project, move the project to eclipse then run your GWT program. This is just an introduction and in the next article the author will show you how to build a data layer on the server side using the Derby database and convert the data from its database form into Java objects that can be sent to your GWT client. Then you'll meet the remote procedure architecture that connects the server and the client.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a major step forward in the creation of dynamic Java™Script applications that run in users' Web browsers. Using GWT, developers can design the user interface (UI) and event model using familiar Java techniques while GWT does the hard work of making the code friendly for all the major browsers. Learn the basics of GWT in this first article in a series, including how GWT lets you create an Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) application and still write your code in the Java language. Discover how to create and run a small sample GWT application -- a hot new Web 2.0 business called Slicr, which sells pizza online.