July 4, 2007 at 10:19 pm · Filed under Java / Java EE
The Java EE 6 proposal (JSR 316) was published yesterday. Rod Johnson (creator of the Spring Framework and the man originally against J2EE / EJB) has written a blog post "Java EE Gets it Right" where he welcomes the new JSR and looks forward to participate in the expert group. He thinks that Java EE 6 can solve many of the problems that has plagued the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). He concludes:
I believe that the enterprise Java community should welcome Java EE 6, and should welcome Sun's willingness to move with the times and take the choices that will strengthen the enterprise Java platform as a whole. There's a lot of good in J2EE/Java EE, but some of the problems have obscured it. Java EE 6 should change that!
June 30, 2007 at 9:56 pm · Filed under Java / Java EE, Software development
May 10, 2007 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Java / Java EE
At JavaOne, Sun announced what they call their Flash-killer: JavaFX. JavaFX is a runtime library and scripting language for rich clients. It this early stage it is accessable through dev.java.net. I tried some of the samples and it looks quite cool - especially compared to Sun's other UI tools like Swing. Even more exciting is the properties of the JavaFX scripting language described in this quote:
JavaFX Script is a highly productive scripting language that enables content developers to create rich media and content for deployment on Java environments. JavaFX Script is a declarative, statically typed programming language. It has first-class functions, declarative syntax, list-comprehensions, and incremental dependency-based evaluation. It can make direct calls to Java APIs that are on the platform. Since JavaFX Script is statically typed, it has the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features (such as packages, classes, inheritance, and separate compilation and deployment units) that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs using Java technology.
If you like statically typed languages this is good news. Otherwise stick with Groovy or something like that.
There are already discussions on whether the Java runtime is the right delivery platform for something like this. Some of the problems with Java is that it is relatively heavy as opposed to Flash. You can read more about the negative sides in this post at theserverside.
April 5, 2007 at 9:29 am · Filed under Java / Java EE, Web technology
The Sun JSF team with Ed Burns in front has decided to go public with a pre-JCP-filing of the JSR for JavaServer Faces 2.0. You can read the announcement in this post from Ed Burns. The draft for the JCP-filing is located here.
This is cool stuff! It brings a lot of new features to JSF along with optimizations to the current release (JSF 1.2). The new specification is timed for release with Java EE 6 so we will have to wait until fall 2008 before the spec (hopefully) is done and then some years for vendors to fully implement the spec.
November 7, 2006 at 12:44 pm · Filed under .NET, Java / Java EE
JNBridge has released JNBridgePro - a Java and .NET interoperability tool that easily connects anything in Java to anything in .NET. OK, so how does this work?
JNBridgePro creates the interoperability bridge by generating a set of proxies that expose the classes' APIs and manages the communications between the .NET and Java classes. You can explore Java or .NET classes with an easy-to-use proxy generator GUI and determine which classes should have their functionality exposed. The communication architecture enables the construction of distributed systems with the choice of three communication channels: a fast in-process shared-memory channel, a TCP/Binary protocol based on .NET remoting or an HTTP/SOAP channel. JNBridgePro provides support for J2SE or J2EE and all of the leading J2EE application servers.
With JNBridgePro developers can access Java objects and classes from .NET as if they were .NET objects and classes, or access .NET objects and classes from Java. JNBridgePro v3.1 adds the ability to embed Java widgets written in AWT or Swing directly inside WinForm applications, or embed .NET WinForms controls into Java AWT, SWT, or Swing applications. That's pretty sweet!
October 3, 2006 at 3:36 pm · Filed under .NET, Java / Java EE, EA and SOA, Software development, Web technology
Computerworld.dk skrev idag i denne artikel at den moderne udvikler skal kunne håndtere en bred vifte af webteknologier, programmeringssprog, arkitekturer og udviklingsmetoder. Det er budskabet på konferencen JAOO, der finder sted i Århus.
Den helstøbte udvikler kender til nye webteknologier som Ajax, programmeringssprog som Java, C#, og Ruby, arkitekturer som SOA (serviceorienteret arkitektur), forskellige modelleringsværktøjer og agile udviklingsmetoder. I hvert fald hvis man skal tage JAOO-konferencens program som udtryk for, hvad den helstøbte udvikler er.
Så kan jeg jo bare glæde mig over at jeg er godt på vej til at blive en helstøbt udvikler, da det netop er ovenstående egenskaber jeg fokuserer på at lære og til dels allerede mestrer :-)
JAOO afvikles som sagt i Århus i denne uge, og der er en masse kloge hoveder som f.eks. Martin Fowler, Gregor Hohpe, Bertrand Meyer, Ed Burns, Nikhil Kothari osv. som det kunne have været fedt at høre.
August 1, 2006 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Java / Java EE, Web technology
In the past few weeks I have looked at the various posibilities for using Ajax with JavaServer Faces (JSF). You can of course code all the javascript/dhtml/css yourself or you can use a toolkit like Dojo, Script.aculo.us or something like that. But you can also use a set of JSF components / RenderKit. With this approach you don't need to worry about writing and debugging some ugly javascript that doesn't behave the same way in the different browsers. You naturally also get all the advantages of the JSF framework, which I won't elaborate on on this post.
Regarding Ajax for JSF several initiatives are going on both open-source and commercially. This is not a full list, but in the following I will shortly introduce some of them.
Open-source
The Sun Blueprints team is working on some AJAX components which I think is included in Sun Studio Creator 2 (I installed it the other day, but damn it was heavy to use). Ed Burns, the co-spec lead for JavaServer Faces, and Jacob Hookom, member of the JavaServer Faces expert group, put forward their take on JSF and AJAX in the JavaServer™ Faces Technology Extensions project. There is also the jMaki project which is a little broader than just JSF components I think. Finally there is Exadel's ajax4jsf project. According to Ed Burns ajax4fsj and the JavaServer™ Faces Technology Extensions project has a similar approach.
Commercial
Recently ICEsoft released ICEfaces Enterprise Edition 1.0, an implementation of JSF that relies heavily on AJAX functionality. ICEfaces looks pretty cool I think. You can take a look at their Component Suite Showcase. Actually ICEfaces also comes in a Community Edition which is a fully featured product free for development and deployment. But it miss some enterprise details such as clustered deployment support. View the complete feature comparison between the Community Edition and the Enterprise Edition here.
As mentioned earlier Exadel has their open-source ajax4jsf project. They also has the commercial Exadel Studio Pro IDE and the Exadel Visual Component Platform (VCF), which is a rich component library for JSF with AJAX capabilities. You can view a demo here. I haven't looked into VCF, but I have tried Exadel Studio which is their free version of the IDE. It works good but that's probably because it's Eclipse-based :-) For a comparison between the Pro and Free version see this feature comparison.
Very recently Infragistics announced the release of NetAdvantage for JSF 2006, Volume I. This is a commercial set of AJAX-enabled JSF components for building user interfaces in J2EE. It includes design-time support for Sun Studio Creator and Eclipse (including Exadel Studio). Infragistics also has a cool showcase of their components. According to a comment on theserverside.com from Kito D. Mann, author of JSF in Action, NetAdvantage for JSF should be of good quality.
Which one to use
I can't say. They all look cool because they make it possible to do AJAX relatively simple if you know JSF. But you should probably look into their architecture and clarify if they fit your needs. I have the luxury of just playing around with them because I'm only a student and don't do any serious customer projects. If I find the time maybe I will take a look at ajax4jsf with the free version of Exadel Studio. Or maybe the community edition of ICEfaces. Maybe I don't get the time at all! My wife is due to give birth to our first child tomorrow. Exciting :-)
July 19, 2006 at 12:25 pm · Filed under Java / Java EE
A few days ago TheServerSide.com announced the release of ”Mastering EJB” in its 4th edition. The book is updated to EJB 3.0 and has around 50% new and revised material. The book includes an in-depth coverage of the Java Persistence API and how to use POJO entities with EJB. You can read more about the book and the contents at this link or go directly to their download page to get the free PDF.
