SpringSource Team Blog » Spring Overtakes EJB as a Skills Requirement

I think Spring is becoming important :-)

SpringSource Team Blog » Spring Overtakes EJB as a Skills Requirement

Seriously, I did a similar lookat using www.jobserve.com.au and found a similar trend.
Spring + Hibernate and Java is important.

Why are we not using Java EE 5?

I've been given the responsibility here at the University of Technology, Sydney take over the J2EE subjects 31242/32549 Advanced Internet Programming and the short course, AJPCPE "Advanced Java Programming"

One of the interesting debates I've been having with colleagues, industry and other trainers is what version of Java EE to teach.

Currently we are using a mix of Java application servers:
Tomcat 5.5 + Mysql 5
Axis
Weblogic 8.1 + Oracle 10
Weblogic 10.1 + Oracle 10

Now what makes the mix even more interesting is a comment from the BEA techday recently in sydney - basically the #1 weblogic server by big corporates (eg: commbank, qantas, westpac, etc) is Weblogic 8.1.

AArrgghh J2EE 1.3. Yuk.

The main strategy for these large companies is to skip odd version numbers ie: not weblogic 9.2 but migrate to weblogic 10. However, weblogic 10 is buggy and slow and the admin interface is unpopular. (and slow, oh sorry did I say that??)

Here's a Javalobby commentator's view of why are aren't going to Java EE 5... ( Why are we not using Java EE 5?).

I agree. Java EE 5 is simpler to develop with but no one wants to use it! Sun claims a huge success with Glassfish (or so their testimonials say) but are they in full scale product?

Sorry my friends, I think I'll stick to Java 1.4 for the moment, and give the option for Java EE 5 as an extension to the subjects. Or maybe teach both. Sigh.

WTP Tutorials - Building a School Schedule Web Application

WTP Tutorials - Building a School Schedule Web Application

Nice example.

Java EE without Ajax

Saw this by accident: Apusic is a chinese middleware company that has licensed and passed the J2EE 1.5 tests.

JavaEE without Ajax

The basic argument is that via a JSF render engine, you can AJAXify your JSF based JSP with minimal effort. The big issue with Ajax now is that you call javascript, hence a maintenance nightmare.(especially after my experience with SBW!!)

to quote:
Java, Yes; Java Script, No!
“We Love Java, Not Java Script.” Alternatively, such meaning can be put in the typical sentence pattern of the former Chinese leader Chairman Mao, “Java, yes; Java Script, no!” I believe that many readers may not agree with the title of this section. Yet it is a common voice of a large number of J2EE developers.
Quite many Java engineers have a strong favor in, or even obsession of, Java. They love the simplicity and elegance of Java. Once they are given an assignment that requires Java Script, they will feel puzzled. Overly flexible grammar, no way of checking the grammar through compiler, lack of good debugging tools… all hampers the use of Java Script by the developers, not to mention development with Ajax.
In short, the Java community needs Ajax to improve the man-machine experience of the Web applications based on javaEE. However, people do not like the current Ajax development mode. Needless to say, we want some new solution.

Who Will Rescue JavaEE Ajax ?
What is it then? My answer is JSF . Now, a popular belief about JSF is, in a somehow comic way, “Tragic life – Sun places JSF into the world of Java Web, naked.” My belief, however, is that as a revolutionary server component technology, JSF is like the sun at eight or nine o ' clock in the morning, hopeful and possible for anything.

Weblogic, Eclipse WTP, and RAVING MAD!!

Listening to the soundtrack of Battlestar Galactica. Bear McCreary. wow, what an imaginative and invocative soundtrack. I haven't seen most of the episodes but the music alone is enough to make me want to see the episodes in question. Got distracted looking at the composers website (bearMcCreary.com) where he describes the themes. Love it!

Am going insane preparing for the Adv Java Prog short course this saturday. Have been working around the clock and not seeing much of my wife and kids. not to mention subject material prep for web services development and going to meetings for the impending merger of facIT and facEng.

Monday was a meeting with our peers in engineering ICT land. Spent most of the time wrangling over title of the new "school". met Bob Rodowski and David Davis. I agree this david on his suggestion (School of ICT)

One reason I'm so mad is I had time to do and rethink the AJP course to something nicer like J2EE 1.5 or whatever.
Anyway, it took me 2 F*CKING months to get weblogic 10 working. Turns out there are a million bugs in it (and I though 9.2 was shit). What ever happened to the quality and speed of 8.1?
I investigated (ie: wasted time) looking at WASCE and Geronimo and so on (I didnt go for JBoss for some unknown reason). WAS 6 could've been a go-er except that it's not that friendly for young-uns at uni.

I wanted to use eclipse WTP 2 to do the development stuff - hey, the embedded JSP container (Jetty, aka J2EE Preview) is cool. But hey, Eclipse WTP 2 under Europa breaks all the time with permgen errors and a million little nigglys. Bleeding edge, more like haemorrage edge. Also because bloody IT support at faculty of IT UTS insist on the latest and greatest software so by default (ed: Fedora 8's fault) it runs fricken "icedtea" Java 1.7. This of course is ALPHA code and breaks not only eclipse but everything else under the sun (or should that be solaris .. chuckle!)

So I kept trying for 2 F*CKING weeks to get it working. Finally, 3 days ago (and a massive panic attack) I gave up and ran Workshop for Weblogic (comes with the server in $BEA_HOME/workshop_10.0 ) which was quite decent actually.
What am I saying??? IT ROCKS. The downside? It CRAPS the other server runtimes. Why did they remove J2EE preview and block you loading any plugins for other server runtimes? Oh well, that's why it's free. I wasted quite a few hours trying to hack it, but hey, ran out of time (suspect they have overridden a few Eclipse WTP classes deep inside in its bowels)

And BEA Workshop (or Workspace whatever) for JSP is wonderful. Has a JSP and Struts and JSF WYSIWYG editor. Amazing that I can run it for free (or at least 1 year). They combined everything together at last in the latest (march 08) versions of Weblogic 10 ?MP1?.

Now one more rant before I finish typing up the labs. I wish there was a way to manage slides. Powerpoint slides that is. I'd like some form of content management system that works for presentations so I can reuse, extend, do OO stuff. Slide Executive (looked interesting but it's a bit of a wank really. Just scans your directories for PPT slides, grabs the text and converts the slide into a GIF (!) then lets you generate virtual presentations via drag drop. You can search (using the extracted text) but there is nothing like version control or whatever. It ain't content management!

Oh goody. Maybe that will be my next project.

Code and content manage rulez!

Apache Synapse vs Camel

another good comparison between the Apache ESB offerings

ESBs in 2007: Taking the Open Source Bus to SOA (eBizQ)

article from eBizQ
http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/esb/features/8480.html (Part 1)
http://www.ebizq.net/topics/open_source/features/8638.html (Part 2)

Javablog » How MIDlet Signing is Killing J2ME

Javablog » How MIDlet Signing is Killing J2ME

bored bored bored bored bored

bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored
bored bored bored bored bored

Modest snack packaging

Text reads:

Kangbaien
More delicious than I can tell
Fashionable
Aftertaste without end
Unable dispute
Hot sell the good taste

Yeah, "Aftertaste without End". Maybe not even beer or mouthwash can get rid of it

Research points the finger at powerpoint

Food for thought: Are lectures too boring because of powerpoint?
(SMH article)

Quote:

It is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the written and spoken form at the same time.
The Australian researchers who made the findings may have pronounced the death of the PowerPoint presentation.
They have also challenged popular teaching methods, suggesting that teachers should focus more on giving students the answers, instead of asking them to solve problems on their own.

A lot different from what I've been taught about lecturing!!

A new baby

As of 00:05 wed 4th April 2007, I have a new daughter. She is a healthy 3.22kg, 48cm long child with lovely black hair (more than my first daughter Abigail had :-)

Mum, Dad and baby are fine (so far).

Circle of Three

I've been having some problems managing my daughter abigail so now I am currently staying at child care with her ... full time!!!
What's so painful is that I am paying her fees, yet am not actually getting out.

We spoke with the community nurse and it seems that since we spent the last 8 weeks on holidays with her, she now knows what she's missing - both parents 24 x 7!!!

So this means we basically have to "wean" her off her dependency off us. What the childcare centre will do is get a full time assistant to look after her, this is what is called a "circle of three" - the child, the parent and the carer.
We three play together and she get's used to us both. Then one of us ( me I hope :-) can leave so she still has that comfort of a regular adult with her.

Fortunately, the NSW government will help fund 100hrs of this persons time. All we need is a doctors referral or a letter from the community & health service at camperdown.

wish me luck!

Flash Wankers

Today I was sent a "free 14 day trial of AFR access" (http://www.members.afraccess.com/) which is written in...

fLasHhh

What a pile of shit. Their web site doesn't size correctly (it's a single flash file that is only about 5cm high under mozilla) and only really works under Internet Explorer 6 upwards. Fools. They lose my business.

Why do I rant so much about flash wankers?

It's all about choice. And usability. And accessibility (especially if you run a text-voice browser for blind people, or run a non-graphic browser like linx or elinks, or use a tool like plucker to download to your PDA). And who HATES those ^(*^(^%((%*& animations??
(see a good rant: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html and web sites that suck and
How Flashy websites turn off customers )

What about those stupid splash pages? I want info not infotainment when I want to purchase or spend my internet bucks! Even worse is the epilesy (and vomit) background music and animations. YETCHHH BARF!!!

To me, flash can be used correctly to enhance a website, but alternative navigation MUST exist (see ??W3?? UN?? guidelines).
Some graphic designers are egotistical wankers who use this as a platform to show how "clever" or "artistic" they are.
Not on my $$$ thank you very much.

More on open-source ESB's

Note that most of these posts are old news (last year)
More on the integration between synapse, servicemix and celtix.:
Open-source projects intertwine for integration
http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-5844789.html?tag=st.util.print

Open source's next frontier
http://news.com.com/Open+sources+next+frontier/2100-7344_3-5460334.html

and an opinion from a vendor (Capeclear)
Open Source and the ESB!
http://www.capeclear.com/annrai/archives/2005/08/open_source_and.html

Apache Synapse vs Apache Servicemix

Lately I've been wondering about the conflict between Apache Synapse and Apache Servicemix (part of Geronimo).

Here's an article that claims they are complementary..

How does ServiceMix compare to Synapse?
http://goopen.org/confluence/display/SM/How+does+ServiceMix+compare+to+Synapse

basically says Synapse is WS-*/Soap centric, and Servicemix is far more open (I agree - ESB is more like a generic connect-all bus, and SOAP/ws-* is just another transport).

On the other hand, the creators of Synapse claim that Synapse is an ESB??

Apache Synapse - The ESB that kills the ESB
http://www.us.apachecon.com/html/sessions.html#WE2

Oh well, at least the teams are getting together to get some commonality.
News: ServiceMix, Apache Synapse and Celtix Teaming Up (Sep. 02, 2005)
http://today.java.net/pub/n/ServiceMixSynapseCeltix

This just confuses the consumer and helps microsoft...

Can The Cockroaches Survive a Nuclear Option?

A fascinating article about how the federal government took over the states autonomy by fair means and foul.

Even more interesting was the potential civil war between NSW and the federal government in 1930's (Lang vs Lyons) which went as far as the commonwealth government organising the military to take over state buildings (with the NSW police arming up to oppose it).
The governor of NSW instead sacked Lang, resolving the conflict.

Still, I wonder whether NSW, in combination with the other states, could start secessionist movements to force the federal government to be fairer?

Spring + Hibernate EJB3, POJO + JDBC?

Spring + Hibernate EJB3, POJO + JDBC?

All Hail, The Return To Java EE Standards!

Yakov Fain slags Spring and Hibernate as tangled wire, and claims EJB 3.0 (Java EE 1.5) resolves the issue of THE standard to use.

All-in-One Guides: SOA Implementation

Good summary of SOA guides - this isn't a single guide as such, but links to techtarget's WS and SOA reports/whitepapers etc

Rethink on mirror trusts helps planning

FAMILY succession planning has been made clearer and easier following a rethink by the Australian Tax Office.

A June tax ruling has broadened the possibilities under which certain assets transferred between trusts would be exempt from capital gains tax.

It is now possible for parents to set up "mirror" trusts to transfer assets that would normally be subject to capital gains tax - namely property (land and buildings) and shares (in private and public companies) - to nominated beneficiaries.

Basically this is about how to transferring assets from a trust without incurring CGT.