Blogging Roller

Not a lot of time for blogging or web surfing today. I am working on a old model-1 JSP app and my deadline is rapidly approaching. To give you an idea of my feelings towards model-1 JSP apps, I have temporarily brought some of my original art, a short film known only as Vomit Boy, out of retirement (on the bottom right part of this page). As you can see, I am a multi-talented individual. Maybe I can make some money this way - hey, it works for <a href= "http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/store.aspx?s=boingboing">Mr. Frauenfelder.

Read at ZDNet <a href= "http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878365,00.html"> Part 1 and <a href= "http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878628,00.html"> Part 2. I like what he had to say about Java, Solaris, and the future of Sun. <a href= "http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878648,00.html"> Here is a ZDNet analysis of the interview. via <a href= "http://www.javalobby.org/thread.jsp?forum=61&thread=4962"> JavaLobby.[Karl Martino - paradox1x]

"We've not seen any improvement in the current IT spending environment. In fact, some would say it might actually be worsening," Chief Financial Officer Steve McGowan said during a conference call with financial analysts. [CNET - IT outlook darkens Sun's revenue view]

Ovum software analyst Bola Rotibi said BEA's biggest problem remains its identity. The company calls itself an "application infrastructure" company - offering web services development environment, portal and integration software atop an application server. To many, though, it is still primarily known as an application server company. [The Register - Developer army not on the way for BEA]

Apparently, the hordes of VB programmers that BEA expected to run screaming from VB.NET are not showing up on BEA's doorstep. By painting itself as an applications company, BEA hopes to survive the commoditization of the app server business. Seems like you can't just sell development tools and infrastructure anymore, you've got to sell applications or better yet: complete customer solutions.

SnipSnap is Java-based weblog and wiki software, it is currently licensed under the GPL but may go commercial at some point. The architecture and weblog-wiki synthesis looks interesting.

Cafe au Lait summarizes the new feature list as follows:

    * Pop-up Javadoc documentation
    * Live parsing and error marking
    * Drag and drop support (JDK 1.4.1 only on Windows)
    * Close buttons on tabs

Also: support for Servlet 2.3/JSP 1.2 is now built-in. Unfortunately, the GUI builder still lacks support for <a href="http://form.netbeans.org/doc/IssuesAndToDo.html#2" title="JBuilder has great support for this"> two-way-editing.

The solution, according to [Sun Chief Engineer] Gingell, is simple. "Despite popular belief, our business has always been about solving customer problems by building solutions on top of fairly standard things and just doing a better job of it than our competitors. SPARC is an IEEE standard. Unix isn't substantially different from one version to the next. We just did it better and faster than anybody else. When it comes to Java, there's no reason we can't do the same." [ZDNet: Sun bets its future on Java]

In case Mike gets on me about using WebWork, I think I'm going to stick with Struts because of the resume enhancing potential, but I do have to say that WebWork makes a bit more sense to me than Struts. Niel via Rebelutionary via Russell

Personally, I think Niel should use Webwork in MiniBlog so that we can see how MVC is supposed to be done. If not, he should just come on over to the dark side and work on Roller ;-)

However, I do understand why a company might pick the more popular of what appear to be two equivalent technologies. The more popular technology will have more books on the shelf, more trained developers, more momentum, and more chance of long term improvement.

Bobby Woolf gave a fun and edutaining talk on services layer architecture at the Triangle JUG meeting tonight. The title was Patterns for Services Using EJB, but thankfully the talk did not really focus on EJB. Instead Bobby cracked a lot of jokes at Microsoft's expense, dropped Martin Fowler's name a few too many times, and talked about the history of and reasoning behind the layered architectures of the past and the relatively new services layer architectures of today.

Roller uses a service layer architecture, by the way. The Roller Business Tier interfaces (in org.roller.model) constitute the services layer.

Steve Anglin speculates about the possibility of a HP-BEA-Borland merger, a Sun-Dell union, and merger mania in the Java industry. [Steve Anglin's weblog]

The site that accompanies The Java Developers Almanac is the greatest Java sample code site around. As such, it's probably the greatest reference site. I suggest buying the book. This looks like what the Java Cookbook should have been.[paradox1x]

Borland intends to be a sort of Switzerland of development tools, supporting the two major programming models, the Java and Microsoft.Net development camps. [CNET] Does CNET mean to imply that Microsoft's $25 million investment was Nazi Gold? And just what is a "development camp" anyway?

Rickard Öberg has posted some interesting random thoughts on blog syndication, aggregation, and blogging's role in the Java community.

<a href= "http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-castor/?loc=j"> Introductory article on Castor JDO on IBM developerWorks written by Bruce Snyder of the Castor team.

I think Russell has some good points in his rants about JSP tag libs. One of the design goals of JSP tag libraries was to help get code off the page - to separate business logic from presentation. If you start doing general purpose programming with JSP tags you are going to end up with the same sort of mess you would have with lots of Java JSP scriplets all over your page.

But I think Russell is wrong about JSP tag library portability. There are plenty of portable JSP tag libs out there from open source projects and payware products alike. There is no reason to use a tag lib that will tie you to one app server. However, the learning curve involved in mastering a tag lib can be a drag on developer portability.

Russell, I think you are really ranting about JSP in general not just JSP tag libs. Velocity might be a better choice for you (and for me), but I believe that if you are going to be using JSP then you should be using JSP tag libraries as well. With some forethought you can avoid writing lots of general purpose programming logic using tags. Your tagless JSP code in MiniBlog and SimpleWeb looks pretty nice, but I have seen what JSP code-on-page can degenerate into and it is not pleasant.

eWeek reports that Sun will be adding 18 new modules to the open source Netbeans IDE. I wonder what they are doing for Struts support.

Among the 18 new modules is one that features support for Java Data Objects, which is a Java technology for mapping entities in relational databases to Java objects. Another is a module for Java 3D support. And a third is support for the Apache Struts framework, which is a technology built on top of JavaServer Pages that enhances productivity for Web application developers, the company said. Other modules include a Support Interface Module, a BugSubmitter module, an audit module for defining best practices, a metrics module for analyzing source code, and an XTest module for providing performance and API compatibility tests.

InfoWorld is reporting that BEA will be working together with local Raleigh software developer Redhat. Details are sketchy at this point, but it appears they will work on optimizing BEA's "fastest JVM for the intel architecture" JRocket Java VM for Redhat Linux.

Internet.COM is reporting that local Raleigh software developer TogetherSoft is buying WebGain Studio and Visual Cafe from Webgain. Visual Cafe is in good hands.

Russell Beattie has released <a href= "http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/index.jsp?date=20020813#20020813023656"> SimpleWeb, an open source Wiki written in Java.

I've browsed Russell's MiniBlog code and the code for SimpleWeb. I don't really like lots of Java code in JSP pages and there are very few comments in his code, but there is something special about Russell's style. Russell calls it his keep-it-simple, just-to-get-it-done style. He keeps dependencies to an absolute minimum, uses the power of JSP code-on-page to his advantage, and writes code in a clear and easy to follow style. Even if you don't use MiniBlog or SimpleWeb, they are nice code examples to have on hand.

Hey!, that is my Relay-IRC client running inside the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. What the hell is going on! Here is a screenshot on Mike Cannon-Brooks' site.

The write-up on the IntelliJ site is correct, Relay-IRC is one of those ghost projects. I had so little feedback on Relay-IRC that I eventually lost interest myself. If you are interested in working on (or even taking over) Relay-IRC please let me know.