Blogging Roller

<a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596003285/002-2189911-3107222"> <img border="0" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" src= "http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0596003285.01._PE_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg" alt="O'Reilly Struts book" /> I've been using the review copy that was posted on The Server Side for quite some time. From what I've seen, this book is going to be a valuable resource for both Struts newbies and veterans.

So, potentially you could make an argument that the open source thing is just screwing up all the revenue models and we aren't getting the advertising, because it isn't the best technology that always wins, it's who advertises more ... And in fact Bill Gates may be sitting up there laughing his butt off because the open source community is cutting the legs out from under all the R&D and promotion efforts of all the open interface strategies -- not open implementation, but open interface strategies. Scott McNealy, Interview excerpt in Open Enterprise Trends via Sam Ruby and Ugo Cei.  There is also a Server Side thread on this topic.   

Just what we need: inferior techology and more advertising. Thanks Scott. Open source Java  developers are not going to be goose-stepping along with the suits in Sun's and BEA's marketing department. Get used to it, open source is not going away - in fact it may be Java's only hope.

The date of the next Castor release has been officially set for Monday, August 12th. We are currently in a code-freeze - Keith Visco on the castor-dev mailing list.

Java Developers Journal is reporting that there is a big shortage of skilled Java developers. If that is the case then why have the recruiters been missing from the local JUG meetings for the last 12 months?

"is a library of useful classes that is used by Tea and the TeaServlet. Trove includes the Class File API, the Logging API and a set of utility classes." The HttpClient looks pretty useful.

It's nifty but not really that useful to me, and besides - noone goes to DMOZ Mike Cannon-Brookes

True, DMOZ does not store the right meta-data to make it into a truly useful open source Java directory. We need all open source Java projects to register themselves into something like SourceForge's Trove, but more Java oriented. And, I think you are right - few people go to DMOZ even though it is the directory that is built into Google.

That was fast. Is this blogging or instant messaging? Thanks for the heads-up on Anthony Eden, I'll email him as soon as my mail-server comes back up.

The Xulux (pronounced zoolooks) project is gathering steam. Its going to be an ASF licenced open source XUL framework. The aim is to simplify the development of rich/thick clients [by] using XUL to define more traditional, rich user interfaces. The XUL can then be transformed into HTML / DHTML / JavaScript for old HTML browsers such as IE while still supporting rich in XUL browsers such as Mozilla or Flash (thanks to ZULU). So the aim is to build a HTML, Swing and SWT clients for XUL as well as a server side framework for developing XUL applications. James Strachan on XULUX

Very cool. Time to learn XUL.

O'Reilly has started up an Open Source Java Directory - this is something that is really needed in the J2EE world, but sadly it looks very poorly implemented. I've been saying this should exist for a while now. Freshmeat is just too non Java (apologies - FM is cool, but if you're just looking for Java stuff it's a pain in the ass). I tried to convince Floyd at The ServerSide to create a directory but was sadly rebuffed. I hope it improves. Mike Cannon-Brooks

Try the DMOZ Open Directory's Java category. DMOZ lists both open source and commercial products and lists the license of each (GNU, BSD-like, commercial, etc.). And Mike: last time I checked, Open Symphony projects were not listed there either.

In this Java World article Tal Liron describes how to use VNC technology to create remote-terminals for your Java Swing, AWT, or command line app.

That Microsoft actually entrusted remote control technology to us idiots at home (Remember, Microsoft has to give us user support too!) represented a triumph for a 20-year-old model. With any computer acting both as host and terminal, all you need is an Internet connection to access any computer anywhere in the world.

How could I have missed it. Download it here.

When I heard that expression, I was not the only one thinking "how many of those thingies are there?" Mike has written up a listing of the Open Source Java umbrella projects and he calls it The Open Source J2EE Landscape. Nice. He hit all of the projects in my bookmark list plus Tigris. Oh, I just noticed: he forgot to mention the GPL-only Giant Java Tree.

Tonight at the TriJUG meeting, Andrew Oliver gave an interesting talk on what initially seemed to me to be a boring topic - reading and writing OLE2 Compound Document Format, Excel, and Word documents from Java. He was talking about the Poor Obfuscation Implementation (POI) project. The talk was good because Andrew is a good speaker and because he included a nice introduction to Cocoon in his presentation.

I know about Castor and Torque, but I need learn about Object Relational Bridge, OFBiz Entity Engine, Hibernate, JGrinder, JRelationalFramework, and Abra. Maybe I should just skip all that and go straight to Sun's JDO - it is going to rule the roost, right?

They are talking about this CRN article over at The Server Side: Former Employee: WebGain Out Of Business. If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies! His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, He's shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisibile! This is an ex-parrot!

I have to admit that when I heard about J#, I was massively skeptical. After spending an evening with it, I have to admit that it appeals pretty deeply to the subversive in me. The thought of running Ant, Xerces, or Tomcat under the CLR is pretty interesting. Don Box

How is Don going to run Ant, Xerces, and Tomcat under the CLR? All of those things require Java 2, but Microsoft's Java VM is still stuck on JDK 1.1.4 - isn't it? I think he has his beer goggles on. And another thing: did he "probe every corner and alcove" of Stephanie or Visual J#.Net? That article is really creeping me out!

As Jeff has correctly pointed out, XDoclet will start on a major refactoring to Velocity after the next release (in a month or so we hope). XDoclet 1.1.2 has 17000 downloads and many contributors. vDoclet is the third tool in its category (EJBGen, XDoclet and vDoclet). My question is: Do we need another one? Aslak Hellesoy from the Velocity mail list

Aslak is encouraging the VDoclet team (a team of 1?) to join forces with the XDoclet team. XDoclet is preparing to drop the weird XML templates and adopt Velocity as it's templating language. That is great news. Those XML templates are butt ugly.

From an article on CNET. Apparently Oracle bought only TopLink and left the rest of the WebGain products to rot in the hot sun while the (Oracle, Sun, etc.) buzzards circle overhead. Also, Rogers Caldenhead pointed out this ominous part of the CNET article:

On Tuesday, the parking lot at WebGain's Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters was empty and the entrance to the building was locked.

Interesting article on Struts by by Harry Rusli and John Yu.

Mike has responded with a nice little write-up of WebWork. This is the point that I find most interesting:

Not tied to the web - WebWork (despite it's unfortunate name!) is not tied to the web at all. As I said, we use it as a general purpose command framework within our application. There is also a ClientAction which allows you to run any action over RMI. There is a project to tie SOAP into WebWork at a very low level.