Blogging Roller

Dave Johnson on open web technologies, social software and software development


Yet Another MVC Framework

I've been taking a little time to read about WebWork as an alternative to Struts. I've been googling around for information, and I have not come up with a whole lot. I found a post by the Struts master, some evangelism, and the WebWork docs on some dodgy server somewhere. I found the most informative summary of WebWork on the Barracuda site:
WebWork - WebWork is a web application framework for J2EE. It is based on a concept called "Pull HMVC" (Pull Hierarchical Model View Controller). The basic idea is to separate the site programmers' and site designers' tasks.

It has a small API and easy to use tag library in order to make it as easy to use as possible. It supports the notion of actions that are just JavaBeans. This means that they have setX() methods for incoming parameters, an execute() method to perform the action, and getX() methods to retrieve the result data. This ensures that all actions only contain the code that is required to perform the logic.

The tag library has also adopted this philosophy. They only provide tags to extract and iterate over the result data so that formatting the output as HTML, WAP, or what ever is as straight forward as possible.

If you've got pointers to WebWorks articles, postings, threads, etc. please send me a couple.
Tags: Java

Rusty knows RSS

While fixing my little RSS bug, I started looking for an alternative to the Jakarta Commons Digester RSS classes. I did not find an alternative, but I did find this nice little write-up of RSS and RSS 0.9.1 vs. RSS 1.0 by Elliote Rusty Harold. Now, why can't I find Rusty's RSS feed?
Tags: Java

OSCache does not require JSP

Ugo, on first glance OSCache does appear to be JSP centric but it really does not require JSP. I would not have been able to use OSCache if it required JSP, because Roller weblog pages are not JSP pages - they are generated by Velocity templates.

OSCache includes a caching Servlet Filter. The CacheFilter automatically generates a cache-key based on incoming request parameters and either pulls the corresponding entry from the cache or runs the request. So, adding OSCache to your webapp can be as simple as dropping the OSCache jar in your classpath and adding a Servlet Filter entry to your web.xml.

I had to do a little more work than that because I need to cache on a per user basis and the auto-generated cache-key does not consider request.getUserPrincipal(). So, I had to write my own Servlet Filter based on CacheFilter. Also, CacheFilter is not very well documented, so I had to look at the source to figure it out.

Tags: Java

Spotted JState

Spotted JState which looks interesting. It could be useful when putting together an open source workflow system. James Strachan
JState does look nice. JState is currently at Revision 0.2.1 and licensed under the LGPL.
Tags: Java

Without a net

Sometimes you just won't feel like writing tests, especially at first. Don't. However, pay attention to how much more trouble you get into, how much more time you spend debugging, and how much more stress you feel when you don't have tests. We have been amazed at how much more fun programming is and how much more aggressive we are willing to be and how much less stress we feel when we are supported by tests. The difference is dramatic enough to keep us writing tests even when we don't feel like it. JUnitTest Infected : Programmers Love Writing Tests

I really like this idea of using unit tests as a safety net for development, so I guess I need to learn more about JUnit and the Extreme Programming ideas behind it. Up until now, Roller development was done without a net.
Tags: Java

Redhat does J2EE

Red Hat CMS [Content Management System] is delivered with the source code and is J2EE compliant, allowing easy extensibility and customization of the implementation by Red Hat, or by the organization's own developers.
Excellent! I'll add that to <a href= "http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller/20020618#a_href_http_radio_weblogs2"> my list of open source Java CMS sofware. The license sure looks like open source. Via BeBlogging via Rebelutionary via rc3.org
Tags: Java

Open source Java e-biz

Mike's post about open source Java workflow engines highlights a trend I've noticed recently. You've heard a lot about open source Java software at the tools level - class libraries, appservers, IDEs, code generators, and build tools. But recently, open source Java has been moving up the chain - towards the business application area. You won't find a complete and ready for deployment open source Java e-biz solution yet, but you will find some key components.  Here are some of the pieces:

<table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" border="0" width="80%" align="center"> Business Processflow/Workflow
OSWorkflow
Powerfolder
Open Business Engine
OFBiz Workflow Engine

e-Business software suite
Open For Business Project
Content Management Systems
RedHat CMS (added June 21)
Cofax
Slide

Portal servers, search engines
Jetspeed
Lucine
Tags: Java

JDO vs JDBC

you need to decide whether you want an object model for your application or not. If not, use JDBC, if you do, consider JDO.
David Jordan of Object Identity following-up his talk on the Triangle Java User's Group mailing list. FYI: Roller uses Castor JDO, which is quite different from Sun's JDO.
Tags: Java

Over the wall

Mike's right, it sounds like WebGain is just throwing Visual Cafe over the wall to the open source community. But, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd rather see old software products released as open source than see them disappear into oblivion.

Java trivia: some consider Visual Cafe to be the first Java IDE, but I think that distinction belongs to Rogue Wave's JFactory - which was introduced in January 1996 and has since disappeared into oblivion (along with the zApp C++ GUI library).

Tags: Java

Open source Visual Cafe?

The deal will also means WebGain will halt all development and sales of its market-leading IDEs Visual Café and WebGain Studio - the latest version of which is currently in beta. WebGain hopes the IDEs will be picked-up by the open source community, carrying the product forward.
From The Register's May 6th article WebGain to exit tools, Oracle to buy TopLink. If the above quote is true, it means there will be three major open source IDEs (I'm assuming that Visual Cafe and Webgain Studio are really the same thing): Netbeans, Eclipse, and Visual Cafe. And four if you count jEdit.
Tags: Java

Udell: Eclipse is hot stuff

It's true that SWT is not yet available everywhere. But Eclipse 2.0 works with Windows, Motif, and GTK+ (Gimp Toolkit) 2, and operability on Mac OS X seems imminent. Unlike Swing-based software, Eclipse works immediately with native features such as Windows XP skinning. "Microsoft has lots of programmers and so does Gnome/GTK," Grindstaff says. "So why not leverage that?"
From a very interesting InfoWorld article on Eclipse via Sam Ruby. I prefer Swing, but if the Eclipse SWT approach means that vim could be embedded into the Eclipse IDE then Eclipse will be the IDE for me. I need to download the Eclipse 2.0 beta and take it for a spin.
Tags: eclipse java

Intalio stops support for OpenEJB, OpenJMS, etc.

The Server Side is reporting that Intalio will stop support for all of its OSS projects, except for Castor. I'm not sure what this means, but it does not give me any warm fuzzies about Castor. But, the fact that a new release of Castor v0.9.3.19 is now available for download is somewhat reassuring.
Tags: Java

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