Posts tagged 'app'



Lots of latest links: social networking APIs and more

Here are my links for the past week or so and notes about social networking APIs, using the web itself as a social network, JMaki, Abdera and more. [Read More]

Latest links Nov. 12, 2007: Glassfish, OpenSocial and more


Blogapps 2.1 released

RSS and Atom in Action image The next releases that I'd like to announce are the Blogapps 2.1 Examples and the Blogapps 2.1 Server.

If you'd like to learn more about the Blogapps examples and server then read The Blogapps Project article at Java.net. Here's a quick summary:

The Blogapps project hosts a collection of useful RSS and Atom utilities and examples from RSS and Atom In Action by Dave Johnson. They're designed to be useful even if you haven't read the book and they're available under the Apache License 2.0 so you can use the code in your applications and you can modify and redistribute them as you wish.

What's changed since 2.0? The examples have been updated to include the latest version of ROME Propono, which means that most of them now support the final Atom protcol spec. The server has been updated to include Roller 4.0 RC5, which also includes Atom protocol support and JSPWiki 2.4. And of course, various bugs have been fixed. Here are the release files, installation instructions and release notes.

This blog entry was posted via Atom protocol and the MatisseBlogger blog-client, which you can see in the screen-shot below (which was also posted via Atom.

screenshot of MatisseBlogger

What's next? Not sure at this point, but I will do another Blogapps release once ROME 1.0 is released.


Joe's Q&A: Do we need WADL?

Joe turns a #redmonk IRC chat-room discussion into an insightful Steven O'Grady style Q&A on REST, WADL, interfaces and APP. For the record, I still think WADL is going to be useful to many, but I think APP is going to be a whole lot more useful and it doesn't need or use WADL.

Update: Pat Meuller has more on the WADL question. Apparently, there were some interesting hallway discussions about about out at IBM RTP. I just caught the tail-end of that on IRC.


Friday Atom and REST links

A bunch of Atom and REST related links that I came across while catching up with my blog reading today:

Atom and LDAP sitting in a tree. Trey Drake has released his OpenDS based Atom store as an open source project on Java.net at http://atom.dev.java.net. It's a directory server distributed as a Java web application that supports both Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Signing, encrypting and decrypting Atom. On IBM developerWorks, Nicolas Chase explains how "digital signatures and encryption can easily mesh with Atom data using the Apache Abdera API."

Google GData: A Uniform Web API for All Google Services. Dare Obasanjo praises Google for creating a single uniform and RESTful web services API for eight of its key services, the APP based GData API. He writes "not only is it now possible to create a single library that knows how to talk to all of Google's existing and future Web services since they all use GData. It is also a lot easier to provide 'tooling' for these services than it would be for Yahoo's family of Web services given that they use a simple and uniform interface."

RESTful web services support in Netbeans. Geertjan links to blog entries and a screen-cast that explain Netbeans 6.0 support for RESTful web services, including the early access JSR-311 REST API.

Generate code from your WADL REST API. Eduardo at The Aquarium links to Thomas Steiner who is making progress on a WADL editor and a generator, bringing WSDL-like code generation to RESTful web services.


The Apache Lucene GData server project

German Viscuso: Generally spoken GData provides a general interface to make information available even beyond a browser context by providing a single API that could be used to query, update, and index structured data anywhere on the web. Could GData become a simple and open replacement for all the proprietary communications protocols currently in use by database vendors?
Interesting thoughts. I've heard about the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) based Lucene Web Services API, but I hadn't heard about the Apache Lucene GData server project. Atom protocol is moving fast, especially considering the fact that it's not finished.

APP and OpenID at JavaOne

Trey Drake: How do you demo a directory server? Build cool apps around it. To that end, we've built an Atom/APP server, a lightweight OpenID server, a blogging and "twitter" like app - all powered by OpenDS. Drop by our booth (Glassfish alley at CommunityONE and .org section of the pavilion during JavaONE). Ludo and I will introduce OpenDS and show off the demos in two talks; today at CommunityONE at 5PM and Wednesday at 1:30 in the CommunityCorner.

Very cool. I'm not going to be the only one talking about Atom protocol at JavaOne. I'll have to stop by the CommunityCorner, that sounds too good to miss.


WSO2 Web Services Mashup Server

I was wondering what web services vendor WSO2 was doing at the APP interop event. Turns out, they've got a "Web Services Mashup Server" in the works.

APP interop event day #2

The Atom Publishing Protocol interop event is over and now I'm catching up on blogs and email in my hotel room in Mountain View, CA. In the end, I was able to run ROME Propono successfully against Blogger/GData, AOL Journals and Wordpress. I also found a dozen small problems in Propono and in the Roller APP server.

For more information on the event, check O'Reilly's Keith Fahlgren's summary of the event titled Atom Publishing Protocol a Success. Keith mentions that "big industry players like AOL, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun are working on APP clients and servers and sent people to the interop event with interesting code" and I agree that's definitely a good sign for the protocol.

I thought it was particularly interesting that database vendors IBM and Oracle showed up with DB2 and Oracle-backed Atom stores. If Google's half-dozen or so Atom protocol based services aren't enough make you stand up and take notice, surely that should get your attention.

APP interop event day #1

Day one of the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) interop event was a success, at least from my point-of-view. I was able to test the Propono client against Blogger.com/GData, AOL Journals and an implementation from Oracle. I found and fixed problems in Roller's APP implementation. Plus, it was great to meet all of the good folks implementing Atom and to get a close look at the Google campus. I'm getting ready to drive back to Google now so... gotta go.

Check out Tim Bray's blog for some photos of the event.


ROME Propono 0.4 released

I'm happy to announce the first release of the ROME subproject Propono. Propono is a ROME-based Java class library that supports publishing protocols, specifically the Atom Publishing Protocol and the legacy MetaWeblog API. Propono includes an Atom client library, an Atom server framework and a Blog client that supports both Atom protocol and the MetaWeblog API.

Here's the project page
  http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javawsxml/RomePropono

Here's the Propono 0.4 release page:
  http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javawsxml/RomeProponoRelease04

And here's a link to the API docs, which include details, diagrams and code examples:
  https://rome.dev.java.net/apidocs/subprojects/propono/0.4/overview-summary.html

I'll be testing Propono this week and next (at the Google-hosted APP interop meeting) so now is a great time to provide feedback and bug reports. I plan on releasing Propono 0.5 in the *very* near future.


Atom protocol interop event

I just got approval to attend the Atom protocol interop event at Google April 16 and 17. I'll be bringing at least three Atom protocol implementations: Roller's Atom server, Propono's simple file-based Atom server and Propono's Atom client.

Atom protocol as the substrate for reliable messaging

I've heard the argument before that the REST approach to web services doesn't give you reliable messaging and that's the reason you need to stick with WS-*. Today Bill de hÓra disputes that notion with an interesting and somewhat provocative post that mentions a couple of specs for messaging via HTTP (HTTPLR and BTF) and argues that Atom protocol can serve as the basis for web-scale reliable messaging.

Bill de hÓra: There are a number of reasons to choose Atom Protocol as the substrate for web-scale reliable messaging. First, a ton of software will be written to target APP in the next few years, and there is plenty of scope for extending the protocol; this suggests openly available and flexible software stacks. Second, since all document collections in Atom Protocol are served as Atom Feeds, it has inherent support for systems management and end to end reconciliation. Third, Atom entries have identity and are natural envelopes, unlike SOAP, where identity and true enveloping requires further specification (essentially raw Atom presents a better basis for interoperation than raw SOAP). Fourth, Atom Protocol can support binary content transmission not just XML, and thus can transmit arbitrary payloads. Finally, because Atom Protocol respects media types and deployed HTTP infrastructure, independent proxy inspection and security check-pointing can be installed cleanly, also eliminating the need to rewrite 2 stack layers and buy XML appliances to support and secure SOAP backed web services. It seems to be a question of when, rather than if, this will get built out.

I would have blogged about this earlier today, but Bill's blog looked foobar and I didn't realize that today is CSS Naked Day. My blog doesn't look half bad naked.


Latest links: March 21, 2007


Atom protocol powered Blogging Portlet

Jeffrey Blattman has put together a new Portlet that makes it possible to blog via Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) from a portal page. He's added it to the Open Source Portlet Repository on Java.net so you can try it out against your favorite APP server.

APP interop at E-Tech

James Snell brings news of an Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) interop event to occur in March at the O'Reilly E-Tech conference. I'd love to use that as an excuse to go to to E-Tech, since my current work involves APP in ROME and Roller, but it sounds like I can participate remotely.

New Atom protocol spec draft and Queen City planets

Joe Gregorio announces a new Atom Publishing Protocol Spec (draft #12) and he says it might end up being the final. I guess it's time for a new Blogapps release with APP draft #12 and ROME 0.9 support.

Plus, Joe has put together a set of new planet sites for towns in the Charlotte, NC area; all based on feeds from Google Base, Google Blogs, Google News, Craigs List, Flickr and the Weather Service. The sites look useful, but the ads combined with the minimalist design make them look a little spammy on first glance. Perhaps a short "about this site" paragraph is in order.


Atom Publishing Protocol, draft #10

APP draft #10 is available. I'm still reading it over, but the major changes appear to be:
  • Categories can be specified at the workspace and collection level. Multiple category schemes are allowed and both fixed and free-form categories (e.g. tags) are allowed.
  • Collection titles are now specified by an <atom:title> instead of an attribute on the <collection> element.
  • A new "slug" header has been added for media posts so that clients can specify the file-name to be used for the uploaded file.
I'm especially happy about the category support -- now Atom protocol can do everything that MetaWeblog API can do, and much more. I'll be updating my client and server implementations during the next week.

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