Always reading bits...


Its the shadows and reflections cast from the future that interest me.

Who : Charles Ditzel

Email: cld9731@yahoo.com



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Now Serving : NetBeans 6.9.1 IDE and Java SE 6 Update 21

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 2:59 P GMT-08
If you missed it - NetBeans IDE 6.9.1 is out and available.  The latest version includes support for JavaFX 1.3.1 and the JavaFX debugger, performance improvements integration a number of patches.  Available are release notes, installation instructions and the most recent tutorials.  Also noteworthy is the release of Java SE 6 Update 21.  Java SE 6 Update 21 includes the latest version of HotSpot (17.0), VisualVM 1.2.2, improvements in applet/application security and a number of bug fixes.  Available are release notes and downloads for JDK and JRE.

New Article : Lightweight User Interface Toolkit and Java ME

Monday, 28 June 2010 7:36 P GMT-08
There is an interesting article,  Rich Applications for Billions of Devices: What's New in LWUIT, which highlights the Lightweight User Interface Toolkit.   There are some interesting examples of UIs constructed using the LWUIT.  Also shown is the LWUIT Theme Creator which is a tool for editing and creating themes and resources.  Finally, the article shows how Java ME can leverage LWUIT.  
 

NetBeans Language Panorama : Erlang, Lisp, Scala, Python and Prolog

Wednesday, 16 June 2010 9:02 P GMT-08
Here are five dynamic languages that have support in NetBeans.  You are probably familiar with the fact that NetBeans provides support for a large number of languages - Java, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Groovy, C, C++, JavaFX, Fortran and others but here are five languages that you may not have know that have NetBeans implementations -
1.  Erlang.  Erlang is a general-purpose concurrent programming language and runtime system.  You can find out how to use NetBeans to create Erlang applications at the NetBeans Erlang wiki.  At Erlang installation site you can find out where to get the NetBeans Erlang plugin and how to install them. >
> 2. LISP.   Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system. Clojure is predominantly a functional programming language, and features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures.  A NetBeans plugin, enclojure,  is available. You can see from the screenshots that is a very sophisticated LISP Machine-like environment.    Scheme is another dialect of LISP.   LambdaBeans is an IDE for Scheme built on top of the NetBeans platform.

3. Scala.  Scala integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages.  You can develop in Scala on NetBeans.  There are both plugins and nightly builds that will provide the tools.  You can find details about Scala on NetBeans here. >

>
4. Python. Python is a powerful programming language that has efficient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms  Details about using Python in NetBeans can be found here.

5. Prolog.  What's interesting about Prolog and NetBeans is that there is a project called, GeeWhiz Prolog, which accomplishes two things at once.  It demonstrates and provides a NetBeans 6.1 version of Prolog. It also gives you a tutorial on how to build an IDE for any language. Also worth looking at is the Schliemann tutorial which shows how to build the syntax to support a Prolog IDE. Prolog


 

NetBeans 6.9 IDE & Platform Released; 7 Videos, Lots of tutorials and more

Tuesday, 15 June 2010 7:39 P GMT-08
NetBeans IDE 6.9 is released and is now available.  There is a video guided tour of NetBeans 6.9 which you can find here.  Additionally, there are a number of new videos covering the new release -
- Editing Java Code in NetBeans 6.9
- Using JavaFX Composer in NetBeans IDE 6.9
- Creating Applications on NetBeans Platform 6.9
- Zend Framework Support in NetBeans IDE for PHP
- Ruby Support in NetBeans 6.9
- PHP Support in NetBeans 6.9

If you want a quick snapshot of the feature list, you can find it here.  All the 6.9 tutorials are here. Also available are installation instructions and release notes.  If you are into building RCP applications - you can find the NetBeans Platform overview here.  You can find NetBeans on twitter as well.  There will be the usual mad rush to download it - it is right now a slow download.
 

Living On The Edge with Early Access : Tomcat 7 and Java SE 6 update 21

Thursday, 10 June 2010 7:27 A GMT-08
> The most pervasive application engine in the world has something new for you to look at.   Tomcat, the small application server serves up more applications than most other app servers.  You can't exist in the world of Java without bumping into Tomcat. The Apache Foundation is delivering Tomcat 7 soon.  You can look at it early because you can get it early right here - if I only had grabbed it when the server wasn't buried under the volume - be forewarned this link has been problematic. This is what happens when everybody at once tries to walk in the same front door at the same time.  Yes it is not yet released but you can live a little on the edge. Release notes are here.  The changelog is here.  A nice description of some of the features are decribed here.  Incidentally, Spring Source has an upcoming webinar on it. You can then run Tomcat ontop of an early access of Java SE 6 update 21.  Java SE 6 Update 21.  I noticed that Java SE 6 update 21 snapshot is available from here. This is an early access snapshot.  You can see what has changed by looking at the Bug/RFEs fixed in JDK 6 update 21 here and here.  The source release can be found here.
Post-Post.  One more point - Tomcat has apparently come under attack from competitors - you can read about some of this here. I will make the point that Tomcat is really quite good - not for everything but generally you can find it being the workhorse for a huge  number of sites.  There are however two sides to this argument. I learn a lot from listening to both sides and reading the comments.  Worth reading and relating to GlassFish versus Tomcat characteristics - you can read, Scaling Your Java EE Applications  and Tomcat Today, GlassFish Tomorrow. You can find other comparisons.  Since we are talking about Tomcat - check out the article, How To Scale Tomcat in the Cloud with RabbitMQ and JMX.

A Graph-Based Visual Library In Action : Demo-set, Tutorials and New Videos

Wednesday, 9 June 2010 8:20 P GMT-08
Graphics libraries are the spice of desktop application development.  One graphics library in particular is genuinely interesting if you are building applications that make use of icons and movable objects. It is designed for a general visualization with support for graph-oriented modeling. This is another of NetBeans well-kept secrets - the NetBeans Visual Library. If you want to see the Visual Library in action there are a number of examples which you can download and you get both the source code and a demo.  The examples range from creating a simple composite widget to creating card layouts to creating interactive, animated, and custom widgets.  Check out the large number of examples at the NetBeans Visual Library Examples site.  There are a number of tutorials which help you move
Select to enlarge from creating simple movable objects to a large number of other possible combinations.  You can read about creating a small application here. Another tutorial shows you how to create the basis for a visual database explorer. Another in depth article is a three-part tutorial on using the Visual Library and integrating it with XML multiview.  You can read the Visual Library 2.0 docs here.  
There are many features in the Visual Library including support for graph-oriented models, widget-based UI appearance definition, action-based UI behavior definition, layouts, zoom in/out, animation support, object states , bird's view and many more.  You can see what people have done by going to the introductory page - one example is GeeWhiz Prolog which is a NetBeans Platform application uses it to build a visual predicate mapper for Prolog.  You can read more about the Visual Library at Geertjan's blog. You can also catch recent NetBeans Platform Training of the Visual Library.  It should be noted that this one of a large number of videos from the training.
Post-Post.  In case you wonder where to get it  ?  The NetBeans Visual Library is simply part of NetBeans Platform.  Incidentally, after I posted I realized that I forgot to point out this nice tutorial   and an example of someone who has written a way to visualize SQL scripts  and finally - you can find much more at the Platform  page. [Apologies for yesterday's link problem - it seems a couple of links were broken]

Webcasts : GlassFish 3.1 Basic Clustering, Application Versioning

Wednesday, 9 June 2010 4:59 P GMT-08
If you missed it - the GlassFish App Server turned five years old recently.  It has obviously come a long way.  As with anything related to Oracle these days - the question is how will it be treated not today but in the long run.  My hope is that it continues to prosper - it offers a lot.  So as we think of the future - we obviously think of GlassFish 3.1 Open Source Edition (which is now at Milestone 1).  You can see what constitutes the milestone here.  Two features being made available are basic clustering (which includes dynamic reconfiguration) and and App versioning. You can find details of the basic clustering part here and the dynamic reconfiguration part here.  Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine offers two webcasts showing Basic Clustering and the second one is on Application versioning.  I have been using the v3 version an like it. GlassFish
Post-Post.  Note - that there are two aspects to GlassFish.  One is the GlassFish Server Open Source Edition and the other is the Oracle GlassFish Server product.  The  versioning for both is rather torturous - there are v2 and and a v3 versions for both the open source and Oracle products. You can find the differences between v2 and v3 here.  It should also be noted that there is GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0 which includes an option to create a lighter Web Profile.  You can see the details of the "heavy" versus "light" profiles here.  Consider the Web Profile to target web apps and dynamic languages - the heavier version contains the full Java EE stack (such as JAX RPC, JavaMail, JAXB,  CORBA, etc).

Plugin of My Day : jVi Plugin

Tuesday, 8 June 2010 9:26 A GMT-08
In the killer-plugin category.  Sometimes  something suprises you in a really, really good way. If you use vi or vim and you like it and if you use NetBeans and like it ... walk don't run to the jvi plugin .  One thing I notice - it has really become much nicer and better integrated into NetBeans than it used to be. Usually the people that like this are Unix (or Linux) developers - but  vi(m) has also seen its way to Windows.   I started to use the plugin a while back and it was not quite there.  This time I download it and it seems to integrate very nicely into NetBeans.  You can get an introduction at the the jvi in NetBeans Introduction site.  It feels *fast*.  You can download it here. >
Post-Post.  The nice default editor found in NetBeans is actually quite good but I struggle with it because my Unix-nature (and as a result my vi-nature gets in the way. There are probably implications to replacing the native editor - there are a wealth of add-in editing plugins like HTML Mark Occurances, rectangular edit, etc and it has out-of-the-box a lot of nice features.   I have to say though that I am gratified that the NetBeans code assistance features work and syntax highlighting works nicely with the jvi plugin.   More comments here in the next few weeks on this editor.  

Update : NetBeans 6.9 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) Is Available

Monday, 7 June 2010 11:32 A GMT-08
NetBeans IDE 6.9 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is available.  It is available at the download site.   Release Notes can be found here.   Installation Instructions can be found here Updated Tutorials can be found here.  There are considerable additions.  The New and Noteworthy Site explaining all the latest features and updates in 6.9 can be found here.  One very interesting feature is the ability to run a terminal emulator within NetBeans - I had not seen this before but it seems like it could be very useful to me.  Details on this can be found here.  
Post-Post.  Incidentally there is a new tutorial on Using the Annotation Processors Support in the NetBeans IDE.   NetBeans IDE 6.9 introduces built-in support for custom annotation processors. It is now easiler to add annotation processors to your project. You can see the results of annotation processing directly in the NetBeans IDE's Java Editor through code completion and navigation.   

Bits : Developing Software for the BlackBerry, Huge Developer Contest

Sunday, 6 June 2010 8:27 P GMT-08
BlackBerry is one of the premier Java-based mobile platforms. I've been seeing a fair bit of traffic looking at some of my past posts on doing Blackberry software development using NetBeans [ 1 2 3 4 ] and at first I thought it was simple interest - but I was wrong.  Hinkmond set me straight  There is a contest in BlackBerry land.  Check it out here.  The official site for the contest is here. The winner wins $25k. Hmmm...not a bad first prize.  All you have to do is build a super app.  And you can find what a super app looks like here.  Here I will do a little of the legwork for you on updating you to what has changed.  There are some new resources for the BlackBerry. > First, the Plugin. Let start with the contributed plugin RIM BlackBerry Plugin, which was last updated on March 25th 2010 - so it sound pretty au current. There are a couple of sidenotes to look at [1].  > Integrating BlackBerry Emulators Into NetBeans.  There is a very nice article detail emulator integration into NetBeans here. The author goes into some detail about integrating the BlackBerry 9500 and 8530 into NetBeans (I do note that two readers had issues).  > Further Details Of Plugging in BlackBerry Platform Into NetBeans.  You can find a fairly lengthy thread about plugging in the BlackBerry Platform into NetBeans. Lengthy Oracle Tutorial. > NetBeans Mobility. There is another tutorial (NetBeans 6.1) that goes through configuring NetBeans.   While we are it - check out the Java ME Mobile Technology Trail which will be useful to you at the NetBeans document site.  
Post-Post.  People love NetBeans (like this person).  Even when RIM puts out their Eclipse version and their own development tools - people integrate them into NetBeans so they can use the NetBeans toolset.  For completeness it should be mentioned that RIM has their own software development tools at their BlackBerry developer site. These tools include a BlackBerry Java Plugin for Eclipse and the BlackBerry Java Application Development v5.0.  They have a webcasts on BlackBerry Development and a Gettng Started one.  Two other resources - a BlackBerry Web Plugin and a BlackBerry Widget SDK.  Finally - check out the Java Application Development site which features an overview and details of advanced features, the Push Service, development tools, learning resources ad support and check the Getting Started part.  

Bits : New CouchDB Webcast from O'Reilly + More things CouchDB

Sunday, 6 June 2010 12:30 P GMT-08
I've been curious about CouchDB for a while.  It seems that everytime I wanted to spend time looking at it - something got in the way.  This weekend nothing got in the way.  There is  a relatively new O'Reilly webcast, Introduction to Apache CouchDB, that goes through some of the benefits of Apache CouchDB. Good introduction for me.  Another related talk is Mike Miller of Cloudant's webcast, An Intro to CouchDB.  What draws me to CouchDB is the offline mode - something also experimented on JavaDB.  There are some useful tutorials here, here and here,   I'v discovered also Planet CouchDB to stay tuned.   Couchdb
Post-Post. Having looked at it, I'm interested and I'm forced to download it and learn more about it. And so the learning journey on CouchDB starts with loading it on my Mac.  Also note that if you are interested in the combination of Grails and CouchDB - check out the Grails CrouchDB plugin.  

Quick Bits : Using VisualVM, BTrace and DTrace = A Clear Java MRI

Saturday, 5 June 2010 8:35 A GMT-08
I've taken some time off from blogging but I'm back.  Between traveling and a new job, I've been a bit pre-occupied. However, lately, I've been spending alot of time looking at Java performance and as a result have spent considerable time looking at VisualVM, JConsole, JMX and an assortment of tools.  One aspect, I found interesting was that VisualVM has a plugin architecture.  I've been spending some time looking at the BTrace plugin.  You can read more about it at the BTrace page - "BTrace is a safe, dynamic tracing tool for the Java platform. BTrace can be used to dynamically trace a running Java program (similar to DTrace for OpenSolaris applications and OS). BTrace dynamically instruments the classes of the target application to inject tracing code ("bytecode tracing"). Tracing code is expressed in Java programming language. " Since some of the systems I use are running OpenSolaris at home and many use Solaris at work - I found this particularly interesting.  Between DTrace and BTrace these two tools are probably one of the best reasons to use Solaris-based architectures if you are developing or deploying software. It becomes possible to thoroughly know what is happening through your application and on down through the stack and down to the metal. My understanding is that Windows also has architectural hooks to do this kind of thing - I haven't but will look at that in the future. There is a basic BTrace guide and a BTrace plugin via the VisualVM Plugin Center.  I also have spent a great deal of time with DTrace - you can catch some nice reads on it - here and here and here.  The fact that you can inject BTrace scripts into a running app and query it for various bits of information is incredibly useful.  
Post-Post. Oh, and if you start using VisualVM don't forget the Visual GC Plugin and the MBeans Browser (also via the VisualVM Plugin Center in the tool). And lastly, VisualVM is included with the Sun JDK.  

Why Apache Harmony is An Important Necessity to the Future of Java

Saturday, 5 June 2010 2:06 A GMT-08
Quite a while back, I asked myself - why Apache Harmony ?  I mean really, there was Sun OpenJDK, who needed yet-another-JVM that was (or so I thought bound to be ) slower, have less of the feature set implemented and lag on some platforms.    Okay - that was then, Sun was commited to open source projects, every week saw another build of some open source thing or other and the world was (let's face it) a better place for open source. Today, Sun for all practical purposes exists in the corporate history books only.  Yes, I hear the ads on NPR for Oracle software and Sun hardware (complete) and I think first about Daniil Kharms red-haired man story, then I think ... wait, wait - what about all that Sun software.  Oracle has moved in (figuratively) to their new Sun home and changed all the furniture  - throwing out quite a few good things.  A real pity.  So it's the then and now part that today gets me.  In the old Sun days many of us were blind to the possibility that Sun would not exist someday. In this context - Apache Harmony is an absolute necessity in the Post-Sun world.  No question.  Other people, at that time were much wiser than I about that possibility.  What is the future of the OpenJDK project ?  I'm sure it is a good one, but it is only one project - what if Oracle decides to demonstrate the same  lack of, shall we say, kindness and openness  it that it has shown the OpenSolaris project ?  Then what ? Can't happen, I hear some say. Oracle has been very quiet about the future of the Sun JVM and JRockit - although it has been stated (also here) that there would be one Oracle JVM in the future.  What does that mean for the OpenJDK project ? Really ?  Well, let's not bet on it.  If something like the vagueness about what been happening around OpenSolaris happens to OpenJDK then I see a fork coming.  Yes, except a compatible fork has already happened in the form of Apache Harmony.  It would be nice to see two forks, if our worst fears come to pass  - one of OpenJDK and the continuation of the existing Harmony one.  If not then I think Harmony is quite important to sustain a balance in the Java ecosystem. Thinking in reverse to what I imagined 48 months ago - I think competing and cooperating open source JVM implementations would make for a better future for Java.  
Post-Post. As it turns out - Harmony has come a long way and offers JREs, JDKs and HDKs for Linux and Windows. The performance is becoming competitive with Sun's JDK.  Though I continue to use the Sun Java JVM implementation - I have looked at Harmony and foresee a day when I would use it - maybe sooner if my worst fears are realized.  The only problem for now is - no OpenSolaris version is available (unless you want to build it).  Tangentially, I have to say that the OpenSolaris project offers a number of more interesting features than what is found in Solaris (not surprising as it offers cutting edge projects) which you can read about on the OpenSoalaris.org site or on PlanetSolaris.  

NetBeans Bits : JavaFX NetBeans Modules, High RCP Adoption, Mobility News

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 2:42 P GMT-08
I haven't blogged for a while.  First, I went to China for almost a month and managed to simply relax and avoid anything that resembled work.  Upon returning I got caught up in a number of things that pretty much have taken up all my time.   A lot has happened.  Some of the coolest things have been around NetBeans Rich Client Platfrom (RCP) adoption.   Clearly, JavaFX has not taken off the way Sun would have liked - one reason I blogged about before was just how broken JavaFX was in terms of two-way interaction with Swing and not being able to use it within the context of Eclipse or NetBeans RCP.  Well, some of that is changing because the NetBeans guys have now made that possible to code a NetBeans JavaFX module.  Check out,  NetBeans Platform Development in JavaFX!, which provides some nice details.  Geertjan has really been highlighting a tremendous number of NetBeans platform applications such as those from Raytheon,  an open source math suite,  a biochemical Network simulation and analysis environment,  database design software (DbWrench),  jMonkeyGame development platform,  Visual Thesaurus,  Radio Propagation Simulator and lots more.   In another cool development - it is now possible to do Java ME programming on MacOS X versions of NetBeans - check out NetBeans Mobility 6.9 for Mac OS X.  

Oracle Takes The Red Pill - And Everyone Wins

Wednesday, 27 January 2010 9:30 P GMT-08
Oracle did something surprising (at least to me).  Given the choice of  doing the staid status quo or doing something that would creatively widen their view - they picked the latter.  Excellent news.  In a video out of Oracle, Ted Farrell, Chief Architect and Senior Vice President clearly spells out Oracle's plans for NetBeans.  I have to say - I'm delighted to see them doing the right thing and making their entire developer tools strategy much stronger as a result.   Todays announcements from Oracle indicate that NetBeans will be enthusiastically embraced (my words, you tell me if I'm wrong after watching the video) by Oracle.  The cross- pollination that I had hoped would happen seems to have started.  Oracle is talking about bringing the Matisse UI Builder into JDeveloper.  The video explains what's happening with NetBeans and the news is great. Check out the video "Oracle + Sun : Java Developer Tools Strategy".  On the surface, this is great news - lets look forward to more positive developments in this space. [ thanks to Toni Epple for the pointer]  

Excellent Resources : GroovyMag, Grails Podcast

Friday, 15 January 2010 12:10 P GMT-08
If you are learning Groovy and Grails or simply want to be up-to-date on the what people are doing with Groovy/Grails and you may moaning about the lack of a e-magazine - you may be interested in knowing that there is an excellent resource that fits exactly that model.  Rather than simply getting books on the topic (which are typically slightly dated) I have started getting GroovyMag. Yes, sometimes knowledge costs you - but then it is well written and provides a slew of information.  For example the January edition includes Groovy Combinator Parsers, Groovy Meta- Object Programming andmore.  The December edition covered using JNDI with Grails, building a Grails portal, interviews with the people behind the Grails podcast and more.  You can get various editions (if you missed them and ) if you specifically see a topic of interest.

While we are on the topic of Groovy and Grails.  Check out the Grails podcast.
 
   

Deploy A Servlet On A Smart Card. Really.

Thursday, 14 January 2010 2:27 P GMT-08
If you are interested in embedded systems, smartcard technologies and solutions around them, then you should be interested in a new article,  Deploying Servlets on Smart Cards: Portable Web Servers with Java Card 3.0.  Java Card 3.0 allows developers to create and deploy servlet apps on smart card devices.  This article shows the differences between Java Card 2.0 and 3.0 and it shows you how to get started with the Java Card Connected Development Kit.  The article provides a small example that shows Persistence.  The web site for the Java Card Development Kit provides the development kit and you can read more about Java Card Technologies here.  You can read more about Java Card 3 in this article, Java Card 3:  Classic Functionality Gets a Connectivity Boost.  

JDK and JRE 6 Update 18 is Available

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 9:48 P GMT-08
JDK 6 Update 18 is now available.  Why is this release important ?  It offers support for Windows 7, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. You can find the release notes here.  This release includes VisualVM 1.2, Java DB 10.5.3.0,  a higher performant version of the HotSpot VM. Also if you are interested in what's coming JDK 7, you can download snapshot releases of JDK 7 Milestone 5 Build b76 from here.  Also note that Project Lambda which is bringing closures to Java can be found here.  

New Book : RESTful Java Web Services

Monday, 11 January 2010 10:16 P GMT-08
Go to the RESTful Java Web Services Web Site
Select to read more
I've started reading a new book, RESTful Java Web Services, and in the weeks ahead you should see a review of it.  This is the first of three books I've decided to read.  I've wanted to spend some  more time on RESTful web services and so I'm making the opportunity to go and check out this new book.  Initially, looking at the book  covers a lot of territory - an overview, accessing RESTful  services, designing the services, Jersey (JAX-RS), RESTEasy,  the RESTlet framework,  Struts 2 & the REST plugin,  Restlet clients and servers,  security, performance and more. So I'm off to the races on this one.  I plan on using NetBeans 6.8 and go step by step through the book.
 

01 01 10 : Predictions of Changes in the Conversation Stream For 2010

Wednesday, 30 December 2009 12:17 A GMT-08

Here are eight changes in the conversation stream that I expect to see in 2010.  These conversation changers will alter what we talked about in 2009.  That doesn't mean the 2009 topics of conversation disappear or becomes less relevant - just that the conversation changes and popularity of the 2010 topics are or I think will be on a steep rise and some of them may even eclipse those of  2009.   However, many of them are simply a shift in the momentum of competing technologies.  Here are changes that I foresee happening :

2009 2010
iPhone Android
Google Bing
MacOS X Windows 7
Ruby/Rails Groovy/Grails
RIA RCP
Laptop Tablet
MySQL PostgreSQL
JavaOne Devoxx


iPhone/Android - There is no question that Apple's iPhone/iTouch devices will continue to have huge popularity and success. However, I think the conversation will change to Android-based devices.  Android is constructing a huge device ecosystem from cell phones to e-Readers - MP3 and Portable Media Players to Netbooks and more.  The economics and the implied interoperability is reminiscent of Windows.

Google/Bing - In a very short time Bing has achieved some fairly impressive results.  I think this is the beginning.   I think that the surprise will be how quickly Bing achieves substantial mindshare - next year is the year of Bing in search.  Google will have to respond.

MacOS X/Windows 7.  I think the arrival of Windows 7 will see a shift to a better form of Windows in large segment of the desktops out there.  MacOS X will continue to do well in various forms but Windows 7 has significant improvements over Vista and Microsoft has clearly fixed a lot of things.   The overall Windows 7 UI is significantly better and the OS is much more solid.  I think increasingly the conversation is about Windows 7.  Recently, I  worked on a project where I used Windows 7 and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) tool.  RDP was a productivity win.  Working on multiple machines I was able to transparently view the server desktops and drag and drop folders and files easily between various systems.  Windows 7 was not the mess I thought it was in previous versions of Windows - it was actually reasonably productive.  I have Microsoft Office on two machines - one Mac and one Windows 7 machine (and yes I also have OpenOffice on these machines).  What I notice is the combination of Office and Windows 7 is really a pretty nice fit - they work in tandem and the tools compliment each other.  Office feels less productive to me on MacOS X.

Ruby/Rails and Groovy/Grails.  Ruby and RoR have garnered significant mindshare - but I think the combination of Groovy  have been garnering more interest (you can check out Google trends trends).  It isn't that simple.  I think Ruby currently has a substantially larger mindshare - but it is waning.  Groovy offers a Java.next approach that is attractive for developers searching for a turbo-charged, productive follow-on to the Java language.    In the quest for a better enterprise solution, Grails offers a framework built on Spring, Hibernate and Groovy.  This is a type  of  Java Web Edition that Sun should have offered years ago.  The fact that SpringSource offers professional services and support for Groovy and Grails is actually the piece of the puzzle that was missing before.

Rich Internet Application / Rich Client Platform.  Next year it will become more obvious - but have you noticed the large number of RCP applications that have popped up.  I follow NetBeans, but I suspect that something similar may be happening with Eclipse.  I think this year was the year of RIAs with the arrival of JavaFX, Flex/Flash and SilverLight.  I think it has dawned on a lot of developers that RIAs are limiting.  In my mind, they seem designed for graphic intensive web apps  - but most enterprise apps are data intensive.  Unfortunately I don't see JavaFX going anywhere until they fix it so that it can seamlessly support for  bi-directional interoperability and RCP interoperability is built into it.  I'm not saying that there won't be a lot of RIAs out there - just that they seem relegated to flashy, low-data graphics apps on web sites.

Laptop/Tablet.  I suspect Apple will probably hit a homerun with their rumored tablet, but, even if they don't there are some clearly interesting alternatives to the laptop coming in tablet form.  Despite the rough start, the JooJoo tablet looks pretty cool.  The tablets may turn into better eReaders than the existing Nook and Kindle.

MySQL/PostgreSQL.  Okay - so whatever happens out of the Oracle/Sun merger, I don't think it matters.  I think a lot of companies that chose MySQL to escape from the Oracle license fees are probably spooked and may be thinking about other options just about now.  It's not so much what Oracle will do as what they might decide not to do. It's an open source project that will be led by a company that competes with the largest revenue stream the company has.  I suspect there is probably some unease about what the longterm implications of the merger.  Other companies in the process of trying to decide what database to use  are probably taking a long hard look at PostgreSQL.  It's possible that MySQL will continue to flourish but  I think PostgreSQL will be one of the beneficiaries of the merger.  The other one may be Apache's CouchDB. 

JavaOne/Devoxx.  Okay - everybody seems to be talking about the fact that the JavaOne traditional call-for-papers has come and gone.  Amazingly, without a word from either Sun or Oracle - which I find amazing.  If it is Oracle's intention to merge it in to Oracle World - good luck. I see Devoxx as the new JavaOne if they do such a move.  I don't think that's a bad thing at all.  It is sad for me to see the demise of JavaOne - I've gone to almost every single one of them - but I think Devoxx is a really good replacement for it.

 

Groovy-ness: Groovy 1.7 and Grails 1.2 Arrive

Saturday, 26 December 2009 12:01 P GMT-08
The Groovy Project ( aka by some of us as Java.next - but in fact Groovy leverages and sits on top of Java) has released Groovy 1.7.  Groovy 1.7 is the latest major release of Groovy.  The latest version has included an implementation of Anonymous Inner Classes, Nested Classes, Annotations, support for Grape dependency system, power asserts,  new features for AST, an AST Viewer, an AST Builder and there are many more new features.  You can read about them here.  Note you can find the full range of features of Groovy at http://groovy.codehaus.org.   Along with the release of Groovy, Grails 1.2 has also been released.  Check out the new features in Grails here.  One excellent aspect of both - there are modules available that further extend this language with some pretty amazing frameworks. If you check out the Grails modules (331) they cover a spectrum of uses - cloud computing to security to barcodes to datasources to support for other languages to portlets to support of PayPal to PDF to a number of other modules that support much more.  Check out the Grails modules.   I've recently seen some back and forth of moving from Ruby to Groovy here and an interesting shoot-out here.    
 

Sixteen Talks from the Java EE 6 & GlassFish v3 Virtual Conference Now Available for Replay

Monday, 21 December 2009 10:40 P GMT-08
If you missed the Java EE 6 & GlassFish v3 Virtual Conference you can still listen and see the presentations.  There were a number of talks covering :
- Java EE: The Foundation for Your Business (Keynote)
- Java EE 6: An Overview (Keynote)
- GlassFish v3 - Java EE 6 Reference Implementation & Beyond (Keynote)
- Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.1 Features
- Jersey, JAX-RS and REST with GlassFish v3
- Java Servlet 3.0
- Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0
- Java Server Faces (JSF) 2.0
- Web Services in GlassFish
- Context Dependency and Injection (JSR 299)
- OSGi in GlassFish v3
- Dynamic Languages with GlassFish v3
- Tools for GlassFish v3: NetBeans and Eclipse
- Grizzly: NIO & Web Framework. Comet using GlassFish
- Monitoring, Management in GlassFish v3
- Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6

These talks are available for replaying and you can also download the slides from here.
 
 

Very Cool (Flash-Based) Presentation Tool : Prezi

Saturday, 19 December 2009 9:45 P GMT-08
There are two interesting tools I've run into.  One I've used for a while, Freemind, its a mind-mapping tool.   While Freemind is nice for putting down what's on your mind.  Wouldn't it be nice to use it for presentations.  Prezi is similar in some ways to Freemind (you can create a form of mindmap) - although Prezi allows you to create a presentation mindmap.  I spent some time looking for information on how Groovy builds web services and ran across this presentation.  Prezi is flash-based.  This is not a bad example of what RIA can do - very nice presentation-oriented application.  Will it replace Powerpoint or StarOffice ? No.  However, it is a nice alternative.
 
 

Four Big Releases : Java EE 6, GlassFish v3 Final, GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse, NetBeans 6.8

Thursday, 10 December 2009 10:40 P GMT-08
Four big Java announcements.   The first is the release of Java EE 6.  You can learn more by reading the (new) article, Introducing the Java EE 6 Platform, Part 1.   The second is the release of GlassFish v3 Final which includes Java EE 6.   The third annoucement is the availability of the GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse which means GlassFish v1.2 RC 1.1.9 with key bits from GlassFish v3 Java EE 6.  This is the most recent distribution of the GlassFish Tools Bundle for Eclipse, containing Eclipse 3.5.1 Java EE IDE, GlassFish v3 with Java EE 6 support pre-configured, and optionally, JDK 1.6.   Finally, the killer IDE - NetBeans IDE 6.8 has been released and is now available .  

NetBeans IDE 6.8 Release Candidate 1 Available

Tuesday, 1 December 2009 11:59 P GMT-08
NetBeans IDE 6.8 Release Candidate 1 is now available.  You can download it from here.  The Release Notes are here and the Installation Instruction can be found here.  There is a number of recent tutorials you can use to learn more.  

NetBeans Tutorial : Generating a JavaServer Faces 2.0 CRUD Application From A Database

Thursday, 26 November 2009 10:01 P GMT-08
If you missed it - there is a nice new NetBeans tutorial, Generating A JavaServer Faces 2.0 CRUD Application  From A Database.  In this tutorial, you use the NetBeans IDE to create a web application that interacts with a back-end database. The application allows you  to view and modify data contained in the database - otherwise referred to as CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) functionality.  It uses JavaServer Faces 2.0, Java Persistence API 2.0 and EJB 3.1.  The IDE provides two wizards which generate all of the code for the application.  It walks you through creating the database, examining the database structure, creating the web app project, generating the entity classes from the database, generating the JSF Pages from the entity classes, exploring the application and much more.   >
   

Video NetBeans Platform Session : BlueMarine - How To Build A Visually Rich Platform Application

Thursday, 26 November 2009 10:07 A GMT-08
One really nice NetBeans application is BlueMarine.  It shows what you can do with the NetBeans platform, NetBeans Visual Library, Swing, SwingLabs and wealth of graphics APIs.  Fabrizio Giudici gave an excellent talk which is on Parley's and which is now available. If found that the talk a lot insight into how he created what  is one the most visually rich platform applications available.  It covers a lot of territory about the creation of a NetBeans platform app and quite a bit more. It provides greater functionality than I've seen from any of the RIA (JavaFX, Flex and SilverLight) applications - probably because it provides a real application with a multitude of features.  You can  watch the video session  at Geertjan's blog. (Thanks to Geertjan for the pointer) >
   

A New NetBeans Platform Application : SQLBrowser IDE for Sybase Transact-SQL

Wednesday, 25 November 2009 11:26 P GMT-08
While Oracle has provided some vague plans about NetBeans - a very cool SQLBrowser IDE for Sybase Transact-SQL has emerged.  The IDE is built on the NetBeans platform.  There is a nice article describing the effort here.  The SQLBrowser IDE's main objective is to help understanding complex stored procedures.  In the IDE you can open a stored procedure and it provides a visualization of the call tree and the tables read and updated.  Check it out here.  You can download it here.  The interview provides a nice description for others (say large database companies) to learn from this effort. 

NetBeans Platform vs JDeveloper's (Non-Platform) IDE : Huge Numbers of NetBeans Platform Apps

Sunday, 15 November 2009 12:37 A GMT-08
Why do companies like Northrop Grumman and Boeing build on the NetBeans Platform ?  Lots of reasons.  I have to say I missed this post  ( both September & October were incredibly busy for me) at the end of September by Geertjan.  In this post he describes why Northrup Grumman is using the NetBeans Platform.  There is also a nice short presentation worth going through. The topic of the NetBeans Platform has come up in the discussion of NetBeans versus JDeveloper. JDeveloper  lacks the notion of a complete platform - either for jumpstarting full rich client platform applications and building full IDE's (like Ruby, PHP, Clojure, etc) - the API powerfully allows you to do all of these things. At it's core the NetBeans Platform supports extreme reuse with Platform modules.  If you try to understand how important all of this is, it is huge.   I've written before Select to enlarge
on the the problem with JavaFX in What's Wrong with JavaFX and What Needs Fixing as well as Followup on Fixing JavaFX - JavaFX, Flex and other RIA solutions  provide a way to write smaller web-oriented applications but there is no substitute for what RCPs provide - whether it is NetBeans or Eclipse.  Similarly, an IDE is nice for building applications - but it severely lacks in providing
Select to enlarge. a wealth of application tooling and infrastructure for jumpstarting an application.  The difference can be quite important by providing you with pre-built facilities to manage updates, windows management, menu management, storage, file access and a lot more.  In addition you are given dynamic modularity which can mean updating or upgrading the application dynamically - as well as providing a way of reusability to the max.  Writing applications becomes trivial because you can leverage not only the foundation NetBeans platform modules - but also previously developed modules.  All of this let's you leverage these things in your own application - whether its its the QuickSearch, Toolbars or Window sytem tooling.  In addition you can leverage non-visual parts of the platform like NetBeans Preferences APIs (for storing user settings),  Lexar APIs (for creating or
parsing tokens from input) and quite bit more.  You can learn much more about the NetBeans Platform from the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail  and also here.The reality is that there are alot and many more companies adopting the NetBeans Platform -
Select to englarge. Northrup Grumman is one.  Another is Boeing. You know the huge airplane company that builds excellent airplanes like the 747, 757, 767 777 and the new Dreamliner.  Boeing has built the Mass Properties Toolkit (MassTk), Boeing Shared Platform (BSP), the Boeing Composite Material Analyzer and the Boeing Cross-Sectional Structural Analyzer.   You can read more about it here.  There is a huge number of companies on the NetBeans Platform.  Check out over 100+ examples of the NetBeans Platform here.   There are a lot more, obviously, that are not on the list - for example - IAV of Berlin Germany is doing there Automotive Engineering on a NetBeans Platform application with EasyDOE ToolSuite.  There is a nice write-up here on the work.  The list goes on and on.  Experian has a code base of over NetBeans 100 modules.  In Brazil, the Brazilian State's Financial Management System is built on top of NetBeans Platform (you can read an
interview about it here).  Exie has written a "People-Driven Performance Management" solution for  serving dynamic markets. GEE has developed  URSUS is a NetBeans Platform application for bioclimatic design and energy consumption optimization in town planning. Bright Software has buillt BrightBuilder Mobile Application Designer is a rapid application development tool for building and deploying mobile enterprise applications. It provides a single point to design, implement, test and deploy applications using a modular user interface. The US Department of Agriculture is on the NetBeans platform - the Object Modeling System (OMS) is a pure Java, object-oriented modeling system framework. OMS enables interactive model construction and applications based on components.

Okay, enough you get the idea.  There is plenty more RCP apps and I could go on for some time. NetBeans Platform has been widely adopted and is at the core of many mission government, financial, consumer, industrial, engineering systems - and much more beyond that.  These are in many cases critical systems.  We are talking engineering design on aircraft as an example.  Financial systems.  Sales systems.  Mining. And a lot more.

So now the big question.  Where is the JDeveloper Platform ?  

Now let me answer that.  There is no JDeveloper "platform" in the Eclipse/NetBeans sense of  the word "platform".  It also doesn't exist from the standpoint of huge numbers of platform applications. Or if you are interested in creating your own enterprise desktop apps for ... finance, retailers,  etc. 

That's why most reasonable people are talking (and here)

Select to enlarge

about why the best of possible worlds would involve Oracle building on top of the platform and moving JDeveloper's Oracle functionality over to NetBeans as  Platform modules.  It's not like we are talking a huge technology bridge - say like moving to an alien, native API - no  both NetBeans and JDeveloper are built using the Swing toolkit.  Get with it, Oracle.  Move your developers  to a great Java Platform solution and and the best IDE available.

[Update : I found this out just now, yet another very recent adoptee  of the NetBeans Platform, is NASA.  You can read the details here .]

 

 

New NetBeans Platform Tutorials : Wizards and 3D NASA Application

Saturday, 14 November 2009 3:59 A GMT-08
There are two new NetBeans Platform tutorials.  The first one, NetBeans Wizard Module tutorial,  in this tutorial you learn how to you create a general wizard that appears when you click a button in the toolbar. [ In NetBeans Platform applications, many different kinds of wizards can be created. If you want to create a wizard that appears in the New Project dialog, see the Project Sample Module Tutorial. If you want to create a wizard that appears in the New File dialog, see the File Template Module Tutorial. ]  This wizard tutorial walks you through creating Module project, creating the Wizard infrastructure,  registering the Wizard Action Class, designing the Wizard Content, validating user data, persisting data across restarts, branding the wizard and much more.   Check it out here.    The second platform tutorial, How to Create a Cross-Platform Application with NASA WorldWind & NetBeans Platform, offers up mini tutorial on how to create an Select to check out this mini-tutorial
a application based on NetBeans Platform that uses the WorldWind Java virtual globe. The tutorial discusses the components (NetBeans Platform, WorldWind from NASA and JOGL (a 3D library) then it walks you through creating the application. Very cool.

Interview : Java Development Kit 7

Friday, 13 November 2009 9:00 A GMT-08
I ran across an interesting talk/deep dive given by Danny Coward, Chief Architect for Client Software at Sun on the topic of the next major version of Java, 7 and the Java Development Kit (JDK).  You may be interested in this.  This is an SDN video.  The JDK 7 Project has a number of JDK 7 binary and source snapshots. In addition you can read more in the JDK 7 docs.  He talks about a Java module system (I hope that he is paying attention to Tulach's good work - what I would dread is for a rarified modular system over a practical get-it-done modular system). Anyway - you may be interested in this video.
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