Raible Designs

AppFuse 2.0 M5 Released - now with CRUD generation and XFire support

The AppFuse Team is pleased to announce the release of AppFuse 2.0 M5! This release marks a milestone in the features of AppFuse 2.x. This release adds CRUD code generation, full source support (just like 1.x) and XFire integration. In addition, we've fixed all the issues related to switching persistence frameworks, and you should now be able to easily switch from using Hibernate to to iBATIS or JPA. The videos have been updated for M5. The Easy CRUD with Struts 2 video shows how code generation currently works.

AppFuse 2.0 is available as a Maven archetype. For information on creating a new project using this release, please see the QuickStart Guide or the Hello World video.

If you've used AppFuse 1.x, but not 2.x, you'll want to read the FAQ and join the user mailing list if you have any questions. The Maven Reference Guide has a map of Ant » Maven commands. Maven for Newbies might also be useful if you've never used Maven before. There is some support for Ant in this release.

For more information, please see the 2.0 M5 Release Notes. If you'd like to use AppFuse offline (or download everything at once), you may want to grab the dependencies and extract them into your ~/.m2/repository directory.

The 2.0 series of AppFuse has a minumum requirement of the following specification versions:

• Java Servlet 2.4 and JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.0
• Java 5 for Development (Java 1.4 for deployment using the Retrotranslator Plugin)

Comments and issues should be posted to the mailing list.

We appreciate the time and effort everyone has put toward contributing code and documentation, posting to the mailing lists, and logging issues. We also greatly appreciate the help from our sponsors, particularly Atlassian, Cenqua, Contegix, JetBrains, Java.net and KGBInternet. Without them, working on this project wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Update: The videos are much lower quality than the ones I originally recorded (13 MB vs. 70 MB). If you want to view the high quality videos (they're much clearer), you can download them from java.net. If someone has a better way to compress these (I just used QuickTime's Export feature), please let me know.

Also, this release contains the first release of the AppFuse Maven Plugin. This plugin is largely based on Hibernate Tools. We modified many of the FreeMarker templates from Hibernate Tools to default to certain annotations, as well as clean up the formatting. These templates are currently available in AppFuse's SVN. Hopefully making them available is enough to satisfy Hibernate's LGPL license.

Proof that Abbie is growing up fast

There's been a couple of significant events in Abbie's (and our) lives in the last couple of weeks. First of all, Julie and the kids spent two weeks down in Florida at the beginning of May. Julie's mom has a pool, so the kids enjoyed swimming in it almost every day. They've both been taking swimming lessons, but they certainly couldn't swim by themselves. Julie taught Abbie to do an underwater breaststroke rather than doggie paddling after the first few days. By the time I arrived (a week after their arrival), Abbie could swim all by herself, underwater. By the end of the week, she could swim from one end of the pool to the other. Pretty impressive I must say.

The 2nd event I learned about on Friday night. Sometime last week, Julie decided to start giving Abbie money to do chores around the house. She can only earn a maximum of $1 per day, but she's super pumped about it and is always asking if she can do stuff. Her room is usually spotless now. With her new found wealth, she needed something to store it in - so Julie bought them piggy banks over the weekend. Who knows how long their enthusiasm will last, but I think it's important to teach them how much things cost and how they can save money to get things they want. When I was a kid, I had a lot of chores and earned something like $5/week. While I didn't like the chores, I loved the allowance. It's good to see inflation hasn't influenced allowances too much.

Thanks Erik!

From Erik's Weblog:

After 7 years, It's time to put my linkblog to rest.

I've been struggling in the last few months to find good content... what used to take 30 minutes, now takes hours. Moreover, places like DZone are doing a better job than I ever could.

I took a few weeks off last summer hoping it would help with my frustrations, but it didn't. In a way it made things worse. It is no longer fun and I can't shake the feeling that I could do something more productive with my time.

Thanks to all my regular (and not so regular) readers. It has been fun.

Thanks for the memories.

I'm definitely bummed to see Erik's Linkblog go, but I understand time commitments and priorities. Erik's Linkblog was one of the first Java blogs I started reading and I've enjoyed it thoroughly all these years. Thanks for all the hard work you've put in over the years Erik. Your linkblog will be missed.

A Story about My Mom

My Mom is one of the coolest people I've ever met. She was born in Billings, Montana on January 4, 1950. That makes her a Montana Native. She grew up in the city, but moved to The Cabin in her 20s. Life at the cabin wasn't easy. My parents were pretty darn poor the entire time we lived there. To help reduce the cost of living, we raised a lot of animals. We had chickens for eggs, goats for milk, rabbits to eat and every so often, we'd get a couple of pigs to raise for food.

The pigs presented an interesting problem: bears. Bears love pigs. I can remember a couple of times where bears would sneak in and run off with one of the pigs for dinner. Bears were dangerous and my parents didn't like them - both for fear they'd harm one of us, but more because they'd harm the animals and our food supply. Bears were also good eatin', so if there was one hanging around, my parents didn't hesitate to try and shoot it.

When I was 2 years old, I got a puppy for my birthday. We named him "Woofer". He grew into a big ol' Hound Dog and turned out to be great at treeing bears. He had a very deep bark that would apparently scare them into climbing trees, making them easy targets.

The story I'd like to tell about my Mom happened when I was a kid. I don't know how old I was - but I was young enough that I don't remember the story. My dad was out of town, and a bear had been hanging around. My Mom was not happy and set out one day with the rifle and Woofer. They ended up getting the bear up a tree and my Mom shot him down. Apparently, she was pretty mad at the bear for threatening her children and all. She hauled him back to the "skinning tree", which was next to our house. I can see her now, yelling at the bear, telling him he deserved it and what a cocksucker he was. Foaming at the mouth, she whipped out her hunting knife, grabbed him by the balls, and sliced them right off. Still swearing at him, she grabbed a hammer and nail, and angrily nailed his nuts to a tree. "Serves you right you motherfucker", she probably muttered to herself.

To this day, that nail is still here and a small tuft of hair hangs from it. I apologize for the swearing in this story, but my Mom has always cussed like a sailor.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my Mom for all she's taught me. One of the things I've always admired about her is how happy she is all the time. She's a true optimist and enjoys almost everything she does, from being a "Burn Boss" to running in marathons. She's an incredible lady and I'm very proud to call her my Mom. Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Off to Florida

While I've been trouncing around the globe with my Dad, Julie and the kids have been splashing around Julie's mom's pool in Florida. Tonight I'll be joining them via a Frontier red eye. I'm not looking forward to the flight, but it'll be great to see everyone. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I'll be sipping on a cold Corona and sitting by the pool. I like the idea of going on vacation a lot better than attending the JavaOne festivities.

Cheers!

What a Trip - Amsterdam was a blast!

Last week's trip to Europe for ApacheCon EU was nothing short of spectacular. Amsterdam was an incredible city that amazed me with its awesome biking system (and usage!), incredible atmosphere and a nice sense of relaxation. I think the picture below sums up our trip nicely. The weather couldn't have been better - sunny and warm with a cool breeze.

ApacheCon was likely an excellent conference, but I'm proud to say I didn't attend a single session. I did manage to make it to Sun's party on Thursday night (thanks Dave!), but that was about it. At the party, the Wicket guys had a BOF, which my dad and I sat in on. Thanks to Martin, Eelco and others for the good conversation, even if we did have to shout.

After my talk on Friday, we scrambled for the airport. It was pretty hectic after my talk with our departure looming and the fact that I still needed to pack. To top it off, the power went out in the hotel shortly after my talk. After arriving at the airport, I realized I forgot my passport in the room - Doh! (you're right Neil). Luckily, I was able to sweet talk my way onto the plane anyway and we arrived in Stuttgart an hour later.

The weather wasn't nearly as nice in Germany, but we did have a great time. The folks we went to visit have same last name as my family. Roland Raible was driving his VW Bus through Montana in the early 80s, when he noticed the "Raible" name on our mailbox. Curious, he drove up our front road and made it all the way to the cabin. I remember him driving up the road - I was only 9 years old when it happened. He hopped out of his van and yelled to us "My last name is Raible!" We don't know if we're actually related, but Roland and my dad have stayed in touch ever since that initial meeting. My dad visited him for the first time last year, following one of his trips to Africa.

Roland, his wife Helga and their 2 children all live in Wangen, which is a countryish town in Southern Germany. It rained the two days we were there, but we did make it to "Fidelisback", a bakery that's been around for over 500 years. The beer was excellent, as was the food. On Saturday, we traveled to the Zeppelin Museum and some stone-age huts along Lake Constance. Both places were very cool and educational. We enjoyed the audio tour at the Zeppelin Museum just like we did at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

On Sunday, we left Stuttgart around 11 and arrived in Amsterdam at noon. Bruce hooked me up and left my passport in a locker. It was surprisingly easy to travel between The Netherlands and Germany with nothing but a driver's license. We arrived at my house in Denver at 11:00 on Sunday night.

If you ever get a chance to visit Amsterdam for Queen's Day - I highly recommend it. I know we'll be back.

For some photos of our trip, see my Europe 2007 Set on Flickr. Also, checkout Dave's Amsterdam vacation wrap-up for some good photos of Queen's Day.

ApacheCon EU: Comparing Java Web Frameworks Presentation

I said I'd post my presentation after my talk this morning, so here it is:

Download Comparing Java Web Frameworks Presentation (1.1 MB)

I went a bit long on the presentation, but the crowd (standing room only) seemed to enjoy it. Thanks to all who attended!

Java Web Framework Tools: How many are there?

How many tools are there for the various open source web frameworks in Java? Here's my count:

So where did I get these numbers?

Struts 2's number (4) is based on tmjee's comment on a recent post. Spring MVC consists of Spring IDE, Gaijun Studio and IDEA (which supports Spring XML code-completion). There's no Stripes tools that I know of. JSF's number (12) is from research I did in October 2005 (if you have a definitive list, let me know). Tapestry has Spindle (which only supports 3.0) and 4.0 has an IDEA Plugin. Wicket has NetBeans support (which also exists for JSF (+Facelets), Tapestry and WebWork).

Please let me know if you have any corrections to these numbers. You can also download my presentation if you'd like to refute anything before tomorrow morning. It's noon in Amsterdam right now, so you have 18 hours or so.

Update: I've updated the graphs based on comments. Thanks for your input!

Having fun in Amsterdam

My dad, Bruce and I arrived on Sunday morning in Amsterdam at the early hour of 8 a.m. I drugged myself with some Melatonin, so I didn't work as nearly as long as I would've liked. They did have an electrical plug (that required and worked with my MacBook adapter) so I was able to pull out the 15" and work for 5 hours. The flight was 9 hours and I managed to never step out of my seat (good ol' bladder of steel developed at The Cabin). Bruce said he slept 30 minutes at the end of the flight; my dad managed to get 7 hours.

The weather has been beautiful and we've been enjoying the sunshine and good beer. Queen's Day was crazy and quite a sight to see. The amount of boats in the canals and people in the streets was amazing. The only downside so far is neither my dad nor I brought our camera cords. If you're at ApacheCon EU and reading this, we could use a USB or Sony camera connector. I'll try to post some pics if I can borrow a cord.

The Flight to Amsterdam

Tomorrow morning, my dad, Bruce and I will be getting on a Continental flight headed for Amsterdam. We stop in Houston for a couple hours, then it's a 10-hour flight from there. Bruce found a diagram of our plane and it appears to have power outlets. Inspired by this news, I went out and bought an adapter for my MacBook Pro.

Now the question is - where there be enough room for my 17" laptop?

The last flight I was on (to Boston a few weeks ago), there was no room for a laptop. When the guy leaned back in front of me, I ended up with barely enough room to scratch my nose. A 15" laptop wouldn't have solved that problem. Has anyone out there flown internationally in a Boeing 767? We're in economy, so it might be tight, but I would like to get some work done on the flight. I'm willing to take both my MacBooks, but it would suck if I couldn't use either one. On the other hand, it'd be nice if I knew my 17" would work fine and I only had to take one. Thanks for any advice.

Update: The adventure/drama has already begun! My dad forgot his passport in Oregon and we've been on the phone with Fedex and UPS trying to get it here before our flight takes off at 11:20. Fedex was $384 for a "it should get there" delivery. UPS gave us a "guaranteed delivery" for $75 and told us it would get here by 9. Once they gave us the tracking number, they switched it to 10. Those bastards! Oh well, at least I'm on the flight - who knows about my dad.

Saturday @ 7 AM: UPS Tracking shows his passport is in Ontario, Canada (an arrival scan, no departure shown). WTF - the two hour flight from Portland to Denver wasn't short enough?!

Saturday @ 9 AM: Julie has the passport in her hands and is driving out to the airport to give it to my dad. He came with me an hour ago to check in and explain his situation. Looks like he's going to make it!