Raible Designs

Sun ONE will be free, and maybe Solaris?

From CNET News:

The company said it has released two new versions of its Sun ONE Application Server 7. The Platform Edition is available as a free download for Solaris and Windows operating systems. The Standard Edition includes additional management tools and costs $2,000 per server processor.

Maybe Sun is listening to Russell, because they've really started to pick things up lately. If you look at their homepage, it's all about this download. Too bad there's no Linux/OS X version. I doubt I can hack the Solaris version to work on OS X - though I was able to hack the Solaris J2EE RI to work. I've heard great things about the 7.0 version of the app server. I hope it does well.

Bias Alert: I've worked with Netscape/iPlanet application server since NAS 2.1 and have detailed knowledge how everything works/doesn't work. So my hoping for a better version is definitely tied to my existing knowledge and hopes of leveraging it with folks hoping to implement a Sun ONE Solution. Also, I am certified to teach iPlanet courses for Sun and I'd love to start getting more teaching gigs - they've been non-existent lately.

Wiki Evaluation.

I'm conducting an evaluation of wiki's to use on this site. I'm taking a look at Gareth Cronin's Very Quick Wiki, Russell Beattie's SimpleWeb, and Ghoot Emaho's Chiki. My only criteria is that it must be an Open Source Java-based implementation. If you know of any others, let me know.

Update 1: I got a note from Ugo Cei of Be Blogging to check out Open Wiki. Unfortunately, it's an ASP implementation, so it doesn't satisfy my only criteria. It really looks very slick, and I especially like the attempt to follow web-standards (indicated by the w3c icons on the bottom right).

Update 2: Brad Smith (no blog in e-mail) sent me a head-up about JSPWiki this evening. This one looks pretty cool - it's got a RSS feed and statistics. Just to be fair, SimpleWeb has an RSS feed as well.

I've begun my first phase of the evaluation and will update notes in this post accordingly - after I'm done, I'll add to to my Articles list. Keep the suggestions coming - I'll eval as many as I have time for and hopefully keep the list growing.

Nice Photos!

I wonder what kind of digital camera James Duncan Davidson has? He's posted some really nice pictures of his hike up Yosemite falls on Monday.

Sun Certification Summit.

Want to get certified in just one, two or three days? If so, you could attend the Sun Certification Summit, November 10-13 in Colorado Springs. It's almost worth it considering how many hours you would spend studying for these certifications.

The all-inclusive fee of $1,295 per person includes all conference activities, student materials, Web-based courses, meals and lodging. One price fits all. You choose how aggressive you want to be, and take as many sessions as you want.

The Zone and The Wall.

I've certainly been in The Zone before:

Sometimes, you just have one of those days. One of those days where you manage to find flow, and stay in it. One of those days where you move from test, to code, back to test, back to code with ease.

But what about those days you feel like you're pounding your head against the wall. No matter what you do or try it just doesn't work. Or you're trying to fix a bug and just can't seem to find the problem. And when you do, it was sooo simple - ARRRGGHHH! I battled with The Wall all day yesterday writing installation scripts for my current project. I was lucky enough to get it all working by the end of the day, but I think I scared the bejeezus out of my cat a time or two.

Dream Job in Carribean.

I got this e-mail yesterday for an Oracle Certified Trainer in the Carribean. How sweet would that be?! If any of you are qualified for this position, I encourage you to apply. I've provided this nice picture for you to gaze at and dream about.

James Duncan Davidson has a blog.

I found James Duncan Davidson's blog tonight. For those of you who didn't know, James is the original author of both Tomcat and Ant. Now he appears to be caught up in Mac OS X goodness, and is having fun with the T68i and iSync. Powered by blosxom, motivated by simplicity, driven by perl.

Testing Javascript.

I found JsUnit this morning. JsUnit is a Unit Testing framework for client-side JavaScript.

• JsUnit uses exception handling, which means we need JavaScript 1.4 or higher. That means that the browsers supported are Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, Netscape 6.0 or later, Mozilla 0.9 or later, and Konqueror 5.0 or later. JsUnit has been tested for:
  • IE 5.5+, on Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 95, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X
  • Mozilla 0.9.4+ on all platforms (includes all Gecko-based browsers including Netscape 6.2.3+ and Netscape 7.x)
  • Konqueror 5+ on KDE 3.0.1 (Linux)

Now you should have enough testing frameworks to triple the timeframe of your project...

Java Developer? Buy this book!

Yesterday was a good day - I woke up at 4, finished the features and bug fixes for the 1.0.2 release of my project, deployed it, and headed to the library. I was at the library from 8 until 2:30, finishing off Java Development with Ant. I really can't say enough about this book - it's a must-have for anyone who develops in Java. As I told my wife, it's the best technology book I've ever read. It's got tons of great stuff on testing (JUnit, HttpUnit, Canoo WebTest, Cactus), deployment (to Tomcat, to WebLogic) and a very good chapter on XDoclet.

The best part is that it's got tons of examples that you can use immediately if you're already using Ant. You might even be able to download them and copy/paste. I also found you can get it at half-price as an eBook ($22.47, PDF). I think it's a great resource as a reference manual, and you probably don't even have to read the whole thing like I did.

Ant and JUnit.

I reduced the build.xml file on my project drastically this morning (more than 900 lines). I used to have a task per testcase and was able to consolidate from this:

<!-- =================================================================== -->
<!--            Run the UserDAO test                                     -->
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<target name="test.userDAO" depends="compile">
  <echo message="Running UserDAO Test -------------------"/>
  <junit printsummary="yes" haltonfailure="yes" 
    haltonerror="yes" fork="yes">
      <jvmarg value="-Djunit.conf=./src/onpoint/PersistenceTestValues.ini"/>
      <classpath>
          <pathelement path="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/classes"/>
      </classpath>
      <classpath refid="classpath"/>
      <formatter type="plain" usefile="false"/>
      <test name="com.onpoint.webapp.persistence.UserDAOTest"/>
  </junit>
</target>

To this:

<!-- =================================================================== -->
<!--            Run all the Persistence tests                            -->
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<target name="test.persistence" depends="compile">
    <echo message="Running Persistence Tests -------------------"/>
    <junit printsummary="yes" haltonfailure="yes" 
	  haltonerror="yes" fork="yes">
      <jvmarg value="-Djunit.conf=./src/onpoint/PersistenceTestValues.ini"/>
      <classpath>
          <path refid="classpath"/>
          <pathelement path="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/classes"/>
      </classpath>
      <formatter type="plain" usefile="false"/>
      <test name="com.onpoint.webapp.persistence.${testcase}" if="testcase"/>
      <batchtest unless="testcase">
          <fileset dir="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/classes" 
              includes="**/persistence/*Test.class"/>
      </batchtest>
  </junit>
</target>

And I got to remove the AllTests.java file in the persistence package! You probably knew this already, but just in case...

Thanks to Erik Hatcher for Java Development with Ant. I studied this book for three hours yesterday and it's already increasing my productivity! I hope to finish it by tomorrow afternoon - only 300 pages to go. It's pretty cool when you're reading someone's book and getting e-mails from them at the same time.