I discovered some issues with struts-resume 0.6. Thanks to Thomas Fabbricante for the tip. The first bug I found is that you need to change the following line in your database.properties file:
hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/struts-resume?autoReconnect=true
to:
hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/resume?autoReconnect=true
As for running struts-resume on Tomcat LE, you'll first need to put mail.jar and activation.jar in $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib - or you can comment out the mail-related stuff. These files include metadata/web/struts-resume.xml (JNDI Mail Session) and web/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties (SMTPAppender configuration). Then it all seems to work great! Sweet - that was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. I'll release a 0.6.1 in order to update the database.properties.sample to have a valid db url.
Update: I've uploaded the files for 0.6.1, you can download them here. Alos, here's a demo and a project link for your clicking pleasure.
I don't know if there was an upgrade or something, but it took me until today to notice that java.blogs has an rss feed for recent entries. Very cool. I'm going to be using NetNewsWire for a while to read sites - it's just faster. Another effort to improve my time management skills.
I was invited to attend Basebean's Struts Training today. Vic Cekvenich was nice enough to give me a password to attend, and I agreed that I would blog about it. I also agreed to help out on the MVC Programmers mailing list. I don't know that I'll do the labs, but I am interested in doing them - especially since the examples run on Resin 3.0. So I'm sitting in right now and they're doing some introductions. More to come soon. It's about a 1 and 1/2 hour class this morning - should be fun.
The first 20 minutes have been mostly about open source and it's benefits. I'm thinking - most of the students already know this don't they? Maybe not. I guess my perspective is skewed since I've been involved in open source for so long. Before I started using it, I guess I kinda scoffed at it - so I suppose the intro is good.
The second 20 minutes has been about "why projects fail" and the importantance of requirements. I can definitely understand this - as I've been on a couple projects with a bad requirements-gathering process. So far, this class has been a little disappointing as I haven't learned anything yet. The students seem very interested in the first two topics though - so I guess it's satisfying them. I'm sure I'd be more satisfied if I'd already done the labs (the students have).
Now onto Project Management and CMM. Didja know you can get certified as a Project Manager from PMI.org. IMO, a Project Manager can single handedly make or break a project. I agree with Vic that "the best person to have certified on a project" is the PM. The PM on my current project rocks, and it's made the project soooo much easier. You can track your project's ROI at softwarereality.com.
Don't these student's have mute on their phones? I've heard kids crying and dogs barking so far ;-) No one's heard me sneeze yet - and I've done it 3 times!
Vic recommends the following:
- When starting a project, create the entire application as an HTML mockup. I agree with this - it's awesome for getting requirements solidified.
- Mockup the outputs - i.e. Reports in Excel. For reports, he recommends using iReport. After a quick review - it looks like a report designer that creates an XML file that can be fed to Jasper Reports.
NetLedger.com is a recommended UI for complicated forms. Rumored to have a free login.
Tip: When you have bad requirements, surf the web. Programming on your project will just frustrate you. My advice: contribute to an open source project - then you'll keep your skills up to par. Or, read blogs - you'll learn something there too.
Now we're learning how to setup an IDE (Eclipse) and deploy/test and example app. Looks like the sample app (webPIM) uses JSTL's Fmt tag. Cool, I've never used it, I should probably do the labs. Teaching students how to use an IDE for Struts Development is definitely the easiest way to go, but using Ant is the real-world way - right?
The next lab covers configuring Tiles and developing a sample layout. I noticed it was a big confusing for the students that the tiles definitions file is named layout.xml and the base Tiles template is named layout.jsp. I usually name my tiles definition file tiles-config.xml.
