The Angular Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and
deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.
Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.
For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.
The JHipster Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring
Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.
This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.
For book updates, follow @jhipster-book on Twitter.
From the Apache News Blog, I found there's a new sorting and paging taglib in town. We already have the Display Tag and the Value List Handler, but now we have the Data Grid. It looks pretty good too - although it doesn't seem to support/enforce XHTML. For your viewing pleasure, I've setup a demo. To be fair, you can also checkout the Value List Handler Demo and the Display Tag Demo.
Vincent Massol has released Cargo 0.1 - an open source project to start/stop and configure Java containers. I'm using its Ant tasks in Spring Live's sample app in conjuction with jWebUnit and Canoo's WebTest and it works great. Here's some sample code:
<target name="test-web" depends="war"
description="Runs tests that required a running server">
<taskdef resource="cargo.tasks" classpathref="classpath"/>
<cargo-tomcat5x homeDir="${tomcat.home}"
output="${test.dir}/cargo.log"
workingDir="${test.dir}/tomcat5x" action="start">
<war warFile="${dist.dir}/${webapp.name}.war"/>
</cargo-tomcat5x>
<property name="testcase" value="WebTest"/>
<antcall target="test"/>
</target>
Read more about Cargo's beginnings on TheServerSide.com. This initial version provides:
Good stuff - thanks Vincent!
As you can probably tell from my lack of posting here - I'm having a good time being Abbie's buddy these days. I've also learned a couple of things. First of all, raising two kids is easy. You just have to give up any notion of wanting to do anything for yourself. Secondly, we had a "turn off the TV week" here and Abbie didn't even notice. She's usually a huge Elmo fan - so I was a little worried. However, she only asks for Elmo when the TV is on. Kids are actually a fair bit easier to manage when there is no TV. This goes back to point #1. If you concentrate on the kids and not on yourself, it's pretty easy work. Exhausting, but easy. Chances are you won't ever regret it. That's it - we're off to Gymboree and then to the airport to pick up "Mimi" and "Baba" (my parents).
Last night I attended the local Denver JUG meeting.
Chris Huston gave a presentation on JMX and
Dion gave a presentation on JDO 2.0. Below are my notes from the event.
-----------------------------
Java Management Extensions one of the first JSRs and now included in to JDK 5. Monitors health of the system. Alter sys-admin of error conditions. Provides capability of to view and modify runtime parameters.
MBeans are deployed in an MBeanServer and their capabilities are exposed through Connectors. Then tools talk to these connectors to get their information.
JMX is covered by two separate specifications: JSR-3 (MBeans) and JSR-160 (Connectors). BTW, Chris has some good slide-making capabilities - I'll have to get some tips from him for my next preso. For example, he shows an entire class and its methods, then he fades it and zooms in on certain methods and highlights them to explain what they do.
Four types of MBeans: Standard MBeans, Dynamic MBeans, Model MBeans and Open MBeans. More info on these Mbeans can be found at http://docs.sun.com.
Standard MBean: All you need to do create an interface for your class your class name with "MBean" appended to it.
In order to deploy, you need to create and configure an MBeanServer.
You can create an MBeanServer using javax.management.MBeanServerFactory.createMBeanServer().
MBeanServers keep track of MBeans
using a javax.management.ObjectName.
After creating and configuring an MBeanServer, you simply need to
register your MBean using an Agent. All pretty simple so far, right? Now you have to use a Connector
to expose your MBean to the outside world.
"Connectors are the fly in the ointment." MX4J is an open source project that has good Connectors: i.e. RMIAdaptor and HTTPAdaptor. There's also SNMP Adapters from a number of commercial vendors. In order to solve the current lack of good Connectors we have JSR-160: Distributed Services Specification. This JSR defines one connector: JMXConnector (part of JDK 5).
Chris is now showing us a counter widget deployed as a Swing app and managed using MX4J's web interfaces. Very cool stuff - the ability manipulate runtime parameters. As Chris stated - the real power of JMX will come from the tools. I wonder if there's MBeans available for monitoring webapps - seems like there'd be quite a market for management beans you could just drop in and deploy.
Notifications are another feature of MBeans and can be sent by an MBean. Two important interfaces: NotificationEmitter and NotificationListener.
Chris gave a good introduction to JMX, but I don't see myself using it anytime soon. It seems to be something that framework and container developers might use, but not many application developers. Maybe I'm wrong - are you deploying MBeans as part of your web applications? Chris mentioned that Hibernate and Spring have MBeans as part of their distribution - anyone using these? If nothing else, it's great to know that JMX is available if I ever do need to monitor and control applications.
-----------------------------
Now Dion's up after a 1/2 hour break with announcements. Dion is talking about JDO 2.0. I think JDO would
be a lot more popular if it wasn't for Hibernate. Hibernate seems to have done JDO better and faster.
What is JDO?
JDO Main Objectives:
Other Objectives:
When JDO first started, a bad thing happened - the object database guys were heavily involved. JDO 1.0 had 80% of its Expert Group from object database vendors. JDO 2.0 got object guys off the committee and real-world (relational) folks onto it.
JDO 1.0: Most of it is not very new - just a standard way of implementing persistence. Other proprietary tools already accomplish most of what JDO is.
JDO 2.0 Strategic Goals:
JDO 2 Status: First Early Draft Review is out there. Soon there's going to be a Community Review - then things
will start rolling after that.
JDO 2.0 Goals:
Dion's take on politics between EJB 3 and JDO 2
Why are people even arguing about it? Money. Because companies have invested a lot of time
and money into X technology and therefore they bash the other. This problem might be solved
by an O/R Mapping JSR that both EJB and JDO have to adhere to.
JDBC vs. JDO
| JDBC | JDO |
|---|---|
| SQL-oriented | Object-oriented |
| Explicit intrusive code | Fully transparent |
| Manual mapping | Automatic mapping (automatic == create XML file) |
| RDBMS-centric | Universal |
JDO will use all J2EE services inside a container.
Deployment time scalability - database becomes bottleneck as number of users increases. JDO middle tier
can relieve this load on the databse. JDO's configuration can be altered at deploy time to handle better
scalability through caching.
JDO 2.0 Multi-tier Development - big thing is disconnected objects through attach/detach. Very simple API
for detaching and re-attaching objects. Internally there's a version that's used to determine if the object
is the same one.
JDO and EJB
As opposed to Entity bean, JDO instances...
And as of JDO 2 (new and improved object modeling!)
Some argue that JDO is what Entity Beans should have been!
Some argue that JDO complements Entity Beans because Entity beans can use JDO.
EJB3 is totally moving directorys with regards to Entity Beans, and they are much more like JDO.
EJB3 EntityManager == JDO PersistenceManager == Hibernate Session
JDO and Connector Architecture -
JDO is NOT a framework, but plays well with others!
The JDO architecture uses the J2EE Connector architecture for application servers. The JDO PersistenceManager is a caching manager as defined
by the J2EE Connector architecture.
A PersistenceManager may define the following Connector components:
Persistence Contract (behind the scenes)
- To achieve transparence, JDO:
PersistenceCapable interface
- Declares any fields available for persistence storeage
- Defines methods that allow JDO instance management
JDO has a number of callbacks that you can implement: jdoPostLoad(), jdoPreStore(), jdoPreClear(), jdoPreDelete().
In JDO 1: one interface: InstanceCallbacks
In JDO 2: InstanceCallbacks purely extend interfaces: LoadCallback, StoreCallback, etc.
Ways to make classes persistence capable: byte code enhancement, annotations (maybe for JDO 2.1).
JDO Interfaces: PersistenceManagerFactory, PersistenceManager, Transaction (new set/getRollbackOnly() in JDO 2)
and JDOHelper (class with static methods, for use by persistence-aware classes), Query, Extent. You'll probably
never use an Extent; like "select * from table". Represents all instances of a class or subclasses.
A persistence cabable class is just a POJO - you could use the same class for JDO and/or Hibernate. A default
contructor is required in JDO 1, but not in 2.
JDO 2.0 has "use cases" for lazy-loading. This enables you to configure fetching based on certain situations.
Sounds pretty cool.
Extent is usually optimized for better performance. If you're selecting all records from a table, you're
probably better of using Extent vs. Query in order to avoid OutOfMemory errors.
New in JDO 2: ability to specify query filters in other languages - i.e. SQL or HQL or user-defined. These
languages are up to the JDO vendor to implement.
JDO can use stored procedures if you map it in your metadata.
JDO 2.0's Query API looks very rich. It allows you to limit your results to certain properties/columns, as well
as set what type of to return.
JDO 2.0 supports obtaining a java.sql.Connection from PersistenceManager. However, this may reduce portability
since not all SQL is portable b/w databases.
Overall, I thought this was a great talk by Dion. If you're looking to start working with JDO 2.0, I'd recommend
JPOX (also see JPOX with Spring or Tapestry). Unfortunately, their implementation still requires you to "enhance" your
classes at build-time, but hopefully they'll have a transparent mechanism for manipulation (i.e. cglib) soon.
This past week has been a lot of fun. In order to survive our new life with two kids, we've split up the responsibilities. Abbie is now my kid and Jack is Julie's. This means that I'm in charge of Abbie 24 hours a day, and Julie takes care of Jack. Julie's definitely got the easier deal as Jack sleeps most of the time. Abbie and I are having a blast though. We've been out and about every day - whether it's at the park, riding bikes or in the mountains hiking. Now when she wakes up she yells "Daddy" instead of "Mommy".
I think I've created a monster though. Today I went the local Starbucks during her nap in order to try and get a little Spring Live writing done. Julie called me when she woke up from her nap to tell me that I had to come home right away b/c Abbie wouldn't come out of her room. She was screaming for Daddy and wanted nothing to do with Mommy. Uh oh, this little girl is going to be awfully upset when Daddy goes back to work at the end of the month. Since I don't have a new gig yet, maybe I won't be going back to work so soon. 
This week I realized why I like being a consultant so much. I've taken 9 weeks off so far this year - and after this month, it'll be 13! When I told my Dad this he made a good point, "then why haven't I seen you more?" Unfortunately, out of the 9 weeks I took off earlier this year, I went to conferences for 4 of them, and worked on Spring Live for 4 of them. The other week I was sick. Ugh, I've got to start taking more vacations like this one - they're awesome.
From the Aspect Log (which is mighty nice BTW), I found CSS Beauty. Very cool - CSS is the bomb. Subscribed.
I'm in the midst of integrating WebWork into AppFuse. I started wiring validation last night. This morning, I realized that I could probably use Commons Validator to make validation a lot easier. Here's why:
Now I just need to figure out 1) how to hook WebWork custom tags (or my own custom tag) into the validator to mark fields required and 2) how to write a validation interceptor that uses Commons Validator. Whaddya think? Are there advantages to using WW's validation over Commons Validator? Any tips for writing an interceptor or modifying the custom tags?
Julie's Mom lives in West Palm Beach, which is directly in the path of Frances. She's decided to weather it out in Miami. I don't know if Miami is in the path of the hurricane or not, but I'd love to find some blogs from that area. Blogs seem to provide much timelier news than traditional media - and they're usually more pleasant to read.
Michael Levin (of Gainesville I believe) points to buzzmodo, who seems to live in Central Florida and gives a chilling perspective of what's going on there right now.
The streets are empty, stores are boarded up, many gas stations are without gas, having sold out yesterday. Most business are closed including all of the banks.
...
I heard friends today sharing tips about where to get battery powered radios, then where to get batteries, and where to get water.
It's almost as if people are preparing for the end times.
Firefox is a great browser as most of you probably already know. I recently switched to using it as my default browser on OS X because Safari is flakey with GMail. One of the annoying things about Firefox on OS X is you can't tab to drop-downs in a web page. No longer my friends - in this month's Macworld there's a solution!
In Firefox (or Mozilla), type about:config in the address bar. Then search for "accessiblity.tabfocus". Change the value to "3" in order to allow tabbing to all form elements, or "7" if you want form elements + links.
Now if I could only get my two favorite Safari features in Firefox: auto-fillin of forms and spell-checking as you type.
Mac Rumors: No G5 PowerBooks Anytime Soon. If I had a vote, I'd say it's time to give up on the G5 for the PowerBook and make OS X run on Intel or AMD chips - then produce an Intel/AMD version of the PowerBook. Apple makes great hardware, but their laptops are much slower than their Intel counterparts (for Java at least). All I want is a PowerBook that can keep up with an Intel-based laptop - is that too much to ask?
