Raible Designs

Upgrading to MyFaces 1.1.5 and Spring 2.x + Resin 3.x + Cargo

This week, I encountered a few issues with some open source software that I hadn't seen before. Furthermore, it was difficult to find the problems' solutions via Google, so I figured I'd blog about them and make life less painful for the next person.

Upgrading MyFaces to 1.1.5
The first issue I experienced was when I tried to upgrade from MyFaces 1.1.4 to 1.1.5. After upgrading, my Canoo WebTests failed on some pages because the page kept redirecting to itself instead of submitting a form and properly processing the result. The solution was found with a simple e-mail to the project's mailing list. If you have a view template that auto-submits to a backing bean, you need to change "_link_hidden_" to "_idcl". Apparently, this change was made to be more similar to the JSF RI. Of course, this hack wouldn't be necessary if JSF would simply allow you to call a method from a URL without going to a view page first.

Spring 2.0's RequestContextListener has issues on Resin and WebSphere
Spring 2.0.2 has a bug where its RequestContextListener throws a NPE on WebSphere 6.0 and Resin 3.x. This is fixed in Spring 2.0.3.

Making Resin 3.x XSD-aware when using Cargo
By default, Resin 3.x doesn't ship with an XSD-aware parser turned on. This means that if you're using Spring 2.0 XSDs, you will need to set some configuration options on Resin. I don't know why Resin doesn't ship with these on by default, but it doesn't. This presents a problem if you're using Cargo to download and install Resin. The good news is you can configure Cargo to set system properties and turn Resin's XSD parser on. Adding the following to the <container> element in the Cargo plugin's configuration to solve the problem.

<!-- Make Resin aware of Spring 2.0 XSDs -->
<systemProperties>
    <javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory>
        org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl
    </javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory>
    <javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory>
        org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl
     </javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory>
</systemProperties>

Resin and Cargo
Finally, Cargo 0.2 throws a NoClassDefFoundError when shutting down Resin 3.0.23 and doesn't work at all with Resin 3.1.0. What does this mean? It means Cargo works great with Tomcat and JBoss, but not so good with Resin 3.x, Jetty 6.x or Geronimo 1.1.

It's too bad, Cargo really is a great project idea. Maybe the container developers should get involved to help it support all the latest versions?

Comparing Java Web Frameworks at ApacheCon Europe

It's been almost 2 1/2 years since I created and presented my "Comparing Web Frameworks" talk at ApacheCon 2004. It's hard to believe that was my first talk in front of a large audience. Before that conference, I posted a list of possible topics, as well as an outline a few days later. The most recent time I presented this talk was at Spring Forward 2006.

At this year's ApacheCon Europe, I'll be presenting Comparing Java Web Frameworks again. This time, I'll be adding Wicket and Stripes to the mix. I'm adding these two because they seem to be getting the most hype in Java developer's blogs. Of course, it would be great to add Grails, RIFE and Seam, but that's just too much to cover in an hour. Also, Grails is just Spring MVC and Seam uses JSF - so RIFE is the only one that stands out as unique. Here's the current session description:

One of the most difficult things to do (in Java web development) today is pick which web framework to use when development an application. The Apache Software foundation hosts most of the popular Java web frameworks: Struts, MyFaces, Tapestry and Wicket. This session will compare these different web frameworks, as well as Spring MVC and Stripes. It will briefly explain how each works and the strengths and weaknesses of each. Tips, tricks and gotcha's will be plentiful. Lastly, it will provide attendees with a sample application that utilizes all 6 frameworks, so they can compare line-by-line how the frameworks are different. This sample application will include the following features: sortable/pageable list, client and server-side validation, success and error messages as well as some Ajax functionality. The frameworks will be rated on how easy they make it to implement these features.

Over the next couple months, I'll try to post a revised outline so all the folks who care about a comparison like this can voice their opinions. I'll also be integrating Stripes and Wicket into AppFuse and AppFuse Light.

I'm still not sure about the name "AppFuse Light", but it's probably better than "AppFuse LE" which doesn't seem to convey the concept enough. The problem with "Light" is how to spell it (Bud Light vs. Miller Lite). The nice thing about AppFuse LE is we can shorten it to ALE. Regardless, you gotta love how it can all be related back to beer.

I've never been to Amsterdam before, so I'm definitely looking forward to this trip. My dad will be joining me, so I'll probably do more site-seeing that conference-going. If you're from the area, do you have any suggestions on what to do and where to stay? My dad has been pricing tickets and thinks we'd be better off flying into Frankfurt, spending a few days in Germany, and then arriving a day or two before my talk (on Friday). However, Queen's Day is the Monday of the conference and I've heard rumors it shouldn't be missed. I've got some Dutch and German in my blood, so it should be fun to visit my ancestral homeland.

Java is more complicated than .NET ... unless you use AppFuse

From Java to .NET, Back To Java Again, My Little Impression of The Two:

Having said all these, integration of various java projects together really do take a lot of Java people's time, it's no joke, but it's not desperate. For example, the open source project "AppFuse" does a fantastic job integrating various frameworks for us, I strongly encourage everyone to give it a shot and see how much time it saves you.

So which platform do I like? My impression is Java offers a lot flexibility and choices, but at the same time introduced the "Paradox of Choices", having so many things and integrate them together is no easy task, it simply overwhelm the human brains. .NET on the other hand is in a controlled environment, less choices, but easy to develop.

In other words: Java development is way more complicated than .NET ... unless you use AppFuse.

AppFuse Book!

David Whitehurst (an AppFuse committer) has taken on the task of writing a book on AppFuse 2.0. I don't envy him, but it looks like he's got a lot of good ideas.

If you'd like to help David shape AppFuse Primer, please post a comment on his blog.

SiteMesh 2.3?

Did you know the SiteMesh folks released version 2.3 back in October? Here's proof. Unfortunately, there's no release notes and the release hasn't been uploaded to Maven's repository. There are release notes in JIRA, but not all of them seemed to be fixed. What's up with that? Did you guys forget how to manage a project?

[TSE] Keynote: The Bigger Picture with Adrian Colyer

We've seen a lot of things over the last few days, but what about the big picture? It's not just about the Spring Framework anymore, but there's also a lot of sub-projects: SFW, SWF, SWS, S-OSGi. Then there's Enterprise services: clustering, persistence, messaging and scheduling. Industry trends: SOA, Web 2.0/RIA, RAD stacks.

Agenda

• Spring portfolio: unifying themes, fitting the pieces together (by layer) and future direction
• Facing the feature: my boss says I need a SOA, from auto-suggest to RIA and the quest for ever-increasing productivity

[Read More]

[TSE] Rapid Web Application Development with Rob Harrop

There's a couple of other sessions I should probably go to, namely Juergen's talk on Transactions and Mark Fisher's Message Driven POJOs Rock! However, transactions is generally a pretty boring topic and I don't see myself developing any MDPs in the next two weeks. If you don't use your knowledge in two weeks, you generally lose it, so I'll wait to learn more about MDPs until someone pays me to. I know a fair bit already, so I don't know that there's a whole lot more to learn.

I'm attending Rob Harrop's Rapid Web Application Development Essentials talk. With any luck, I'll learn some new tips that we can use in AppFuse.[Read More]

Facelets 1.1.12 Released

From Jacob's blog:

Facelets 1.1.12 was just uploaded to Java.net and includes many small bug fixes for JSF 1.1 (MyFaces 1.1.4) and JSF 1.2 (RI 1.2_03b5).

Download Here

This release is considered 'draft' until users call it stable for production use. More information is found over at Facelets' web site.

In most cases, when an open source project says "more information can be found on our website", you expect to go to the website and see more information. Not so with Facelets. All I could find was this announcement. How about a detailed list of bug fixes?

Update: I found the magic link on the mailing list which I subscribe to with Nabble's RSS Feed.

Free Seminar: Lightweight Java for 2007

If you happen to live near Denver, you won't want to miss our Lightweight Java For 2007 Seminar this week. It starts this Wednesday at 1:00 PM. We'll be doing talks on JPA, Spring 2.0, JSF + Ajax and AppFuse 2.0. The seminar is free and should be a good opportunity to learn about what's hot in Java these days.

All attendees will receive a complementary copy of a book on Java Technologies, seminar materials, and will be entered into a raffle for an iPod and other great prizes! Directly following the event, join the Virtuas gang for complimentary drinks and hors d'oeuvres at Rock Bottom Brewery from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

How do you get open source frameworks past the red tape?

From an e-mail I received earlier this month, with a subject of "Acceptance red tape":

After requesting permission to use the Spring Framework for the business logic and data access layers of an application, how do you fight something like this? Spring is not an approved Framework for the ********** environment. We understand the benefits of the framework. However, we have not certified it in our environment. Additionally, we have concerns that this framework will not gain long standing traction among the J2EE community. We would like to reduce the number of frameworks used in our environment, and do not want to be left with "legacy" frameworks that have little acceptance or support as is the case with the pico container. This is a response from one of our clients after asking about the use of a framework in our development after another vendor had used the PicoContainer without their permission. We have Spring experience and we love it. My responses have been to ask what they have certified that we could use and to ask their business staff to override their tech staff. I'm caught needing to redesign an aging J2EE application with an awfully over-architected original design confined to EJB 2.1, JSP 2.0, Servlet 2.4, and JDK 1.4.X in a very short amount of time. The additional responses were that they have only certified Struts and although both the business staff and the tech staff admit they know the benefits of Spring, neither of them are allowing us to use it.

My response:

Wow - I don't know what to say, especially when they say "Additionally, we have concerns that this framework will not gain long standing traction among the J2EE community." They're probably using Struts and they thinks it's wonderful, eh?

I could compose a long response with lots of details, but the fact that they prefer EJB over Spring is baffling. Spring is so much easier to program with, it's not even funny. Granted, EJB does have its place, but it's often used as a hammer for a problem that doesn't exist.

Have you experienced similar "Acceptance red tape" in your company? If so, how did you work around or work through it?