Raible Designs

XDoclet and Castor

I found this post on the castor-dev mailing list this afternoon. It seems to indicate that there's a better version of the Castor module for XDoclet.

The "exolab2" module is nearly identical to the original exolab module in that it:

1. generates the mapping.xml file

however, exolab2 differs in that it:

1. works on the fields in a class instead of the methods
-working with field name seems easier and more logical as castor
is for mapping class/db fields, not methods
2. generates the database.xml file
3. generates the create.sql and drop.sql for each class' table
4. doesn't require explicitly declaring the @castor:field-sql type="..." for each class field; it uses a simple look up .xml file to retrieve the appropriate/default sql type for the field's java type
5. doesn't require explicitly declaring the @castor:class table="...";
the class' name will be used as the default table name

so in summary, it generates:

-database.xml
-mapping.xml
-create.sql
-drop.sql

with less "work" than before. basically, these improvements are to help developers quickly and easily generate all the castor-specific and non-castor-specific (sql table defintions) code for new projects.

Too bad this isn't available in XDoclet as of yet. Hmmm, maybe I can use Castor Doclet to generate my DDL.

JSP's Evolution

There's another interesting discussion taking place over on the struts-dev list again. Man, I'm glad I subscribed (again) to this list last week! It started out as a discussion of JSP vs. Velocity and Craig (McClanahan) provided an interesting evolution of JSP (and comparison to Velocity).

Velocity:
========

(Note -- it's assumed that the Customer collection has been stored in the
VelocityContext by some preceding business logic.)

  \#foreach $result in $results {
    <tr>
      <td>$result.ID</td>
      <td>$result.Name</td>
    </tr>
  }

JSP 1.1 (with Scriptlets):
=========================

  <%
    Customer custs = ...;
    for (int i=0; i < custs.length; i++) {
  %>
    <tr>
      <td><%= custs[i].getId() %></td>
      <td><%= custs[i].getName() %></td>
    </tr>
  <%
    }
  %>

JSP 1.1 (with custom tags):
==========================
(Note -- it is assumed here and in the following examples that the Customer collection has been stored by some preceding business logic.)

  <logic:iterate id="cust" name="custs">
    <tr>
      <td><jsp:getProperty name="cust" property="id"/></td>
      <td><jsp:getProperty name="cust" property="name"/></td>
    </tr>
  </logic:iterate>

JSP 1.2 + JSTL 1.0:
==================

  <c:forEach var="cust" items="${custs}">
    <tr>
      <td><c:out value="${cust.id}"/></td>
      <td><c:out value="${cust.name}"/></td>
    </tr>
  </c:forEach>

JSP 2.0 + JSTL 1.0:
==================

  <c:forEach var="cust" items="${custs}">
    <tr>
      <td>${cust.id}</td>
      <td>${cust.name}</td>
    </tr>
  </c:forEach>
</pre>

I can't wait for JSP 2.0 - it's going to make everything so much easier. Once again, we have exciting times for the Java world. With the power of JSP 2.0 and XDoclet, deadlines should be a non-issue. Now we just have to figure out the best way to use them, and the fastest way to pump out a Struts project. Wouldn't it be awesome if you you could add a new column to a table, build your project using Ant and XDoclet and whalla, all your classes are updated! That would be cool - and I think it's possible. Now I just have to figure out how - and fast!

IE 5.x and Roller's Calendar

I've gotten a few complaints in the last week from users that they weren't able to read my site because of a "calendar overlay" issue. Basically, they said that they couldn't read the content on this site because the calendar was too big and was hiding my blog entries. The two browsers it happened on were IE 5.5/Win95 Tonight, someone sent me a screenshot (150K) and now I know what they're talking about. I don't know if your roller site has the same issue, but the following might help if you do. Basically, I just had to define a font-size for the table that surrounds the calendar. If this doesn't work, I'll define the table and the <td>'s inside the table. Here's the fix so far:

.hCalendarTable {
    font-size: 1em;
}

I also found that I had to do this for Opera 7 to render the calendar properly. And, Opera 7 doesn't seem to understand font-size: x-small, so I used 10px instead.

Of course, the easiest way to avoid any issues such as these is to use a standards-compliant browser. I recommend IE6, Mozilla, Phoenix (Windows only) or Chimera (Mac only). Nevertheless, I'd like to make this site available to everyone, so if you do experience issues, please do let me know and include a screenshot for clarity. Thanks!

Later: It's getting better and I've managed to fix the font-size problem, but the font color inside my calendar is still the wrong color, as illustrated in this screenshot (138K). Oh well, at least everything is readable now.

Load Testing Software and Controlling QuickTime with Javascript

From my work "To Do List":

1. Research controlling Flash movies with Javascript - is it possible? (I believe so)
2. Research controlling QuickTime movies with Javascript - is it possible? (I believe it's only possible in Netscape/Mozilla)
3. Research Load Testing Software for web apps - basically to test how many concurrent users can be handled. (I'm guessing JMeter is a good one)

Please leave comments if you'd like to assist in my research. Thanks!

Apache Conference in Vegas

I read Henri's post about the Apache Conference in Vegas, and then the associated weblogs. Reading Andrew's and Pete's blogs takes me back to my trip to Vegas in September. I highly recommend going to conferences in Vegas - it really is a good time. If you can, talk your spouse or a fellow techno-enthusiast to go and have twice the fun!

Why do you blog?

Lance asks why do you blog? Here is my list:

• I seem to get better assistance for questions I have from bloggers than from Experts Exchange. So it's been great for getting help/ideas when coding.
• Reading blogs keeps me more informed of the latest developments (both IT and otherwise). Writing a blog inspires me to seek out and find better ways of doing things.
• I am the only developer on my current project, it gets lonely - blogging makes me feel like I have co-workers.
• I needed to re-design my site and using Roller turned out to be an easy way to do it. I didn't realize that putting together a new theme would get me committer status!
• I love Roller and I love using Roller.
• I like writing HTML everyday.
• Reading new blog posts is like getting good e-mail in your Inbox. Reading blogs and writing on this one has surpassed my e-mail checking addiction - which has subsided greatly.
• Blogging makes for great advertising of your company if you run a small company like I do.
• You get more visitors, check out my increase in visitors in the last 6 months. I setup Roller on this site in August.

BasicPortal

Dave mentions BasicPortal today. I've kept watch of this project, and I can't comment on it because I haven't downloaded and looked at the source. However, I do know that the original author of it, Vic Cekvenich of BaseBeans Engineering wrote the first Struts book. I was subscribed to the struts-user mailing list at the time, and this book got horrible reviews and a lot of do not buy warnings from developers. I have seem Vic advertising many mini-training sessions across the country re: Struts and BasicPortal though, and apparently those have been really good. He was probably just rushing his book to market too fast and you know what happens when you rush a product and it needs further development.

XDoclet and the Matrix

I got a list of the XDoclet Team Member's Weblogs this morning from the xdoclet-devel mailing list.

• Random thoughts (Rickard)
• Memory Dump (Ara)
• :: rinkrank :: (Aslak)
• :: mabo :: (Mathias)

So I visited them (first two I already knew about) and on Mathias's blog I found some interesting, and slightly disturbing stuff. There is a post from Tuesday, November 5th called Ara Again, that links to this article that Rickard wrote. Rickard's article points to this article about the movie Signs. Both of them discuss a theory of two races, which includes the presence of a "Matrix Control System" (MCS), not too different from the one found in the popular movie, which if true would provide us with a profoundly different take of what reality is and why it works the way it does.

Needless to say, I read them both, and it's a little heavy and disturbing for a Monday morning and a reader with a possible concussion (I've had a headache since yesterday morning).

Chimera Gets Faster

If you use Chimera as your web browser on OSX (and there is every reason to) you might be interested in a little speed boost reported recently by MacOSXHints.

It's called HTTP/1.1 Pipelining and you can enable it by adding the following lines to the preferences file ( ~/Library -> Application Support -> Chimera -> Profiles -> default -> [random].slt -> prefs.js ):

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true); 
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);

There should be a noticeable speed increase, especially news heavy sites such as Slashdot or Metafilter.

{ via xlab via pixelised }

Very cool - my fastest and favorite browser gets even faster! What more could you ask for on a Monday morning?

Missing Valid CSS Icon

The W3C's Valid CSS icon (and server) seemed to disappear over the weekend - forcing me to install a local copy of the image, and to quit relying on their servers. If any of you are having a similar issue, feel free to download it (right click -> Save Image As...) from here, and change your img's src attribute to reference a local copy.