Raible Designs

Developers have the best job in the world

I've often said that being a Software Developer is the "Doctor of The Aughts" - now there's proof.

OpenLaszlo supports Ajaxified output

I heard this was coming, but I didn't expect it so soon.

There has been some crazy, crazy work going on here in the last month or two and the result is amazing. Today at etech, we’re demoing an early alpha of OpenLaszlo’s new DHTML backend. Truth! Press Release!

Here’s a new demo showing off the goods:

• LzPix demo, Flash version
• LzPix demo, DHTML version
• LzPix demo, source code

That’s a live OpenLaszlo server, running both apps from the same source code.

Also, new shiny openlaszlo.org page, with links to the DHTML demo.

This demo definitely works best in Firefox, but it's damn impressive. It's tough to test which medium you're using if you open them side-by-side. My hats off to you OpenLaszlo Developers - well done.

Spring Fundamentals in Boston almost sold out...

If you're looking to learn Spring and live near Boston, I'm coming to town on March 14th to teach our Spring Fundamentals course. We're getting pretty close to capacity, so sign up now before it's sold out!

And yes, I will be staying in Boston on Friday night for St. Patty's day. Should be a good time for sure.

Which Ajax enabled framework should you use as an Enterprise Java developer?

Paul Browne asks (and answers) "which Ajax enabled framework should you use as an Enterprise Java developer?":

Paul goes on to show you how he researched the Ajax-enabled Java frameworks that are currently available and gives a set of criteria he used. His conclusions?

• Use AjaxAnywhere if you need to add Ajax functionality to an existing Struts application.
• For new applications with Ajax, use AppFuse. While he recommends the Struts version, I recommend using the other flavors first (Spring MVC, WebWork, Tapestry or MyFaces).
• For the future (which I believe is what he means by medium-term), use a JSF implementation. AppFuse currently uses MyFaces, and it's likely we'll keep improving that (possibly with a Shale front-controller or some nifty things the Spring team has been adding).

Sun's Guerilla Cannibal Team

James Governor:

It's not every day you get listed with a line-up like that! Like Simon Phipps commented - where should I send my resume? Looks like I owe the RedMonk guys a beer or 6.

DbUnit Tip: Turn off foreign key constraints when importing into MySQL

One of the issues I've had with using DbUnit is getting tables to load in the proper order from XML. The XML datasets I use to load table data are flat and don't really have any notion of foreign keys and such. Therefore, when you get into a situation where tables have a circular reference, using DbUnit can be a real bitch. I ran into this situation yesterday.

Luckily, I was able to figure out a solution thanks to the help of Mark Matthews. Just add "sessionVariables=FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0" to your JDBC URL. Here's how the "db-load" target in AppFuse looks with this in place:

    <target name="db-load" depends="prepare"
        description="Loads the database with sample data">
        <property name="operation" value="CLEAN_INSERT"/>
        <property name="file" value="metadata/sql/sample-data.xml"/>
        <dbunit driver="${database.driver_class}"
            supportBatchStatement="false" 
            url="${database.url}&amp;sessionVariables=FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0"
            userid="${database.username}" password="${database.password}">
            <operation type="${operation}" src="${file}" format="xml" transaction="true"/>
        </dbunit>

    </target>

Does your preferred database have a similar mechanism for turning off foreign key checks using the connection URL?

Why I like Tomcat 5.5.12 better than Tomcat 5.5.15

Here's what happens with Tomcat 5.5.15:

alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ export CATALINA_HOME=$TOOLS_HOME/apache-tomcat-5.5.15
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ ant deploy;tstart
Buildfile: build.xml

...

deploy:
    [unwar] Expanding: /Users/mraible/Work/appfuse/dist/webapps/appfuse.war into
 /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.15/webapps/appfuse

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 3 seconds
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.15
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.15
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.15/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /Library/Java/Home
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ ant reload
Buildfile: build.xml

reload:
   [reload] FAIL - Encountered exception java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: 
org/apache/log4j/spi/VectorWriter

BUILD FAILED
/Users/mraible/Work/appfuse/build.xml:1063: FAIL - Encountered exception 
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/spi/VectorWriter

Total time: 1 second
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ 

Here's what happens with Tomcat 5.5.12:

alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ export CATALINA_HOME=$TOOLS_HOME/apache-tomcat-5.5.12
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ ant deploy;tstart

...

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 4 seconds
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.12
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.12
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/dev/tools/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /Library/Java/Home
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ ant reload
Buildfile: build.xml

reload:
   [reload] OK - Reloaded application at context path /appfuse

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 3 seconds
alotta:~/dev/appfuse mraible$ 

Looks like I'll be sticking with 5.5.12 for the foreseeable future.

Canoo WebTest Firefox Plugin

Canoo WebTest now has a Firefox plugin, similar to Selenium IDE. I gave it a 2-minute test using Deer Park (a.k.a. Firefox) on my MacBook Pro. Thumbs down, not intuitive enough. Of course, if it had a video like Selenium's video, it might be easier to figure out.

OpenLaszlo Tutorial and AppFuse with DWR

A few web development nuggets:

• Web clients fatten up with OpenLaszlo - good article about using OpenLaszlo on developerWorks.
• AJAX using DWR in AppFuse - a tutorial showing how to use DWR in AppFuse, written by Josip Mihelko. Please try it out and let us know how we can improve it.

I also noticed a recently updated howto on the AppFuse wiki: Spring Rich Client with AppFuse by Radim Burget. The amount of documentation being produced by the AppFuse community is truly awesome. Thanks everyone!

Update: XFire is crazy fast. If you like, you can see for yourself in AppFuse using OpenLaszlo as a client. Hopefully we can include XFire in a coming release, along with Maven 2 integration.

MacBook Pro: Kicking ass and taking names

I received my MacBook Pro this morning, and I've spent the day setting it up, doing some development and running some performance comparisons. The setup was easy: I just booted my PowerBook into Firewire mode and copied over all the files I needed. Everything works for the most part. I did have some issues with IDEA and Eclipse, but got both working after doing a few try and try-again shenanigans. Eclipse was crashing when I'd browse to set my workspace; typing it in manually fixed the problem. IDEA hung the first time I opened it; killing it and restarting fixed the problem.

As far as performance, this thing fricken' rocks! Safari launches in under a second and you're browsing before the dock icons hits the top of its first bounce. Firefox is a different story (likely b/c it hasn't been compiled for x86) - it takes 10 seconds to launch. The good news is once it's up, there doesn't seem to be any performance issues. Safari is amazing though - the speed does wonders for GMail and it actually feels like a desktop application.

When I mentioned yesterday that I was going to compare the MacBook to my desktop, Rob Williams said it wasn't a fair comparison. I agree - but I really wanted this machine to be the best machine I could possibly buy. With my (very unofficial) performance tests, it appears like it is. It's faster than my dual-core AMD 64 desktop machine that has 3 GB of RAM. Now, I have had the desktop for a couple months, so it's possible I'm suffering from OS Rot, but still - it's impressive it keeps up. Here are the numbers from my Performance Comparisons page:

For the tests below, I used Java version "1.5.0_06" and had the following variables set: JAVA_OPTS=Xms256M -Xmx384M, $ANT_OPTS=-Xmx256m. I used the CVS version of AppFuse (1.9.1-dev).

A couple of interesting things to note:

• When I first got my desktop, it's numbers were 00:14 for "ant clean package-web" and 01:29 for "ant setup test-all". The MacBook Pro? 00:12 and 01:28. The Windows box had 1 GB of RAM when I ran those tests, but no matter how I tweaked the memory settings once I put 3 GB of RAM in, I've never gotten better numbers.
• My PowerBook has been dog slow for several months now. When looking up the OS X version on it - I noticed it lists the memory as 512 MB. WTF?! I've had 1 GB in it every since I first bought it! What happened? Did half my RAM go bad or did someone steal half of it during a repair? Oh well, at least I now know the reason it was so damn slow.

Conclusion: The MacBook Pro is one of the best machines you can buy (laptop or desktop) for Java development. As for the battery life? I'm still doing the "calibration", so I'm not quite sure. Nor do I care - I plan on having this thing hooked up to my 20" cinema display that Virtuas was kind enough to get for me. The display combined with a mouse, keyboard and iCurve is a very nice setup.

Update: I pulled out the memory from my PowerBook and put it back in. Upon reboot, it resulted in the correct (1 GB) memory setting. The numbers above appear to be accurate regardless. I ran some tests again and times were actually slower (maybe because I'm on battery power).