Raible Designs

At the MySQL Conference in San Jose

I arrived in San Jose at 10:00 this morning to give a 3-hour tutorial on developing test-driven webapps with Spring and Hibernate [download PDF]. This was just a fancy name for developing webapps with AppFuse, but the session seemed to go over pretty well nevertheless. In the first half of the class, there were a couple of sleepers, but I cranked down the A/C for the second half and everyone stayed awake (although some were shivering). I never thought I could ramble on for 3-hours, but it wasn't that hard. I did end up doing mini-presentations on Spring and Comparing Web Frameworks, but all in all, I think it went pretty well. Very few people in the room had heard of any of the Java web frameworks, and only 6 were familiar with Spring and Hibernate. It was a tough crowd, but AppGen's code generation (hopefully) showed it's easy to create CRUD-based webapps with AppFuse. Note to self: make a video of that.

I have a free pass to the MySQL Conference, but I doubt I'll attend many sessions. I have a lot on my plate for AppFuse 1.8, Acegi integration into Roller, and some updates for Spring Live. It should be a good week, hopefully I'll get a lot done. This weekend should be awesome - Julie shows up on Friday for our 5-year anniversary party.

The best part of the conference so far? Talking shop over beers with the locals (crew from c|net and AppFuse user Phil Hershkowitz).

How do we bake Ajax into Struts and Spring MVC?

I see a trend happening here. The next version of WebWork, as well as Tapestry and JSF are all embracing Ajax technologies. By "embracing", I mean they're not only using them, but they're making it easier for us to use them.

After using XmlHttpRequest in my last two projects, I think this is a must for Struts and Spring MVC as well. The technology is very cool and customers absolutely love it.

The question is how do we bake it in? WebWork makes it easy because its tag libraries are backed by customizable Velocity templates. With Struts and Spring MVC, it seems the best way would be to use tag libraries, but maybe there's better alternatives. Do they each need an AjaxAction/AjaxController or something that allows DWR-type stuff?

What are your thoughts? You might argue that using DWR should suffice, but w/ everyone else (even Rails) baking it into the framework - I see no reason why Spring MVC and Struts shouldn't do the same. You are using these frameworks to develop kick-ass UIs aren't you?

Why Wicket looks cool

I like the looks of Wicket for a couple of reasons - without even using the framework yet.

• Its project homepage looks good. If you're using a Java web framework, chances are you're developing UIs too. If you don't know how to make sites look good - it's time to find a new line of work IMO. Of course, learning how to make good-looking UIs is another option.
• Its Wicket Stuff project. It provides Hibernate, fValidate and Spring integration. It also appears to provide an option to use Velocity for your templates. I'm not sure what the Velocity integration provides - since HTML templates (ala Tapestry) should do everything that's needed.

What I don't like about the project:

• The Buzz page has a quote that's (apparently) from this site. Unfortunately, it looks like I said it - which I didn't.
• There's no books being written about it. If it's really that good - where's the books? Ruby on Rails will have 3 by the end of this year. Any good framework should inspire books to be written about it.
• The Wicket Stuff project has no documentation. Javadocs don't cut it. Tutorials are king.

I hope this project succeeds - Tapestry needs some competition and I don't think JSF is providing it. If JSF adds HTML Templates (or I figure out how to use Java Studio Creator to manage an AppFuse+JSF project), that's a different story.

Using Ivy in AppFuse

I'll admit, the thought of not checking in JARs to AppFuse's CVS is intriguing. With Ivy, I think I could pull off the current setup, plus a dynamic-downloading system. By current setup, I mean that the JARs are distributed in your "lib" directory and you can build your app w/o downloading any dependencies. I like this because I can develop AppFuse and not worry about my internet connection.

Dion doesn't get my love for checking in JARs. The main reason I do it is because it takes me a less time to download a new release and check it into CVS than it takes me to find that same release in Maven's Repo. Case in point: Hibernate 3.

I love the idea of Ivy, and mockhaug makes it sounds great, but I don't want to have to create a bunch of metadata whenever I want to use something like Hibernate 3. Then again, if Ivy is ever going to catch on, someone has to do it.

In conclusion, I'm still not convinced I should integrate Ivy into AppFuse - sounds like maintaining and uploading dependencies would be a lot more work than just checking in JARs. If there was a person responsible for creating Ivy metadata every time a new release came out, I might think different.

Closures with CollectionUtils

Here's a pretty nifty trick for using closure's with Jakarta Commons CollectionUtils:

I wonder if there's any performance hit from doing things this way vs. a good ol' Iterator? Hat tip to Anand Subramanian.

Maven 2 Alpha - looking good!

I saw that the Maven 2 Alpha was released today and decided to give it a spin. The two features in Maven 2.0 that look compelling to me are 1) speed and 2) transitive dependencies. I've been using Maven 1.x on my current project since January and I still don't like it. Why? It's dog slow on my PowerBook (but tolerable on my Windows box) and you have to specify a shitload of dependencies when developing an app with Struts+Spring+Hibernate.

Maven 2 looks good, and it does seem to startup as fast as Ant (at least on Windows). Just typing "m2" completes in about a second, and so does typing "ant". Typing "maven" takes about 3 seconds (even though it reports it only took 1 second). I look forward to seeing Maven 2 evolve. I wonder if we should rewrite our POMs for Maven 2 (we current have 11 sub-projects)? We'd probably be a pretty good test-bed, but I don't think Maven 2 supports all the 1.x plugins - does it?

I doubt I'll use Maven 2 with Equinox or AppFuse this year - mostly b/c I don't expect it to be released until 2006. I do like the looks of Ivy and I've considered re-writing AppFuse's monstrous build.xml file using JAM. If I were to use Ivy, I think I'd still release with all JARs in a local "lib" directory. The nice thing about Ivy is it would give users the option of checking JARs into source control (currently, it's required).

Even after using Maven for several months, I still like local JARs better than downloading. It does make a lot of sense in a multi-project environment though.

As for JAM, I don't like it for two reasons: 1) it uses the non-transitive dependency listing like Maven 1.x and 2) it requires you install JAM and set a $JAM_HOME. I'd prefer to keep AppFuse to one build tool - Ant or Maven (or both).

I suggested a large refactoring of the build process (and collapsing of the source trees) for AppFuse 1.9, but it was rejected by users for the most part. Their opinion: the build process works great, we like it - work on other stuff that's more important (code generation, tools support, etc.). Another thing that's suprised me about AppFuse users is the relatively small number of folks that have requested support for appservers other than Tomcat. To date, I don't think I've had a single Resin or Orion request, but I've had plenty of WebLogic, WebSphere and Sun App Server requests. The most compelling reason to use JAM for building/deploying/testing AppFuse is for its server support, but if I don't need it, why add the complexity?

I guess some things just work, and there's no reason to fix them if they aren't broken. Maven 1.x is not one of those things IMO. It's good to see the improvements coming in Maven 2.

Useless Statistic

Speaking of statistics, here's some useless ones:

• This site has had just over 1 million hits in the first 7 days of this month.
• AppFuse has been the most accessed project on java.net for the last three months.

The first stat is pretty useless, but the 2nd is pretty cool considering there hasn't been a release since December.

It's time for some productivity

Just last night I was wondering how I was going to finish up AppFuse 1.8 and Spring Live's April update in the next 1 1/2 weeks. This morning, I got up early (5:00 a.m.) to get back to work on Spring Live, and found that Julie was already up. She was fed up with the fact that Jack was coughing up a storm and both kids are still sick. They've been sick off-and-on since January (but mostly on), and she's had enough.

Julie tooks Jack to the doctor a month ago and his recommendation was a warm and humid climate. She asked him, "like Florida?" - to which responded, "Yes! That's a great idea!" Since then, she's bought a humidifier, taken showers with Jack every morning and even hit him with the nebulizer a few times. No dice, he's still coughing and wheezing. At 5:00 a.m. this morning, she was fed up and said "I'm going to Florida." 20 minutes later, she'd bought her tickets and we left for the airport around 6:30.

While I'll certainly miss everyone, it's a golden opportunity for me to work on AppFuse and Spring Live and get caught up this weekend. Of course, I have to work an extra day in the mix to pay for the (spendy) flights, but it's nice being a contractor and having that as an option. Now the problem is I find an empty house often leaves me with little motivation. I tend to enjoy renting movies and going to bed early when the family is gone. Of course, with DU being in the Frozen Four tomorrow (and hopefully Saturday) - there's even more motivation for more fun and less work.

Regardless of the motivation I have to take part in my extra-curricular obligations (AppFuse and Spring Live), it's nice to know I have a great opportunity to work on them this weekend. Staying up late to work on this stuff just isn't any fun.

Open Source CMS based on AppFuse

If you're looking for AppFuse examples or a Java-based CMS (Content Management System) - you might want to checkout AtLeap.

Blandware AtLeap is a multilingual free Java CMS (Content Management System) with full-text search engine. Blandware AtLeap is a framework which allows you to rapidly start your own Web application.

The screenshot looks pretty cool. According to Andrey Grebnev (the project's owner), this project is based on AppFuse 1.5 with pieces from 1.6.

RE: No More Kids

I'm happy to report the procedure I had done yesterday was quick and relatively painless. I was definitely disappointed to hear from the Doctor that I wouldn't be getting any pain-killers, but I also figured that might be a good thing (maybe I wouldn't need them). The first couple of hours with a frozen bag of veggies wasn't bad. Then I think the combination of a bad cough and no more veggies did me in. I was in some pretty good pain yesterday afternoon, but after getting some frozen peas from the grocery store, I definitely felt better.

This morning I woke up with pain - in an unexpected location. It's on both sides, but along my inner wasteline. I'm guessing this is from all the coughing and is the same pain I would experience if I were lifting over 10 pounds. Oh well, hopefully I'll be pain-free tomorrow.