Raible Designs

[JavaOne] Experiences with the 1.5 Language Features

This is the last session I plan on attending today, and it's titled "Experiences with the 1.5 Language Features: Tips and Techniques" by Tim Hanson and Jess Garms of BEA. Tonight looks to be a good time with the JBoss Party, Java Blogger Meetup (@ Thirsty Bear), the Pavilion Party. Times for the events are 5-9, 6-8 and 6:30-8. This conference is definitely packed, and I expect the parties to be the same. In other words, the best part of this shindig is yet to begin.

This talk is about how to make effective use of the new 1.5 Language Features in your applications.

For Each Loop: Initialization expression is evaluated once (unlike former). Major limitation of using the new for each loop is you don't have access to the index or the iterator.

Annotations: Built-in annotations - i.e. @SuppressWarnings("deprecation"). Possible values: all, deprecation, unchecked, fallthrough, path, serial, finally. This annotation is not supported in the latest version of Java 5, it is supported in Mustang and Eclipse 3.1. @Deprecated is another built-in annotations. If you use this tag, you should use the @deprecated javadoc tag as well. Last one is @Override, which is used to indicate that a method declaration is intended to override a method declaration in a superclass. If the superclass signature changes, this annotation will make sure you change it in child classes.

Annotations are especially useful for frameworks (i.e. EJBs, Web Services, etc.). Not a preprocessor, not a silver bullet.

Enums: Better than static final int. Type-safe. Utility classes: java.util.EnumMap and EnumSet. Public static final int-like behavior: Comparable, statically importable (even as an inner class).

Varargs: Special syntax for cleaning up code. Allows you to use "String... args" instead of a whole slew of methods that take multiple arguments. Use them sparingly - avoid code that casts.

Covariant Returns: Replaces three anti-patterns.

Using Generics: Example from Collections - static List Collections.singletonList(T o). There is a two-pass inferencing process to determine what T is. Other Generified classes: Class (public T newInstance()), Comparable (public int compareTo(T o)), Enum> (public Class getDeclaringClass()). You can also use wildcards with generics, which has a syntax of List instead of List. This allows you to specify subtypes, and not be tied to a strictly typed solution. Wildcards are great to use in APIs and to hide implementations from users.

I give up - this guy has been going on about Generics for far too long. Time to go hunt down some parties.

[JavaOne] Programming Puzzlers with the Google Guys

I'm sitting in a session titled "Yet More Programming Puzzlers" by Joshua Block and Neal Gafter. The other two sessions I chose for this time slot were Groovy and EJB 3. The main reason I chose this session is I've seen these guys in action before and they're excellent speakers. As part of this conference, I'd like to learn a bit about technology - but I'm more interested in becoming a better speaker. This is only my second of the day, with the first being the general session this morning. The afternoon has been spent networking, doing some Virtuas booth time, and presentation a short talk on AppFuse on the java.net booth.

In other news, it's pretty cool to see that BEA is going to start supporting Spring and Struts in its tools and servers.

The BEA WebLogic Workshop and other tools will be designed to allow applications to be built or blended from leading open source frameworks, including Apache Beehive, the Spring Framework and Apache Struts, and can then be deployed on BEA WebLogic Server. BEA will also certify the BEA WebLogic Workshop tools for Apache Geronimo and Apache Tomcat.

The Google Guys session? Entertaining and packed. All chairs were filled and many people were standing in the back and on the sides.

Made it to JavaOne

I arrived in San Francisco at 8:30 this morning, and headed downtown to the Moscone center. I've been sitting in the "General Session" room for the last couple of hours, and there's been some interesting announcements. You can get a Sun Ultra 20 Workstation for $30/month and it comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. The guy on stage made it sound like a screaming machine, but it was also a Sun sales pitch.

Another announcement is they're dropping the "2" from J2EE and J2SE. Now we're not supposed to say the "J", but rather "Java". Now it's called "Java EE". I think the 2 needed to be dropped, but I think it'll take a while before Java EE has the same ring as J2EE. I can already see folks calling it "Java, eh".

[ANN] Equinox 1.4 Released

This release is mainly to support Spring 1.2.1 and Hibernate 3.0.5. The default database is now PostgreSQL because of an issue with Hibernate 3 and HSQL. All of the frameworks used in Equinox, as well as its build/test system is explained in Spring Live. Detailed release notes are below:

- Added "typeMismatch.java.util.Date" key to messages.properties (for Spring) to display a friendly error for invalid dates.
- Changed to use PostgreSQL as the default database because of an issue with HSQL and Hibernate 3.0. Read more »
- Added "clear" target to build.xml for clearing out the database.
- Added MySQL JDBC Driver and jdbc.properties.mysql for easy switching to MySQL.
- Changed UserWebTest (jWebUnit test) to get lastInsertedId from UI using HttpUnit rather than using UserManager (Richard Easterling).
- Changed spring-sandbox.jar to springmodules-validator-0.1.jar since Commons Validator support for Spring has moved to the Spring Modules project.
- Changed all Spring XML files to use new "value" and "ref" attributes.
- Dependent packages upgraded:

• Cargo 0.5
• Log4j 1.2.9
• Hibernate 3.0.5
• iBATIS 2.1.0
• OJB 1.0.3
• Spring 1.2.1

Download. For more information about installing the various options, see the README.txt file.

Demos:

• Spring
• JSF
• Struts
• Tapestry
• WebWork

The basic Equinox download contains all the various web and persistence framework options in the "extras" folder. If you have issues replacing the web or persistence framework (or both), please enter an issue in JIRA and I'll build and upload a customized version for you.

RE: AppFuse, 'tool' of experts

I'm please to say that I've been biled yet again. The first time wasn't so bad, and this time seems pretty mild too. There's no mention of asshat, chozgobbler or turdburglar in the whole post, which is somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, it's what I've come to expect from a guy who sallies car bombs and dances like a sissy.

Regardless of the lack of bile in Hani's post, he does bring up some good points. Let's take a look at them individually:

• IzPack and MyJavaPack: the progress bar doesn't work, and the installer downloads everything rather than just including/installing it all.
  • To be honest, I didn't know it was possible to pack up everything and skip the internet download part. I'll definitely look into fixing this.
• You must have Tomcat installed to work with AppFuse.
  • This is true, and I've thought about changing it to be Resin friendly, or possible Orion friendly, but there simply hasn't been any demand. Of course, Orion isn't that attractive to many folks because it doesn't even support Servlet 2.4. Maybe you should crackin' on that Hani! Or maybe you just like living in the dark ages with your affections for EJB 2.1, Servlet 2.3 and WebWork 1.4.
• When creating a new project, you get prompted for the package name twice.
  • This is true, and something we should fix. The major reason we haven't is because I didn't want to distribute a 2MB BeanShell JAR that would support the 3 lines of code to fix the problem. I guess I should bite the bullet and add the bloat, or figure out a more elegant way to fix the problem. Issue #75.
• Project generation auto-detects MySQL when you don't have it installed.
  • MySQL is the default, but it's pretty easy (IMO) to use PostgreSQL or Oracle.
• I'm a web monkey.
  • True, but that's cool now with Ajax and all.
• Half the build targets don't work.
  • I think this is more like a handful don't work, but good effort. I agree we should remove the install-* targets when installing a web framework. Issue #76.
• Every object creates builder objects in hashCode and toString.
  • This is true, and I've seen no performance implications from it. In reality, these are a product of the commons-lang project, as well as Commonclipse. We should probably change these to use smarter methods like the ones IDEA generates. It'd be nice if Eclipse has hashCode() and equals() method generation like IDEA.
• The project's directory layout is bound to confuse a seasoned webapp veteran.
  • The directory structure is largely based off the example app in Java Development with Ant. Since AppFuse uses Ant, I figured it was a good idea to use a "best-practices" structure like Erik describes in his book. I've often thought about consolidating the 3-source tree, 3-test tree directory structure to one, but users are very attached to the current setup. Maybe for 2.0.
• XDoclet generates web.xml.
  • I agree that using 11 XML fragments to generate 1 XML file is a little ridiculous. You're right - developers should know how to write a web.xml and what goes where. Issue #77.

Thanks for the feedback Hani - sounds like I owe you a car bomb or two at JavaOne.

Bike to Work Day

It's another Bike to Work Day in Denver and I'm missing two key ingredients: a bike and an office to ride into. It's funny to look back at last year and see that my first day with OpenLogic was Bike to Work Day. This year, I'm again starting a new gig and working from home (much like last June). The good news is we'll be moving into fancy new offices (in the swanky Tabor Center) at the beginning of July.

I've been looking at new bikes, but haven't bought one yet because I'm going to be traveling so much in the next couple of weeks. NYC this weekend (wedding), San Francisco next week, followed by a week of vacation at the cabin in Montana. It'll be pretty cool to come back from that and move into my new office at Virtuas (yeah, a *real* office with a window seat!). I'll likely be forced to buy a bike then - driving to work in the summertime just isn't right.

AppFuse cost $78K to develop

I somehow stumbled upon Koders.com this morning, where they have a cost-of-development based on LOC in the project's CVS repository. Apparently, AppFuse has cost around $78K to develop. Here are a few other project costs I discovered:

• Cocoon - $287,750
• MyFaces - not listed
• Struts - $490,040
• Spring - not listed (add to index form - I'd do it, but I'm not a developer on the project)
• Tapestry - $278,185
• WebWork - $109,025
• Ruby on Rails - $181,985

Are these costs accurate? Probably not, but it's still an interesting indicator.

HowTo set the default submit button on a form

Howard has a nice little trick for setting the default submit button on a form. Basically, you just put the default button first, and then use style="display: none" to hide it. For the most part, I haven't had any issues with putting the default submit button first (i.e. "Save"), but I have noticed an issue when developing wizards (b/c "« Previous" is likely to be first). Nice tip Howard.

Presentations: Acegi Security and Spring Web Flow

I just noticed that the javaBin site has published the talks I did at the Norway JUGs. Here are two additional presentations that I didn't post last time:

• Acegi Security
• Spring Web Flow

In the near future, I hope to start taking more of Kathy Sierra's advice and reducing my presentations to almost nothing. This will diminish their value when I post them, but hopefully make the presentations a lot more fun to attend.

[ANN] AppFuse 1.8.1 Released

This release is mostly a bug fix release with no new features. It also includes many upgrades to the core libraries (Hibernate, Spring, iBATIS, MyFaces). Thanks to all the sponsors who have contributed products and free hosting to the AppFuse project. You guys rock!

• Download
• Release Notes
• Learn more about AppFuse

To see how AppFuse works, please see the following demos:

• Demo of Features in Flash
• Struts + Spring + Hibernate
• Spring + iBATIS
• WebWork + Spring + Hibernate
• JSF + Spring + Hibernate
• Tapestry + Spring + Hibernate

Comments and issues can be sent to the mailing list or posted to the AppFuse Issue Tracker.