Webremixed Articles for tags: java

HostGee.Com Web Hosting Now Supports JSP

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:30:10 GMT

HostGee.Com, Inc. Web hosting now supports JavaServer Pages . JSP is an advanced programming language that allows users to display dynamically-generated content.

Planet Eclipse: Ian Skerrett: Eclipse Stories: Cell Biosciences

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:10:36 GMT

As I mentioned yesterday, we want to encourage people to tell their Eclipse story. Last week Cell Biosciences told their story at the Eclipse Day at the Googleplex. You can view their entire presentation but I have added a summary on the Eclipse Story wiki and below.

btw, Cell Biosciences is looking a great Eclipse developer to join their team. Check out the presentation for details.

Eclipse Story

Title: Protein Analysis with Eclipse RCP

Name: Cell Biosciences

Cell Biosciences is a company that provides instruments and software to analyze the proteins in the human body. Their systems help life science researchers in research institutions and pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies.

Cell Bioscience uses Eclipse RCP to create desktop applications to analyze the data sent from their imaging machines. The RCP based application use allows researchers to setup, run and analyze data experiments. The applications feature graphs, images and tables of data that can be sliced in different ways.

In addition to RCP, Cell Bioscience uses Eclipse as their development tool platform. Their systems include Java, Python, Javascript and C/C++ code. To support their development needs they use PyDev, Subclipse, Egit, JUnit, SWT Bot, TPTP Test and Performance, WTP WSDL editing and Aptana for Javascript.

Planet Eclipse: Heiko Seeberger: SLF4S - Logging the Scala way

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:17:53 GMT

Do we need another logging framework in the Java/Scala world? Certainly not! As Scala is fully "downward" compatible to Java, we can use whatever Java logging solution we want. And there are many, aren't there?.

So why SLF4S ? Well, SLF4S isn't another logging framework, but a very thin Scala wrapper around SLF4J which has emerged as the leading Java logging solution. Why do we need a Scala wrapper for SLF4S? Well, there are some nice Scala features that can make logging even easier and/or more performant.

First, SLF4J Loggers use by-name parameters which are only evaluated if needed/accessed. When logging "traditionally", we often create messages by concatenating Strings or using the String.format method, even if we don't need these messages in the end because the logging level is not enabled. Of course we could "manually" check whether the logging level is enabled, e.g. by calling logger.isDebugEnabled, but we often don't, because it's cumbersome. With by-name parameters we can simply call our log methods and let SLF4S check whether the log level is enabled. Just take a look at one example:
def debug(msg: => String) {
require(msg != null, "msg must not be null!")
if (slf4jLogger.isDebugEnabled) slf4jLogger debug msg
}
Second, SLF4S offers a Logging trait which can be mixed into any class to make a Logger instance available. That particular Logger will be initialized with the name of the class it is mixed into which is a common use case.
class MyClazz extends SomeClazz with Logging
...
logger debug "SLF4S just rocks!"
...
Of course you can create Loggers with arbitrary names by calling Logger("SomeSpecialName").

Last but not least, SLF4S offers implicit conversions from "usual" SLF4J Loggers into "pimped" SLF4S Loggers.

Ah, and of course, SLF4S is OSGi compliant. But that's not a big surprise, taking into account that the authors are OSGi fanboys and SLF4J is OSGi compliant, too.

InfoQ: Nuxeo Introduces fise Semantic Engine

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:35:00 GMT

Nuxeo introduces fise - an open source RESTful semantic engine to which NUXEO has made contributions. The goal of the fise is to "help bring new and trendy semantic features to CMS by giving developers a stack of reusable HTTP semantic services to build upon." fise is part of a larger effort, IKS (Interactive Knowledge Stack) as a means of enhancing CMS offerings with Semantic Web capabilities. By Dave West

Planet Eclipse: Scott Lewis: Asynchronous Remote Services - choices, choices

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:56:05 GMT

In ECF 's Helios release , we released an implementation of the OSGi remote services standard specification (chapter 13 in compendium).

In addition to the full spec implementation...which is based upon synchronous remote service proxies...we added support for asynchronous remote services . This provides non-blocking access to remote OSGi services. This gives remote service consumers choices...allowing them to invoke remote services synchronously (i.e. by making a blocking method call on the proxy), and/or asynchronously (with a guarantee that the calling thread will not block).

I think that one nice thing about this approach is that the service host implementer has to do exactly nothing to make these consumer choices available. The implementation of the service host is exactly the same.

There are two styles of asynchronous access supported: an asynchronous callback (like GWT ), and a future result, from the Actor model of computation. These two styles of of asynchronous access...along with the specified synchronous proxy...provides remote services consumers with some useful choices for creating reliable distributed systems and applications.

Planet Eclipse: Chris Aniszczyk: The Value of Documentation in Open Source

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:52:25 GMT

I’ve been starting a lot of documentation work lately for the EGit/JGit projects and happened to come across this timely article from Forbes. If you don’t want to read it, the gist of it is that solid documentation is more important than you think… especially when it comes to attracting a user and developer base. Here are some quotes…

“I can report that my company receives 70% plus of our site traffic from organic sources, and our documentation generates more than half of our overall site traffic. Furthermore, over half of our lead generation is driven by our documentation.”

While the article specifically mentions commercial software, I think the lesson of having solid and findable documentation apply to the open source realm. I mean, when’s the last time you’ve come across an open source project that you praised their documentation efforts? I can maybe count two total in my lifetime. As open source developers and project leads, we tend to put documentation last and our expectation is that users would pitch in to help. As users, we just want good documentation and don’t believe it’s our responsibility to help out necessarily…

So next time you’re working on that feature, weigh it versus taking some time to document things for your users. If you’re in Eclipse land, feel free to take a look at our documentation guidelines and some examples on how to crowdsource your documentation efforts a bit.

Planet Eclipse: Birt World: BIRT Image - Report Item

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:38:13 GMT

BIRT has many ways to include images within a report. Images can be used in BIRT styles, as watermarks, in text elements, and placed within the report using an image report item. In this post I will cover some of the details needed to work with images that are inserted using the Image report item.

The image report item can retrieve images in four different ways. 1 -Through a URI, 2 – as an image in the resource folder, 3 – as an embedded image, 4 -or by using a dynamic image. Each of these methods is described below with examples. In addition some of the examples use onCreate scripts written in JavaScript. While these examples use JavaScript, they could also have been written in Java.

URI Images
The first way is to retrieve an image with the image report item is to use a URI specification. This method is pretty straight forward and the value can be entered as a constant or as a JavaScript expression. Constants are processed faster by the engine but are harder to make dynamic. An example of a constant expression for a URI image would be as follows:

http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse.org-common/themes/Nova/images/eclipse.png

Note: Do not put quotes around the expression unless JavaScript Syntax is selected. An example of using a JavaScript expression is presented below.

if( params["dynamicimage"].value == true ){
"http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/srpr/logo1w.png";
}else{
"http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse.org-common/themes/Nova/images/eclipse.png";
}
This expression checks the value of the dynamicimage report parameter, and then based on its value, sets the value of the URI.
The URI can also be set using an onCreate event handler for the image report item. The syntax for this approach would look like:
this.URI = "http://tomcat.apache.org/images/tomcat.gif";

//for a local file use:
//this.URI = "file://C:/test/birtlogo.png";

Resource Folder Images
BIRT uses a resource folder for storing report libraries, style sheets, images, jars, js files, properties files or virtually any file that you will need access to at runtime. While in the design environment the resource folder location can be set using the Windows->Preferences->Report Design->Resource setting. This can be set for the entire workspace or on a per project basis. At runtime you can set the resource folder in the web.xml if you are using the viewer. If you are using the engine API you can set the resource folder using the EngineConfig class’ setResourcePath method. When using a resource folder image, all that is needed is to specify the image name as it is defined in the resource folder. You can also set a JavaScript expression for the image name. For example:

if( row["QUANTITYORDERED"] > 30 ){
"green.png";
}else if( row["QUANTITYORDERED"] > 25 && row["QUANTITYORDERED"] <= 30){
"yellow.png";
}else{
"red.png";
}

This expression checks the row data to determine which resource folder image should be rendered. The same type of checks can be made if you are using the onCreate script event for the image element.

var myqty = this.getRowData().getColumnValue("QUANTITYORDERED");
if( myqty > 30 ){
this.file = "green.png";
}else if( myqty > 25 && myqty <= 30){
this.file ="yellow.png";
}else{
this.file="red.png";
}

One thing to note in the above is that the column value QUANTITYORDERED is the binding column name, not the dataset column name. See the binding tab on the table in the attached example.
Images can also be placed in jar files within the resource folder. If your image exists in a jar file, you can use a script expression similar to the following to specify the image to retrieve.

var jarfile = reportContext.getResource("birtimages.jar");
myfulljarimage = "jar:"+jarfile.toString()+"!/green.png";
myfulljarimage;

The getResource method of the reportContext object is used to return the location of a file in the resource folder. Using the location of the file and the jar protocol, the image can be specified.

Embedded Images
BIRT allows images to be encoded directly into the xml report design. Images can be added by right clicking on the embedded images icon in the outline view of the report and selecting “New Embedded Image”. After selecting the image, the outline view is updated and the data for the image is encoded in to the design. You can also add embedded images to the report using the add image button of the image report item editor.

Once the images are embedded into the report, you can add the image report item to the desired location, choose the embedded image radial, select the image name and click the insert button.

If you wish to change the image dynamically, this can be done using an onCreate script. In the onCreate script specify the image name using the imageName property.

this.imageName = "eyellow.png";

Dynamic Images
Dynamic images allow Blob images to be inserted into the report. Typically this type of image is tied to a data set column through either the image’s dataset bindings, or the container element’s bindings (eg Table). The sample database, which is delivered as part of BIRT, contains a Blob type column in the PRODUCTLINES table. The example report used in the post has an example of using this column in conjunction with the image report item.

A developer can also use an onCreate event script to set the image data. When doing this, the image data should be in a byte[]. Presented below is an onCreate script that uses the ImageIO class to read a file, a URL, an image from the resource folder, or an image in a jar file in the resource folder. Uncomment the section of the script for the desired image location.

importPackage(Packages.java.io);
importPackage(Packages.java.lang);
importPackage(Packages.java.net);
importPackage(Packages.javax.imageio);

//File Based
//var myfile = new Packages.java.io.File("c:/test/green.png");
//var img = ImageIO.read(myfile);

//URL Based
//Jar image in resource folder
var jarfile = reportContext.getResource("birtimages.jar");
var myfulljarimagestr = "jar:"+jarfile.toString()+"!/red.png";
var myurl = new Packages.java.net.URL(myfulljarimagestr);

//Image in resource folder
//var myurl = reportContext.getResource("green.png");

//Image at url
//var myurl = new Packages.java.net.URL("http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse.org-common/themes/Nova/images/eclipse.png");

var img = ImageIO.read(myurl);
bas = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
ImageIO.write(img, "png", bas);
this.data = bas.toByteArray();

The example used for this post is available at Birt-Exchange . To setup the example, copy the birtimages.jar and the three supplied images to your resource folder.

The Server Side: Does NoSQL Mean No-ACID? Well, Yes...Yes it Does...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:29:14 GMT

ACID is hard to scale. But isn't NoSQL/NoACID the lazy way around the problem? Why not solve the ACID scalability problem instead of just going NoSQL? It's a hard problem to solve, but here are a few ideas on how to solve it.

- - - -

The Server Side: Is Android Evil? Insight from Andreas Constantinou

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:20:11 GMT

Is Android really open? Research Director Andreas Constantinou uncovers the many control points behind Android and explains why Android might be the most closed system in the history of open source

- - - -

The Server Side: Klaros-Testmanagement 3.1 released – including Mantis integration

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:20:00 GMT

Klaros-Testmanagement is an Ajax-based web application to support test managers in controlling and managing the entire testing process in software development projects.

- - - -

Planet Eclipse: Donald & Ralph: Welcome SBB / CFF / FFS to the Eclipse Foundation

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:13:13 GMT

The Swiss Railway SBB has just recently joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Associate Member.

Transporting 327.5 million passengers and 50 million net tons of freight every year the company is by far the biggest travel and transport company in Switzerland.

Having experienced their great services for the time I was living in Switzerland I appreciate very much that this very service oriented organization has become a large consumer of the Eclipse platform and Eclipse related services.

We have seen presentations of their applications on various occasions such as the Eclipse Summit , and we look forward to an even closer relationship with SBB through the newly signed membership.

Java.net Weblogs: JavaOne 2010 approaching fast

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:42:42 GMT

Entry posted to my new blog.

Planet Eclipse: JFace Data Binding Team: A new direction for bindings?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:14:03 GMT

I'm happy to report that I've been given company approval to port the relevant components of our Flex data binding library back to Eclipse Data Binding.

I haven't started the actual port yet--there are still some concepts on the Flex side that are not a perfect match to Java and existing idioms in Eclipse Data Binding. You'll see what I mean.

To avoid conflating the port to Java with the general API I'm going to just present what the Flex API looks like.

Bind.from(source, "foo")
.to(target, "bar");

This binding watches the source.foo property, and writes the new value to target.bar each time a change it detected. Now add some validation and conversion magic:

Bind.from(source, "foo")
.validate(Validators.stringToNumber)
.convert(Converters.stringToNumber)
.validate(Validators.greaterEqual(0))
.validate(Validators.lessThan(10))
.to(target, "bar");

Here we've added several additional steps in the pipeline.

After source.foo changes, we first validate that the string can be converted to a number. If so the pipeline continues to the next step, and terminates otherwise.
Next we convert the string to a number
Now validate that the number is greater than or equal to zero. If so the pipeline continues to the next step, and terminates otherwise.
Now validate that the number is less than 10. If so the pipeline continues and the number, now verified to be in the range [0,10), is written to target.bar.

Now suppose our binding is misbehaving somehow, and we want to troubleshoot. We can add logging steps to the pipeline in between the other steps so we can see exactly what is going on:

Bind.from(source, "foo")
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "source.foo == {0}")
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "validate {0} is a number")
.validate(Validators.stringToNumber)
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "convert {0} to a number")
.convert(Converters.stringToNumber)
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "validate {0} >= 0")
.validate(Validators.greaterEqual(0))
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "validate {0}

.validate(Validators.lessThan(10))
.log(LogEventLeven.INFO, "set target.bar = {0}")
.to(target, "bar");

(In Flex, string formatting is done with {n} format instead of the %s syntax which Java inherited from C. The log statement passes the values in the pipeline as additional arguments which you can reference in log statements.)

These log steps are a real lifesaver for tracking down and squashing bugs in your binding code.

If you've already worked with Eclipse Data Binding you may have noticed something else: you are no longer constrained to the standard data-binding pipeline. You are free to add steps in the pipeline wherever you like and in any order you like.

Next up is two-way bindings. The bind class provides a twoWay method which connects two bindings to the other one's starting point:

Bind.twoWay(
Bind.from(source, "foo"),
Bind.from(target, "bar") );

is equivalent to:

var lock:Lock = new Lock();
Bind.from(source, "foo")
.lock(lock)
.to(target, "bar");
Bind.from(target, "bar")
.lock(lock)
.to(target, "foo");

Notice that each binding has a "lock" step in the pipeline. Only one binding can hold a lock at a time. This solves the common infinite loop problem:

source.foo changes. binding one executes, writing the value to target.bar
target.bar changes. binding two executes, writing the value to source.foo
source.foo changes. binding one executes, writing the value to target.bar
...
stack overflow!

Since only one binding can hold the lock at a time, this is what happens instead:

source.foo changes. binding one acquires the lock and executes, writing the value to target.bar
target.bar changes. binding two attempts to acquire the lock but it is already acquired. binding two aborts.
binding one releases the lock

You should never add the same lock more than once to a single binding, since that would guarantee that the binding will never run.

Two-way bindings can use validations, conversions, logging, locks etc just like regular one-way bindings (since two-way bindings are just two one-way bindings wired up to eachother):

Bind.twoWay(
Bind.from(person, "birthDate")
.convert(Converters.dateToString(dateFormat))
Bind.from(heightText, "text")
.validate(Validators.stringToDate(dateFormat))
.convert(Converters.stringToDate(dateFormat))
.validate(Validators.lessEqual(now))
);

We usually leave out the validations in the model-to-UI bindings. It's usually only important to apply validations when you're copying data back from the UI to the model, to make sure domain constraints are satisfied, such as ensuring that a birth date occurred in the past.

And now for my favorite part: binding from multiple sources, to multiple destinations. Raise your hand if you have ever had to wire up a UI form like this:

Is there a foo? (o) Yes ( ) No <-- fooRadioGroup

Enter bar: ____________________ <-- barText

Requirements:

fooRadioGroup.selectedItem is bound to model.foo (a boolean)
barText.text is bound to model.bar (a string)
barText must be enabled iff fooRadioGroup selection is Yes.
When the user clicks "No," set model.bar to null but do not clear the text box. If the user clicks "Yes" again, set model.bar back to the contents of barText

Requirements 1 and 3 are easy:

var fooLock:Lock = new Lock();
Bind.twoWay(
Bind.from(model, "foo"),
Bind.from(fooRadioGroup, "selectedItem"),
fooLock); // explicitly provide the lock, see more below

Bind.from(fooRadioGroup, "selectedItem")
.to(barText, "enabled");

Requirements 2 and 4 are kind of related to eachother. The model-to-UI binding is simple enough: just write the value straight across:

var barLock:Lock = new Lock();
Bind.from(model, "bar")
.lock(barLock)
.to(barText, "text");

However the inverse binding (UI-to-model) must also take fooRadioGroup.selectedItem into account to decide whether to write back barText.text (if Yes is selected) or null (if No is selected).

The Bind class has another trick up its sleeve:

Bind.fromAll(

Bind.from(fooRadioGroup, "selectedItem")
.lock(fooLock),

Bind.from(barText, "text")

)
.lock(barLock)
.convert(function(foo:Boolean, bar:String):String {
return foo ? bar : null;
})
.to(model, "bar");

Look closely. The binding pipelines that we pass to fromAll(...) become the arguments, in the order they are provided, to the converter and validator functions further down the pipeline. The first pipeline is from fooRadioGroup.selectedItem and therefore that boolean value is the first argument to the converter. Likewise, the barText.text pipeline is provided second, so that string value becomes the second argument to the converter.

The converter takes multiple values but returns only a single value. This is where those values get coalesced into a single value that we can write to the model--in this case, a String value or null.

The outer pipeline adds a locking step on barLock, which is expected since we need to prevent infinite loops between the last two pipelines. However we are also locking on fooLock, on the first of the inner pipelines. We had a problem with our bindings overwriting values in the UI depending on the order things were initialized.

It turned out that without that lock, if a new model object was set, then the foo binding would fire first. Thus model.foo was copied to fooRadioGroup.selectedItem. But that would trigger our last binding to execute, so if the new foo value was false, then the last binding would override anything in the text box and set null on the model.bar field, before the model.bar => barText.text binding had a chance to execute!

A good rule of thumb is that any time you need to bind from multiple sources, you should make sure to create a lock to share between all the bindings to relate to the same field in the model.

Obviously there are several concepts that will have to be adapted to work elegantly with our existing APIs. Realms are a missing piece (Flex is single-threaded so we didn't even have to consider it). Also we would want to try to retrofit the existing binding classes to use this new API transparently, like we did with the transition from custom observables to custom properties.

So there you have it. This is my current vision of what Eclipse Data Binding should evolve toward.

Comments?

Red Hat in talks to buy JBoss cloud fluffer Makara

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:46:53 GMT

Red Hat is in talks to buy a JBoss cloud provisioning startup called Makara, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Planet Eclipse: Ian Bull: OSGi in Dublin

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:11:27 GMT

If anybody is going to be in Dublin next Thursday (Sept 9th), I’ll be talking about OSGi, Software Modularity and Single Sourcing. Details of the event can be found here. If anybody is going to be in the area, let me know. I’d love to catch up with some Eclipse folks over a few frosty beverages.

The Aquarium: New Faces at GlassFish DEV

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:15:54 GMT

Laird wrote this comment to my post on "Staying the Course"

Thanks, guys; it's got to be hard producing a great application server on a skeleton crew. Your work is VERY much appreciated.

Very nice comment, but I wanted to follow-up on the skeleton part.

We can always use some extra recs (Steve?) and we miss some old friends and contributors that chose not to stay at Oracle, but GlassFish is one of Oracle's strategic projects and it's benefited from Oracle's focus.

Here are four faces that you probably remember from previous projects at Sun that became key members of GlassFish in the last few months. They are all very senior Sun engineers with experience in many Sun projects. Clockwise from top left:

• Chris Kasso - Previously in the Java Enterprise System and Update Center; currently the GlassFish 3.1 Engineering Lead.
• Tom Mueller - Previously in the Open Portal project; currently GlassFish Admin and Infrastructure Lead.
• Joe Di Pol - Previously in the Java Enterprise System and Update Center; currently Update Center and helping in multiple fronts.
• Santiago Pericas-Geersten - Previously in the GlassFish Mobility Platform; just joined the GlassFish Web Tier project.

There are many more contributors to GlassFish. Some contribute directly, some to subprojects. Many work at Oracle, but others, like Hervé Souchaud and Romain Grecourt at Serli folks, do not. I've tried a few times to get a full list of the contributors; at some point I had collected all the folks that had submitted bugs see GlassFish Poster Project and this (now out-of-date) list - maybe time to try again.

Planet Eclipse: Ian Bull: Help, I’m looking for directions — Eclipse Active Help

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:13:40 GMT

I know Eclipse ‘Help’ is not a very exciting topic, but today I found myself working with a little known secret of Help. Most people know that you can setup context sensitive help (Press F1 and bring up help for the specific workbench part under focus). However, did you now you do the opposite? That is, activate code in your RCP application from a link in Help?

Here’s the use case: Say you have created a chat client built on the Eclipse RCP Platform. Like any good software engineer, you’ve created extensive help content. In addition to Instructions, you want to provide links that actually open the dialogs, or perform the actions. Active Help is the solution.

In this example, I’ve added a link that opens the “Add Contact” dialog, directly from the “Adding a Contact” Help page.

Doing this is extremely simple too. On the Java side, you simply need to implement the ILiveHelpAction. Then, on the help side you simply add the following JavaScript to your help contents:

Click here for a Message.

The only thing to keep in mind is that the Action is not executed on the UI thread, so you may need to synchronize this yourself.

VMware Launches Cloud Application Development Platform

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:31:59 GMT

VMware is expanding its Spring Framework into a cloud application development platform.

Java.net Weblogs: Independence Day for Java?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:11:32 GMT

I am on sabbatical in Vietnam right now, and today the country celebrates independence day. (On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh gave his declaration of independence speech.)

I read James Gosling's latest blog and wondered whether there ever will be independence for Java.

As James reminds us, there was a time when Oracle wanted to set Java free. I had naively thought we were pretty much there, with a JDK under GPL. But the situation is much murkier, and it is not at all clear under what conditions one can rely on a freely available Java platform as the foundation of one's work. I read Neal Gafter's blog, in which he writes: “Even though I am a contributor to openjdk7, I do not have a license to Oracle's patents that are necessarily infringed by the use of the openjdk7 source base.”

Presumably, there is a process by which Neal could get a patent grant, by getting a license for the TCK, and making his implementation pass it. However, a TCK doesn't yet exist for JDK 7, and the license is only good for GPL implementations that are “being substantially derived from OpenJDK Code”, whatever that may mean.

What's all the fuss about? First off, why GPL? That was so Microsoft couldn't “embrace and extend” Java. Fair enough. But why isn't there a straight patent grant that goes with any GPL implementation? As far as I can tell, Sun wanted to have their cake and eat it too: benefit from open source and keep its mobile phone revenue. That's why we have the “field of use” restrictions.

For a while, it worked. Sun milked its Java ME platform for what remained of it in the feature phone business, ignored Google's “embrace and extend” of mobile Java for smartphones, and enjoyed the benefits of broad community involvment in the Java Community process. I know that many people complained about that process, and it had its problems, but it also delivered results. With one exception: the absence of a JSR for JDK 7.

I think it is no longer working. The Google lawsuit has brought the contradictions out in the open. Java is controlled by a single corporate entity, in much the same way that .NET is. Yes, you can make a GPL clone of JDK 6 that runs on desktops and servers. That's nice. But if you want to run Java on tablets, smartphones, or embedded devices, you'll pay. If you want to use a version of Java that is not “substantially derived from OpenJDK Code”, you'll have to negotiate a TCK license, which Oracle may or may not grant.

For a free software developer, what does that mean? We can almost certainly count on access to a free JDK 6 implementation. It's in our interest to get at least one such implementation, maintain it on free operating systems, and innovate on top of it, independent of Oracle and the JCP. However, there is no way of knowing whether language, platform, and VM innovations, if and when they do materialize, will be available freely, so we shouldn't count on it. As Neal points out, there is minimal incentive to be involved in their development. Overall, that is not so different from what one gets with .NET/Mono/C#.

Of course, Oracle may not care, and laugh all the way to the bank. Then again, how much mirth can there be? Java ME is a lost cause and revenue will dry up soon enough. The Google lawsuit may or may not bring in a bundle, but it may well take a while. There is no other substantial Java licensing revenue outside the mobile/embedded space, and the GPL JDK makes it hard to rustle up any.

So, maybe Oracle will see the light and set Java free? In the manner that they supported in 2007, with an independent foundation, with development funded by multiple parties? That will be a day to celebrate—independence day for Java.

Oracle offers student coders free access to JavaOne

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:28:48 GMT

Oracle is hoping to entice a younger generation of Java programmers into its fold by offering students complimentary admission to the upcoming JavaOne and Oracle Develop conferences.

Planet Eclipse: Scott Kellicker: Contributing to JSDT #5: Launching the Product

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:17:02 GMT

I’ll continue my instructions regarding how to set up JSDT development infrastructure.

Previously

I set up the build target
I checked out the code
I updated to the latest debug plugins to resolve compilation issues.
I launched the unit tests

Now run the product

When I work on Eclipse products, we typically provide a default launch config per product. Although the nightly build is the ultimate authority of what encompasses the product, these version-controlled launch files provide a good point of comparison developer to developer.

I could not find a public JSDT .launch file under CVS control.

So I looked at the installed JSDT product to create my own. It’s here if you would like to download it.

Just drop it into an active project in your Eclipse workspace, refresh the project, open ‘Run Configurations” and you should see a “jsdt” run config.

You may want to tweak it a bit and verify that the set of selected plugins is correct.

Then hit Run to see the JSDT.

Disclaimer: I’m not on the JSDT team, so this may not be exactly how they do it. But it’s what I’ve done to get it working.

Gartner Trims Its PC Projections

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:15:00 GMT

Gartner was late in pooping on the PC party. Intel had already confirmed Wall Street reports that consumer PC sales were crapping out by the time the research house took down its forecast for the second half a half-hearted couple of points, reducing its growth projection to 15.3% against an easy compare. It cited the uncertain economic outlook for the United States and Western Europe as well as sheer supply chain fear. “There is no doubt,” it said, “that consumer, if not business PC demand has slowed relative to expectations in mature markets. Recent dramatic shifts in the PC supply chain were in no small part a reaction to fears of a sharp slowdown in mature-market demand. However, suppliers’ risk-aversion is as much a factor in these shifts as any actual downshift in demand.”

Why the Java Frenzy Shouldn't Worry Anyone

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:27:34 GMT

In recent weeks, we've seen what looks like an absolute state of frenzy in the Java space.

2-day Java EE 6 & GlassFish workshops in Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary - Register now

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:28:17 GMT

Are you interested in learning the nuts and bolts of the Java EE 6 platform ? Do you want to learn on how Servlet 3.0, Java Server Faces 2.0, Context & Dependency Injection 1.0, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, Bean Validation 1.0, Java Persistence API 2, RESTful Web services and other new technologies in Java EE 6 provide a complete stack for building ...

JVM Language Summit Sessions Online

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:04:20 GMT

If you wanted to check out some of the talks at the recent 2010 JVM Language Summit most of the sessions are now available to watch on the Oracle Media Network:

Gathering the Threads -- JVM Futures by John Rose - Session Abstract
Trending Toward the Middle -- The Best of Static and Dynamic by Charles Nutter - Session Abstract
Faking Closures on the JVM Isn't as Simple as It Looks by David Pollak - Session Abstract
Kawa and gnu.bytecode Update by Per Bothner - Session Abstract
LINQ: Language Features for Concurrency (Among Other Things) by Neal Gafter - Session Abstract
Symmetric Multilanguage VM Architecture by Oleg Pliss - Session Abstract
Register Allocation on SSA form for Java Just-in-Time Compilation by Christian Wimmer - Session Abstract
Erjang -- A JVM-based Erlang VM by Kresten Krab Thorup - Session Abstract
Project Fortress Compiler Implementation Status by Christine Flood - Session Abstract
Digital Performance by Cliff Click - Session Abstract
The Maxine Inspector: A Specialized Tool for VM Development by Michael Van De Vanter - Session Abstract
Efficient Lambda Compilation using MethodHandles and JRockit by Fredrik Öhrström - Session Abstract
Coroutines for the Java Platform by Lukas Stadler - Session Abstract
Engineering Fine-Grained Parellelism in Java (Keynote) by Doug Lea - Session Abstract
Mixed Language Compilation in Eclipse: Java and Groovy by Andy Clement - Session Abstract
MethodHandles: An IBM Implementation by Dan Heidinga - Session Abstract
Chronon -- Time-Travelling Debugger by Prashant Deva - Session Abstract
The Thorn Language: Robust Distributed Scripting on the JVM by John Field - Session Abstract
Improvements in OpenJDK Useful for JVM Languages by Eric Caspole - Session Abstract

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Planet Eclipse: Ian Skerrett: Tell Us Your Eclipse Story: Win a Pass to JavaOne

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:38:03 GMT

Lots of people are doing incredible things with Eclipse. People are building amazing applications that embedded Eclipse technology. Companies have standardized on Eclipse as their development tools platform. Students and researchers are using Eclipse for creating some very cool new technology.

As with any open source community, sharing information is critical to fostering a healthy and strong community. Sharing how you use Eclipse will help other people realize the full potential of Eclipse technology. More people using Eclipse technology will lead to more potential contributors, more contributors mean more people working on Eclipse projects.

We want you to share your Eclipse story with the community. I’ve started a wiki page to allow individuals and companies to tell the community how they use Eclipse. Tell us what type of applications you build, what Eclipse technology you use and what you like about Eclipse. You can tell us your personal story or tell us what your company is doing. Just tell us your story.

To encourage early stories, the Eclipse Foundation will raffle off a full pass to the upcoming JavaOne 2010 conference to all who submitted a story. To be included in the raffle you need to submit your story on the wiki by September 9, 2010 at 1:00pmET and send me an e-mail (ian at eclipse dot org)

What's New in CouchDB 1.0 Security 'n Stuff

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:13:04 GMT

Today, I get a little help from Rebecca. She's writing a CouchApp, an application that is served right out of CouchDB and that lives in the browser.

No Google Sessions for JavaOne

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:08:22 GMT

Infoworld are reporting that Google has pulled out of presenting sessions at JavaOne. Which is probably not that big of a surprise considering Oracle decided to sue Google last month.

In a blog post on the Google Code Blog, Joshua Bloch stated,

"..we're sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996."

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Java.net Weblogs: 2-day Java EE 6 & GlassFish workshops in Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary - Register now!

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:54:54 GMT

Content available at: http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/2_day_java_ee_6

Java.net Weblogs: TOTD #144: CDI @Produces for container-managed @Resource

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:54:42 GMT

Content available at: http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/totd_144_cdi_produces_for

InfoQ: New PHP Licensing Option for Cloud Computing

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:54:00 GMT

Zend recently announced an 'unlimited subscription' licensing option for its PHP products, in support of cloud computing. Virtualization and Cloud Computing challenge traditional concepts of software licensing, e.g. one license per user, one license per server, because of the dynamism and variability of running instances inherent in both concepts. Zend offers one way to solve this problem. By Dave West

Planet Eclipse: Chris Aniszczyk: AustinJUG and Eclipse 4.0

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:38:14 GMT

Last night I had the pleasure to speak at my local AustinJUG.

It was nice to catch up with some local folks and introduce people to some new Eclipse technology. In the end, we kind of got sidetracked and there was some good discussion about source control in the corporate environment versus what is going on in open source communities. Unfortunately, it seems Subversion has a stronghold in a lot of companies still. I hope our work in JGit to make a liberally licensed Git library that runs everywhere will start swaying the tide…

Planet Eclipse: Remy Suen: OSGi, language packs, and interval notations…

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:34:46 GMT

Dunge: Hello there, sorry for the noob question. I installed Eclipse for Java (Helios) and JDK update 21, I’m trying to use the Blackberry SDK but when I install it it say I require org.eclipse.jdt.debug [3.5.0,3.6.0) first. I tried to find it in “install new software” or on the website, I can’t find anything
rcjsuen: Dunge: That BB plug-in wants Galileo not Helios.
rcjsuen: “require org.eclipse.jdt.debug [3.5.0,3.6.0)”
rcjsuen: Dunge: 3.5.x corresponds to Galileo, 3.6.x corresponds to Helios
Dunge: rcjsuen : you say 3.6.x for Helios, and they actually write 3.6.0 in the required message, so why should I revert to 3.5.0?
rcjsuen: Dunge: You must not have taken Calculus, or forgot about it.
rcjsuen: [x,y) means x inclusive, y exclusive
rcjsuen: i.e. 3.5.0 <= x < 3.6.0
Dunge: should be [x,y[
rcjsuen: Dunge: I’ve never seen that notation. Where do they do that?
Dunge: I just though it was a typo
Dunge: hmm in my math classes? :)
rcjsuen: [x,y[?
Dunge: yeah
rcjsuen: Dunge: And where do you live? That’s what I meant. :)
Dunge: lol
rcjsuen: Dunge: I am interested in where they use this notation, hence I asked.
Dunge: I just asked the guy next to me and he’s saying it should be a [ too
Dunge: I’m in Quebec
rcjsuen: ah
rcjsuen: in the States they used this
rcjsuen: and I went to U Waterloo, we used that there too
Dunge: but I though it was a global notation
rcjsuen: I shall ask other ppl when I get back to Ottawa on Sunday :)
rcjsuen: Maybe that is what they use in France/Europe?
njbartlett: rcjsuen: Possibly France, but certainly not other bits of Europe
rcjsuen: That notation seems to be part of the ISO anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_31-11#Sets
rcjsuen: Very interesting. You learn something new every day as I always say. :)
njbartlett: Indeed, very interesting.
rcjsuen: njbartlett: So I think we need language packs for fr_FR that uses different notation. :)
njbartlett: I’ve given talks about OSGi in lots of countries, almost everywhere there’s at least one or two maths geeks who nods quietly when they see [,)
rcjsuen: hahahaha

Have You Ever Seen a Cloud in a Box? VMWare Delivers with vFabric

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:39:03 GMT

Okay, maybe it's not a 'cloud in a box.' And maybe they don't even want us to refer to it as a 'cloud in a box.' But that's what they're gearing up for with all of these product acquisitions.

VMware - SpringSource - VCloud - Cloud computing - Emulators

IBM WebSphere SIB & Cloud Computing: Leveraging the Power

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:38:23 GMT

High performance, availability and scalability with messaging solutions, and the key to the mix is the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) along with a handy Service Integration Bus (SIB). Here we're going to deliver some hints and best practices, as we show you how to configure for high availability.

IBM WebSphere - IBM - Application server - Cloud computing - server

Planet Eclipse: Madhu Samuel: BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:29:25 GMT

Packt Publishing, a UK based book publishing firm has send me a copy of their latest book BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting by John Ward to write a review. You can find the details of the book here. I hope to publish an in-depth review about this book in a few weeks at "I Like Eclipse", the blog site of EclipseBible.com.

madhu

eclipseBible.com

How To Pick the Right Web Framework

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:18:32 GMT

In praise of the single page interface. In this little presentation, the author of ItsNat explains why every other web development framework sucks.

Web development - Programming - Languages - PHP - Framework

Java development 2.0: Sharding with Hibernate Shards

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:15:18 GMT

Horizontal scalability for relational databases with Hibernate Shards

Shard - Database - Programming - Java - Languages

Troubleshoot Java in production

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:14:35 GMT

Short description about the challenges of troubleshooting highly distributed and loaded Java EE applications in production. Introduction of AppDynamics Lite a free tool that simplifies the process of analyzing performance and stability problems.

Java - Java Platform Enterprise Edition - Programming - Languages - Troubleshooting

Build Android apps using XML and JavaScript Object Notation

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:12:36 GMT

Explore the benefits of JSON and XML in Android applications

JavaScript - XML - Data Formats - Markup Languages - JSON

'Patently Absurd' Lawsuits Proliferate Among Web Firms

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:03:32 GMT

Seven years ago, Eolas Technologies won a patent lawsuit against Microsoft Corp.

Planet Eclipse: Jonas Helming: EMFStore Project approved

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:56:16 GMT

We are happy to announce that the EMFStore project has been accepted as an Eclipse Project.
www.emfstore.org

Planet Eclipse: Jonas Helming: EMF Client Platform project approved

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:55:35 GMT

We are happy to announce that the EMF Client Platform project has been accepted as an Eclipse Project.
www.emfcp.org

Master-Child BTF Chaperone – A Contextual Event Alternative

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:00 GMT

Inter Bounded Task Flows (BTF) communications are aided in JDeveloper 11g by the use of contextual events, a BTF publish-subscribe mechanism for passing data between BTFs. Yet in some situations contextual events may be the equivalent of "using a sledge hammer to crack a nut", where developers try and use them everywhere when there are alternative techniques available that may work just as well. This blog documents a technique for allowing a master ADF application utilising the ADF UI Shell to provide services to a child BTF, including passing data backwards and forwards, without the use of contextual events. While the blog demonstrates a solution within context of the ADF UI Shell, the overall technique should be useful in other ADF solutions.

InfoQ: IBM X-Force Report: Enterprise Security Exploits Are Raising

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:54:00 GMT

IBM has published the IBM X-Force® 2010 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report August 2010 (112 pages long, free registration required) containing detailed information about the security vulnerabilities and exploits of 2010, such as JavaScript and PDF obfuscation, the current security threat trends in the enterprise, and a look into the future. By Abel Avram

InfoQ: Presentation:Command-Query Responsibility Segregation

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:46:00 GMT

Udi Dahan discusses the Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) pattern and its relationship to Domain Driven Design (DDD), detailing on queries and commands, what they are and how they should be used in an asynchronous programming environment. By Udi Dahan