Eclipse WTP 1.0
Eclipse release the 1.0 of their WTP (Web Tools Platform) today, WTP is a nice collection of plugins for a server-side guy.
The WTP project includes source editors for HTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaServer Pages, SQL, XML, Document Type Definition, XML Schema Definition and WSDL, as well as graphical editors for XSD and WSDL.
WTP 1.0 can be downloaded here.
JSR220 hits final draft
JSR220 (Enterprise JavaBeansTM 3.0) just hit the status “final draft”, so it’s pretty safe to say that there won’t be any major changes from this to the final release. Needless to say EJB3 is a really big thing!
The voes of multi-IDE projects.
At my current gig we use multiple IDE’s for different tasks (of historic reasons as well as pure productive reasons). Today the team uses Borland JBuilder, Intellij IDEA and Eclipse.
The suggested/preferred choice is JBuilder, but the project has decided to be IDE independent, and today JBuilder is almost exclusively used by the EJB-developers (team is split between EJB, Web/Frontend and Persistence/Hibernate). The Hibernate Team uses Eclipse, since it makes a lot of sense to use some of the rich plugins available for this IDE.
The project has a directory structucture set up, an ant file for building/deploying etc. The problem is that JBuilder seems to spread a lot of files around the whole repository, ad hoc META-INF directories, .class files in strange places and some other arbitrary files.
I must say that I am no JBuilder fan, but it has some really nice features for those not that into “code” (i.e. WYSIWYG/Code generation for e.g. EJB’s). But I highly dislike it spreading it’s files all around it, as said before Eclipse & IDEA has no problem with a predefined directory structure, but JBuilder really insist on rolling it’s own, highly annoying. For the time being I believe I got it under control by hacking strange JBuilder xml-files, and heavy usage of .cvsignore .. I only wish it were easier.
Java and PHP integration
Dion blogged about how to run php and Java together looks really nice. Even better, PHP is a goal for JSR-223 Scripting for the JavaTM Platform.
I have to play around with it a bit, even though I’m not that into PHP (Haven’t used it a lot)
Mac OS X 10.4.5 has left the building
The new update arrived today; claimed fixes are
- iChat video conferencing
- Safari rendering of web pages
- usability of Dashboard and widgets
- viewing of QuickTime streaming media behind a firewall
- printing to some Epson printer models
- iDisk and Portable Home Directory syncing
- time zone and daylight savings for 2006 and 2007
- VPN connections to Cisco servers when using NAT
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates
Seems like nothing major
Download here, or from the update manager
Sun releases Open Source RDB, based on Derby
According to a pressrelease from Sun, they have released a database based on Apache Derby.
The DB called Java DB.
The latest version of Sun Java Enterprise System (release 4) now uses Java DB, and it is the default database for development with Sun Java System Application Server. Further it is the default database for Suns Portal server.
The same day Sun released a plug-in for NetBeans 5 for connecting to the DB.
Quite cool I must say, I looked briefly at Apache Derby at the past and it seems to be a quite capable RDB.
Apache Geronimo 1.0 (well sort of..)
Apache Software Foundation issued a pressrelase stating the release of Geronimo 1.0, although going to the Geronimo site gives you a quote.
Geronimo 1.0 Release Pending
If you’re coming here regarding the press release about the 1.0 release of Geronimo, that release came out a bit too soon. The Geronimo team would like you to know that it is very close, but it hasn’t quite finished cooking yet. “
At the same time a couple of products used by Geronimo have been incorporated into the Apache Incubator, these include
- ActiveMQ – a JMS-compliant enterprise messaging platform
- OpenEJB – a modular, configurable, and extendable EJB Container System and EJB Server
- ServiceMix – a JBI-based enterprise service bus and SOA toolkit
- WADI – a clustering, load-balancing and fail-over solution
- XBean – a plug-in-based server framework, analogous to the Eclipse plug-in-based, IDE framework
Geronimo is a interesting piece of software, I really hope it will succeed.
Oracle to donate their JSF implementation
Read it on Matt Raible’s blog, apparently Oracle has decided to donate their JSF implementation (ADF Faces) to the Apache Faces project.
JSF is quite cool, even though I haven’t had the time to play around with it as much as for e.g. Tapestry, but I believe for it to take momentum we need to see a nice ecosystem of components (commercial and open), that’s the whole point about a component based framework. Another point is that JSF seems to be designed around RAD development, I am not sure how good the tools are these days but it seems to be catching up. I believe if JSF should take a hard spot on the framework map we need the RAD tools (at least to catch the “corporate developer” coming from a background such as VB/.NET).
Hopefully I will have the opportunity to form a tighter opinion about JSF in the near future since my current project uses/starting to use JSF.
Netbeans Performance Profiler, for OS X
Tor Norbye points out that Milestone 11 of NetBeans Performance Profiler now supports OS X. As you might know the profiler is based on JFluid.
You will need JDK 5 update 4 for this to work.
I will have to take it for a spin, but I was quite impressed by the demo of the profiler I saw on this year JavaOne.
SCEA – 1
Cleared SCEA part 1
After a slow start I took the plunge and booked a time for part one of SCEA (Sun Certified Enterprise Architect). For those of you not familiar with SCEA the exam is made up of three parts, where the first one is a standard multiple choice exam. Once you have completed part 1 you can continue to the “guts” of the certification which is architecture based on the requirements you receive.
I have started the analysis work of part 2, and I must say that the requirements are as fuzzy as real world requirements often are.