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Livin' Thing

Posted by editor on January 4, 2007 at 9:19 AM PST


Jini to live on as Apache "River"

It's been a long time getting there, but Jini has finally been accepted as an Apache Incubator project, an implementation dubbed "River". The effort to get to this point has been a long one, and the move to Apache may get this interesting technology in front of more eyes than was possible when it was seen as being a Sun-controlled effort.

Artima has posted the news as It's Official: Jini = Apache River, and snagged an interview with committer Dan Creswell, who comments on the goals of the move and the way forward:

While road map might be too strong a term, certain areas of interests or targets I can certainly see. The trouble with Jini is that it's an infrastructure component. It's very deep down in the hierarchies. It's similar to the question of "What's the road map for J2EE?" Simpler and easier to use, and more functionality, [are goals] at the strategic level. Jini has a mixture of both of those. How you knit all of those into a road map, is still to be decided. You can use Jini in the enterprise, in utility computing, or even on devices—the latter of which I don't particularly favor—and each of those uses has its own directional requirements on the road map...

The Apache project page is still coming together, and those interested in Jini should also check out the Jini Community on java.net for documentation, tutorials, and Jini-based projects.

Also in Java Today,
the NetBeans 5.5 IDE was selected as a "Technology of the Year" by InfoWorld in the Application Development category. The magazine writes, "NetBeans already had the most complete collaboration features among IDE platforms. This year it added important new modules such as Matisse, the most advanced Java GUI designer available today, and complete support for Java EE 5. NetBeans is likely all that developers of enterprise Java applications will need."

Java Mobile & Embedded Community Evangelist Terrence Barr recaps the first seven weeks of the community's existence and lays out goals for the new year in Wow, is it 2007 already? "While the big achievements are certainly important it is easy sometimes to forget some of the individual actions and events going on in front of and behind the scenes that contribute to the success and make the project into a living, breathing thing. So let's take a step back and look at some of the highlights of what happened in the last seven weeks."

Yep, there are still more 2007-kickoff themed entries in today's Weblogs, starting with James Gosling's Back in the saddle: "Holidays are over... Surgery recovery is (mostly) over... And work is looking like it's usual crazy self. *way* too much stuff going on. Among them..."

Inderjeet Singh has an idea for
Improving support for generics in the Java Persistence API:
"Java Persistence APIs is currently missing better support for generics in one of the methods for executing queries. In this blog, I discuss the issue and provide a solution that the Java Persistence expert group can possible add in a future version of the specification."

Finally, Carla Mott has some guidance on
Building web 2.0 apps with jMaki:
"Using jMaki to build cool web applications is easy. This app uses the layout templates, widgets from various toolkits and glue to allow the widgets to communicate with each other."

In today's Forums, hinkmond digs into ME's iPAQ status and seeks interested developers in
Building and running on Windows Mobile 5.0 (Pocket PC) iPAQ:
"Well, it's time to spin up the oldie but goodie topic of how to build and run phoneME Advanced software (Java ME CDC) on an iPAQ (Windows Mobile 5.0/Pocket PC ARM-based or XScale PDA). Davy Preuveneers from K.U.Leuven has been helping out tremendously with working through the bit-rot that happened in the out-of-date Pocket PC port we have in the phoneME Advance source code. (The code is about 2 years out of date now and needs some updating). Here is the off-line thread we've been having. It's time to get some help from other developers on this java.net phoneME Advanced project. Please let us know if you have some time to help out."

Annotating your way to a domain-specific language? mklemm doesn't think so, writing in
Re: How about extend Java language to a Domain Language using annotation,
"This is a compelling idea, but I think Java is unsuitable as a domain language because of its fixed syntax. The annotations solution on the one hand will clearly mark domain constructs, but it is IMHO all too ugly a syntax to be acceptable for everyday use... Java was designed as an object-oriented and procedural language. It would cause too much confusion to turn it into a domain language now. Better to define a new, domain-only language along with a compiler, and make it produce Java bytecode, so it can interoperate with Java."

aka1278 describes the ME persitance options in
Re: Is it possible to save application data to a file in this tool kit?:
"There are at least two ways to store a MIDlet's data to persistent storage. The first one is to use RMS, the second is to utilize JSR-75 (PDA optional packages) Choosing the most suitable API depends on the goal you plan to achieve. If you are looking for a mechanism to just keep from losing data between the MIDlet's runs please use RMS. RMS is a part of MIDP, therefore it is present on all platforms. If you need to store data in particular format, you have to use JSR-75. In this case please keep in mind what this is a optional JSR and it can absent on a particular platform."

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Jini to live on as Apache "River"

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