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No, seriously, what is a Rich Internet Application?

A series of blogs from the last few weeks (1, 2, and 3) led the Java Posse into a lengthy discussion of Rich Internet Applications in their latest episode, a discussion which hit a massive roadblock halfway through on the question of whether iTunes and Google Earth are RIAs.

The original discussion (and the earlier editor's blogs) was mostly about the competition between the "browser stack" (HTML + DOM + CSS + JavaScript) versus embedded VMs like Java applets, Flash presentations, and whatever Silverlight is. But isn't a desktop application, whose entire value comes from its network connectivity (as is the case with Google Earth), also an RIA? After all, it has rich interactivity, is completely dependent on the internet, and it's an application. Or maybe the distinction is that webapps and applets/Flash don't require a client-side application install, whereas Google Earth and iTunes do, and so maybe we'll assign them their own little category ("Desktop Internet Applications", anyone?). But then again, even if we do that, what do we make of Java Web Start apps, or Java 6u10 applets that are dragged from a web page to become full-blown desktop apps?

David Herron tries to offer a binding definition in his blog, Thoughts on Rich Internet Applications.

The latest javaposse episode had an interesting go around what is a 'rich internet application'. BTW, guys, I'm really bummed you're not having the 200th episode recording on Sun's campus, I was really looking forward to it. In any case given their confusion over what an RIA is, it indicates there's lots of confusion out there in the world over what RIA's are. So in an effort to solve this problem let me tell you what RIA's are.

Check it out and decide for yourself if his definition holds up. There's already a good discussion underway in the comments.

Also in today's Weblogs, Kohsuke Kawaguchi announces Hudson now available in IPS package. "In addition to Debian, OpenSUSE, and FreeBSD packages, Hudson is now available as an IPS package for users who run on OpenSolaris, and here is how you can use it."

Ryan Shoemaker has another announcement Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 is Available! "I've spent the last year working on a new product at Sun called the Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP), which enables mobile access to enterprise data. Using MEP, you can easily develop mobile applications capable of synchronizing data between Java enabled mobile devices and corporate back-end EIS systems."

The latest JavaOne Community Corner Podcast is j1-2k8-mtW06: API compatibility puzzles by Mikhail Ershov. "Many Java developers create API libraries for use by applications. Such libraries typically evolve over time, providing more and more functionality with each release. At the same time, it's important to preserve backward compatibility of the API so that the API libraries could be upgraded without any negative effects on existing applications. This session focuses on a series of common API modifications that seem like normal modifications, but can manifest subtle compatibility problems. Attendees will acquire skills to evaluate API changes for backwards compatibility, and how to sidestep compatibility pitfalls. The Java Conformance team at Sun has been part of the API evolution in both Java SE and ME, where preserving backward compatibility is critical to platform success. In this session we'd like to share our experience in this area. A short overview of compatibility problems in general will be presented, as well as the API compatibility puzzles."

In Java Today, the OpenJDK community has announced the approval of two new projects, Compiler Grammar and Type Annotations. The Compiler Grammar project's goa il "to develop an experimental version of the javac compiler based upon a grammar written in ANTLR." Meanwhile, the Type Annotations project is implementing "a Java language extension that permits annotations to be written on uses of types. One example of the new syntax is generic type arguments, as in List<@NonNull Object>. The type annotation syntax is also known as "JSR 308"."

The SDN has posted an edit of a white paper by Brian Goetz as An Introduction to Real-Time Java Technology: Part 1, The Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR 1). "Real-time computing is often associated with high speed, but this is only one part of the picture. At its core, real-time computing is about predictability -- the knowledge that the system will always perform within the required time frame. The deadlines involved need not be very short -- though they sometimes are -- and the consequences of missing a deadline may not be dire -- though they sometimes are. The key to whether an application is a real-time one has to do with whether its requirements include temporal constraints."

InfoWorld Test Center compares nine IDEs for Ruby on Rails Development, in Lab test: Climb aboard Ruby on Rails, with NetBeans 6.1 taking top honors with a score of 9.0 out of 10. Author Martin Heller awards NetBeans the article's only "Excellent" rating, saying "NetBeans has long been a strong Java development environment. It gained Ruby and Rails support in the last year. With Version 6.1, NetBeans is a seriously good Rails IDE.

In today's Forums, asdf_asdf asks about JavaFX's viability in Feasibility of JavaFX (vs Flash). Wanting a third opinion. As JavaFX has appeared on the Java scene, it seemed that could be the best solution, since the existing architecture is all-java and the team of developers at ease with java as with any other programming environment. However, at its current stage JavaFX seems as visually unattractive as its applets and much slower than Flash and difficult to embed seemingly onto websites. Is it only my perception, or could JavaFX look as nicely as Flash counterparts (Ajax in some case possibly) without requiring a significant effort (such as hard-coding nice custom elements), be nearly as fast, and allowing easy being plugged in into HTML without popup webstart annoyances and long download time?

qu0ll expresses disappointment on JAR-loading performance in Re: My feedback on Update 10 and wishlist for the future. "But there is one thing that is clear about dynamically loading JARs... class instantiation is S-L-O-W! I have found that once the first class is downloaded, each subsequent instantiation of a class from within that same dynamically loaded JAR takes forever. It's as if the JAR is not being downloaded in full but that each class is downloaded separately and thus incurring the overhead of an additional IO. Is this possible?"

trekkyleaper says Quartz is the way to go for scheduled actions in Re: Running Java Applications as a back-end batch processes. "Personally, I use Quartz (http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/). I have a servlet that is initialized when my app starts up. The servlet sets up my schedules and starts up the scheduler. It has worked well for me. The only problem I have is when trying to shutdown the app server while doing a long-running job. Since Quartz uses its own thread pool, there are occasionally times when I have to forcibly stop Glassfish."

myersj asks Is the source for Java Web Start available? "I've spent a few hours Googling and searching through the OpenJDK webpage, but I can't seem to find a place to download the source for Web Start (javaws.jar, deployment.jar). Was Java Web Start released as open source yet? (or close source but still viewable?) The reason I'm interested is I'm having an issue with the version of Java Web Start included in 1.6 update 7. My application worked fine with update 6, but Web Start consistently crashes (before my application starts) without any errors, logs, or dump files generated with update 7."

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