John D. Mitchell's Blog

J2EE Archives

JaveOne 2007, Enterprise Search-Driven Developement

One of the most exciting things at the show this year is that my company, Krugle, announced the beta of an enterprise search appliance for development teams.

After all the months of labor, I can finally share our little bundle of joy with the world. :-)

In my experience, one of the biggest problems that enterprise developers face every day is finding useful information across the bazillion different silos of information that we have to deal with just to be able to work on our projects. Specifications, design docs, source code, issue trackers, mailing lists, notes, blogs, wikis, souce code control systems.... Mixing in time-to-market pressures, cost reduction, reuse goals, agile methodologies, and the like pushes us to a just in time way of life.

Finding relevant information amid that chaos is all too often painful and labor intensive. So, the core feature of the Krugle Enterprise appliance is to pull all of those silos together and make information available via search. This search-driven development approach is how development teams really work these days -- developers looking for example code, QA looking for bug fixes, maintainers trying to figure out the impact of making a change, managers looking at risk indicators, etc. -- we're bringing it all together.

Of course, I'm totally biased so ignore my blathering and check it out for yourself and your team.

Binary XML?

Well, there's seems to be a fair bit of discussion lately about various approaches to making XML less of a bloated sack of protoplasm. Technically speaking there's a Sun article on talking about the Fast InfoSet draft specification. More generically speaking, here's a CNet article asking: How do we make XML faster?

• If binary XML is the answer, what exactly is the question?
• If XML is the answer, what is the question?
• Why are people using XML for so many things that it's horrible for?

IMHO, all of this stems from the fact that people have been mislead by XML's name into believing that XML is a language when XML is really just a data format. Very sad.

Refactoring Java?

In the spirit of If you could get rid of one thing from Java..., if you could, what one thing about Java would you "fix"? This question is as inclusive as you want to make it. You want Java "open-sourced"? Or you'd like generics implemented "properly" instead of via type erasure? Or you want Sun to fix the insane version numbering scheme for Java? Share it here.

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress." --Joseph Joubert

If you could get rid of one thing from Java...?

In the spirit of If I could add one thing to Java, I'd like to know what one thing you would take out of Java, if you had the chance. Not add, extend, tweak, exchange, or change but just what you would get rid of completely.

"You know you've achieved perfection in design,
  not when you have nothing more to add,
  but when you have nothing more to take away." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

JSR 170 goes public

The public review period for JSR 170: Content Repository for Java technology API is open now until July 19, 2004.

Would you like fries with that?

According to this EWeek article, Sun has a promotion through June, 2004 wherein a purchase of Sun's Java Studio Enterprise product subscription also gets you an AMD Opteron-based SunFire server.

The catch is that the subscription cost is $1500 per year with what looks like a 3 year commitment.

I do like the switch to focusing on the hardware as a support for the software.

XWork v1.0 and WebWork v2.0 released

Version 1.0 of the XWork command processing framework and version 2.0 of the WebWork web application framework (which is built on top of XWork) have been released.

Are debuggers a wasteful timesink?

Bob Martin starts a raucous discussion when he states that Debuggers are wasteful Timesinks.

To paraphrase a character from the last Matrix movie... Debuggers are just a tool. It is how the tool is used that is good or bad.

Java Servlet v2.4 and JavaServer Pages (JSP) v2.0 "Final" Specifications released

The JavaServer Pages v2.0 specification was released.

Be sure to also check out Greg Wilkins' critque of the Java Servlet v2.4 specification.

China options push Sun to consider open-source J2EE app server?

Hmm... Opening up the Chinese market (that won't pay the ridiculous licensing fees anyway) through the hearts and minds of the developers and hoping that will convince them to buy (expensive) Sun hardware? I'm not so sure about that. Will they buy Sun's services? Perhaps but I'm not going to hold my breath.

In terms of the perennial Sun boogeyman that is Microsoft, going with a viral license such as the GPL would be excellent. Just think... Sun suing Microsoft for violation of the GPL and therefore the GPL getting seriously tested in court!

Lame "survey" on Java reliability

First off, let me question the fact that nowhere is it listed in the article that we can't actually get a copy of the survey and survey results without signing up for one of Wiley Technologies seminars (i.e., sales pitches). Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now, without a much better idea of the actual contents of the survey it's ridiculous to rely on any of the so-called results of the survey. Let's just say, for the moment, that I'm skeptical all around all of the numbers. I call on Wiley Technology to provide the full survey and results to one and all so that we can decide for ourselves.

The Java Servlet Specification v2.4: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Greg Wilkins, creator of Jetty and co-founder of the Core Developers Network wrote this in-depth critique of the Java Servlet Specification v2.4.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.