Richard Monson-Haefel's Blog

Deployment Archives

9 of Clubs Seeks a new Deck of Cards

Recently I had the honor of being named one of the 53 most influential people in the Java industry by The Middleware Company. My card was the 9 of Clubs – I have no idea how to interpret that distinction. Obviously, it’s a nice complement especially considering that the votes came from developers who subscribe to TheServerSide.com mailing list – a resource I consult regularly even if the threads are frequently hijacked.

You would think that a guy in this deck of cards is probably making gross amounts of money and living a leisurely life. I can't speak for the other people on the list, but that doesn't describe my life at all. I work really freaking hard – as hard as anyone reading this blog – and I don't own a yacht or drive a Lamborghini. I'm not poor by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not going to make the Forbs list anytime soon.

The truth is being an independent is hard work. I've been at it now for about five years and its never been a cake walk – ok occasionally it's been easy, but most of the time its not. For the most part I'm busting my butt trying to convince companies that I'm worth what I'm worth even if John and Jane Doe charge a faction of the price. The truth is, I'm usually over qualified for most consulting gigs so the spectrum of opportunities available to me is actually less than the average developer.

I heard once that winning an Oscar in Hollywood is a double edge sword. Actors who win are recognized for the quality of their work, but subsequently find it hard to find work. I even heard it descried as the Oscar "Death Knell": Its great to win, but its better to get nominated. This is probably a bit of hyperbola and I don't mean to compare my meager success to winning an Oscar, but the truth is: Success is measured in many ways and peer recognition – while wonderful – doesn't always translate into big bucks and loads of free time.

After more than five years of going-it-alone, I finally asked for help. This Monday I decided to try my luck for the first time with the grape vine. Although I have frequently helped others find work, I've rarely asked for help myself. Why? Well I guess I felt that I should be able to find my own work. Also it’s a matter of pride. I don’t like to ask for help. I don't want my peers to know that its hard for me to find work that fits my skills and pays well – everyone seems to assume that if your well known you automatically make tones of money. Its not always true.

I've been very involved in the Java industry. Two months after I started learning Java I started the Wisconsin Java User's group – that was back in the spring of 1996. Since than I've volunteered for all sorts of things from open source projects to JSRs and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. The culmination of all this altruism was being voted into the JCP Executive Committee last fall – an honor I've take very seriously.

I've done good things for our industry, but I feel its time to step back and let others have the glory. I have a family now. My boy, Henry is about 2 1/2, and my daughter, Olivia, is just 9 months. I need to look inward toward my family and put them first. That means I need to find a stable job with some longevity and hopefully something with a lot less travel. I think I was honored with the 9 of clubs because I've donated so much of my time to the Java community – people will probably laugh at that, but I can't think of any other reason. Working on expert groups, open source, and the JCP consume enormous amounts of time, but pays nothing, zip, zilch. That's ok, I knew that going into these endeavors and its expected that I should be able to leverage my contacts and name recognition into a living. I have done that to some extent, but it hasn't been easy. You still have to find work that fits your credentials and sell yourself at rates that are affordable – these are usually contradictory objectives after a certain point.

OK, so why this blog? Well, I'm hoping that someone will read it and say "Hey, I got just the job for this guy! What's his e-mail address?" (btw it is Richard@Monson-Haefel.com). Head hunters and other professional placement guys should not bother to contact me - you guys are evil.

There is another reason: On occasion I've had people ask me how they can manage their career to become more successful – to be more like me. This always makes me wince. I've been fortunate – no doubt about it – but I wouldn't recommend my life style to anyone. It’s a lot of work with very little pay. As I said, peer recognition is great – its probably the best recognition you can have – but making a living is not a bad thing either. I'm honored to be counted in that deck of cards with the likes of James Gosling, Rod Johnson, Gavin King and others – but its time to join a new deck – one that gives me more time with my family and actually pays a salary.

13 improvements for EJB

What struck me, after counting and grouping relevant posts, was that the developer community desperately desires a simpler programming model for EJB.

In particular developers appear to be most interested in the following:

1. Ditch CMP or make it simpler like Hibernate or JDO
2. Use a POJO programming model
3. Add support for Interceptors/filters/AOP.
4. Eliminate/Consolidate the component interfaces (remote, local and endpoint).
5. Make deployment descriptors more like XDoclet
6. Instance-level authentication/entitlement.
7. Replace the JNDI ENC with Dependency Injection (a.k.a. IoC).
8. Add a Mutable Application Level Context
9. Support development and testing outside the container system.
10. Define cluster-wide singletons for EJB.
11. Clearly specify and standardize class loading requirements.
12. Standardize the deployment directory structure for EJBs.
13. Support Inheritance.

Some of the items can be grouped together to give more weight to a particular approach. For example, item 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 13 all seem to point at a CMP programming model that is more like Hibernate. Hibernate uses a POJO programming model with dependency injection (IoC) and is not dependent on client interfaces. In addition, Hibernate applications can be developed and tested without a container system. A tip of the hat to Galvin King and crew.

Other items were interesting but not surprising like asking for an XDoclet-like vendor-agnostic deployment processes. This is a big concern of mine since EJB isn't really portable in its current incarnation – you can't just drop an EJB JAR into most J2EE servers without adding some vendor specific deployment information. Actually this aligns nicely with the request that EJB define a standard directory structure for deployments similar to Web components.

The mutable application level context was a surprise for me. Standardization and specification of class loading behavior was not a surprise. Requests for instance-level authorization was also expected – it's something developers have been asking for since EJB 1.0.

I was delighted to see so many posts on this subject. Clearly people feel there is much to be done. I was less excited to see the thread wander off into Spring vs. JBoss vs. Mike Spille territory – but I found those posts interesting too.

Obviously, there are better mechanisms for measuring public opinion than a blog. Perhaps someone will take on the task of organizing a more accurate pole, but for me the information and posts were very informative. I read every one of them. I greatly appreciate the time and effort so many put into responding. Thank you.

I'm sharing these findings with the JSR 220 (EJB 3.0) Expert Group and expect your comments will generate a lot of discussion and a great deal of solid action by the group members. Keep an eye on JSR 220, eventually it will make it into public review at which time you'll have something solid to review and comment on. Your feedback is critical to the success of EJB.

You can make EJB better

What do you like or dislike about EJB? If it's broke, how should we fix it?

This is an excellent chance for you to make a real difference. All I ask is that you stick to the facts and your own experiences. Please try to avoid flames, zingers, and debates so that I can make the most of your feedback.

The State of Geronimo

What does that mean? Well, it means that Geronimo, when it's ready, can be tested against Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). An application server has to pass the tests in TCK in order to be called "J2EE Compliant". The fact that Sun has extended this license to Apache, is a huge vote of confidence in the Geronimo project. It says that Sun believes that Geronimo is a legitimate application server that may, provided it passes the TCK, be called "J2EE Compliant." Although, ObjectWeb (another open source organization) was given the TCK scholarship (something Geronimo still needs), Geronimo is the first open source project to receive the license. The license gives you permission to run tests against the TCK, but it normally costs a butt-load of money to label an application server as compliant – that licensing fee is one of the ways that Sun realizes income on J2EE. The scholarship, on the other hand, is designed to support non-profit organizations. It basically waves the costs that commercial vendors are required to pay in order to use the "J2EE Computable" branding.

But wait! That's not all … it was also announced that Geronimo will be using OpenEJB as it EJB container system. Actually, several of the Geronimo folks have been hard at work on a new OpenEJB branch that can be used by Geronimo and the established OpenEJB community. This is an item close to my heart, as I co-founded the OpenEJB project with David Blevins four years ago. It's been a blast working with the OpenEJB code base again. My hat is off to David and the rest of the OpenEJB community – the fact that the Geronimo folks chose to use OpenEJB, rather than develop their own EJB container system is a huge endorsement of that project.

There is more to this, specifically about Geronimo collaborating with ObjectWeb, but I'll cover that tomorrow …

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