Vincent Brabant's Blog

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I am now a Sun Certified Programmer for the J2SE 5.0

Hurrah, Youppie, Yes, Great, ..

Today, I received my Examination Score Report where it's indicated that I am now a Sun Certified J2SE 5.0 Programmer.

I passed the exam the 1st February 2005.

Normally, we know directly, at the end of the exam, if we success or not, if we are certified or not.

But, in this case, it was not the case. I had to wait until today to know my results.

And I am now a Sun Certified Programmer for the J2SE 5.0.

But, IMHO, I would have failed.

I will explain you reasons why I have the status only today.
And why I would have failed.

Once upon a time, somewhere in Octobre 2004, I went to
a book festival in Brussels.
And I bought some Java Certification books for less than 5€.

# Mike Meyers' Java 2 Certification Passport (Exam 310-025)
# Sun Certification Training Guide (CS-310-025 & CX-310-027): Java 2 Programmer and Developer Exams, Second Edition

I was thinking that, for that price, it was always a good buy.

But I never look at them, until the 15 Decembre 2004, when Evelyn Cartagena, of Sun, posted this message: a call for candidates for the Programmer 5.0 Beta Certification Exam.

she said

Candidates will have four to five (4-5) hours to complete 138 questions. The time allotted should give you time to respond to all questions and provide your valuable comments while taking the exam.

After reflexion, I though it was a good opportunity. And for that price (in Belgium, it was only 40€), if I failed, it was not like I spend 150$.
It's always good to know about your knowledge level for your daily computer language. So, I decided to subscribe and start studying.

But the problem was the following: Objectives were not yet available. So, what to study?

I started with the great O'reilly book Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook. And I played with all examples of that book by using NetBeans 4.0. It was very useful because NetBeans 4.0 was already supporting the new JDK 5 language features.

I continued to study with the JDK 5, reading a nice French article of Lionel Roux (available on developpez.com), and by reading the draft of the third edition of the JLS (Java Language Specification), that was available at that url
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/java_language-3_0-mr-spec.zip.

(Please note that you can now freely download the PDF file. It is available at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/ ).

By reading those books, I learned a lot of things I didn't know about, before.
To be sure that I studied all new API of the J2SE 5, I also used a nice tool, called JDiff, that permits to see you on line the difference between J2SE 1.4.2 and 1.5.0.
So, I discovered that I had a lot of things to study.

What I forgot, and it was mentionned in the call of 15 Decembre, was that they posted, the 20 Decembre, objectives of the exam.

So, I was able to enhance my preparation. But the date of 1st February was there.

Continue Reading...

MetaData existed before JDK 1.5

The J2SE 1.5 metadata feature is a facility that allows developers to annotate their code so that tools can generate boilerplate code (e.g stub generation to remote procedure calls) as directed by annotations.

And think about those interfaces: Serializable and Cloneable.

Those interfaces are empty.
They contains nothing.

But they are used to give directive to the compiler to generate the correct code.
They are working like metadata but are recognized directly by the compiler.

• Will we see a javac that will recognize standard metatag and generate directly the .class file(s) as it recognizes now the Cloneable and Serializable, that are ancestors of metatag.
  Serializable and Cloneable metadata are implemented as interface. And then, they have a clear Javadoc page, explaining exactly their meaning, etc.
• Can we do the same with metadata ? When I look at examples, I haven't yet seen it it possible. And I find it's a bad thing.

Why do we need more that one source directory for one project ?

Dear all,

Did you remember one of my blog concerning the usage of Ant to manage project ?

It seems that Netbeans people read my blog and will use Ant-Driven Project in next release of NetBeans. I really think it will be a plus.

But the really good new is that they success to hide the fact that their new notion of project is managed by Ant script. You really can ignore the fact.

But, comparing to old way of work, they introduced somes limitations.

For example, Imagine the following structure

Project
|-- src
| |-- org
| | |-- netbeans
| | | |-- MyClass.java
|-- build
| |-- classes
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- MyClass.class
|--doc
| |-- api
|-- test
| |-- org
| |-- netbeans
| | |-- MyClassTest.java
|-- database
| |-- org
| |-- netbeans
| | |-- database
| | | |-- CreateMyTable.sqlj
|-- resources
| |-- dev
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- itt
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- uat
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- prd
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties


When I am running on my PC the MyClass.java, I am using the src and resources/dev as source directories. Everything that are in the sources directories will be in the jar file.

Also, I like to keep somes classes in a totally separate directory, because they are special classes,

• like classes that use JNI.
• like classes that need to be "precompiled" by xdoclet, for example
• like sqlj classes that need the sqlj precompiler

Also, when I have to write somes tests for my web project, I like to have a directory containing HTTPUnit tests and another directory for JUNIT tests.

Both are tests for the same project, but having not the same purpose

But now, they decided to add the following constraints one source directory for one project. (if we ignore the fact that your tests are in a separate directory).

But, personally, I liked to have more than one source directory in the same project.

I really don't want to create a project, only for somes classes.

The problem is that I have no solid arguments to really have more than one source directory in the same project.

That's the reason I need your help.

If you are using more than one source directory in your project, could you post here the reason why.

If you are never using more than one source directory in your project, could you also teach me how to change my way of building a project ? Brabant Vincent

NetBeans at FOSDEM

The 21 and 22 February, in brussel, belgium, were organized the fourth session of FOSDEM.

Ian Formanek, of NetBeans, had two sessions planned for FOSDEM 2004.

During his talk, Ian did a presentation of new features integrated into NetBeans IDE 3.6 Beta but also, and that was a sneak preview, features integrated into NetBeans IDE 4.0.

Especially the Ant Based Project Management System.

Normally, I would be there, but it was finally not possible for me to be present. So, if you were in the audience, can you give me your comments, and say me what you think about NB4.0 and the Ant Based Project Management System.

Thanks a lot.

Brabant Vincent

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