The Programming Architect

Cron and File Extensions

2011-12-10T17:33:00.001+01:00

I created a script using TAR to backup my data on Ubuntu.
The script was putted to /etc/cron.daily but I didn't run!
After some investigations I found out that in /etc/cron.*/ directories no file extension or dots in the file name are allowed.

So be careful how you name your scripts that should run with cron.

OpenWebBeans Bootstrap in Java SE

2011-12-07T22:11:00.001+01:00

It took me a while to get OpenWebBeans in Java SE up and running. Find below an example on how to bootstrap OWB:

ContainerLifecycle lifecycle = WebBeansContext.currentInstance().getService(ContainerLifecycle.class);
lifecycle.startApplication(null);

BeanManager beanManager = lifecycle.getBeanManager();
Bean<?> bean = beanManager.getBeans(B.class).iterator().next();

B b = (B) lifecycle.getBeanManager().getReference(bean, B.class, beanManager.createCreationalContext(bean));
b.foo();

jtoggl a Java API for Toggl

2011-11-16T12:02:00.001+01:00

Toggl is a great tool for time tracking. Specially if you work for multiple clients and/or projects at the same time.

Toggl provides a REST/JSON API and several samples in various programming languages. But one thing was missing a Java wrapper for the Toggl API.

So I decided to create one. You can find the project on Google code. It's called jtoggl.

If you have any suggestions or find any problems please let me know. You can use the issue tracker.

JBoss User Group Neuchatel

2011-10-24T14:44:00.001+02:00

Since September 2011 there is a JBoss User Group (JBUG) in Neuchatel.
There were already two events.

JBUG Neuchatel Intro & JBoss AS7
OpenShift, the Red Hat cloud offering (I will blog about OpenShift and Java EE soon)

The next event will be about Infinispan on November 23rd 2011

If you are interested in any Java and JBoss releated stuff feel free to join:http://community.jboss.org/groups/jbug-neuchatel

The events will be held monthly.

GlassFish Console hanging

2011-06-29T17:07:00.003+02:00

If you are not able to login to the admin console of GlassFish you can try to disable the update center:
http://techmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/glassfish-v3-admin-console-taking-too.html

JBoss 5.1.0 as Windows Service

2011-05-16T15:28:00.000+02:00

Today we had a problem starting JBoss as a Windows Service on Windows Server 2008. After some time we had a PermGenSpace OutOfMemoryError.

To fix that have a look at https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBAS-7290

Wicket on Google App Engine

2011-01-29T13:24:00.001+01:00

I found a good description how to use Wicket on Google App Engine.

Have a look: http://stronglytypedblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/wicket-on-google-app-engine.html

PASV FTP with IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003

2011-01-21T20:00:00.000+01:00

After some hours I finally get PASV FTP up and running on Windows Server 2003.
Here how to do it:

First set the port range:
C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set /MSFTPSVC/PassivePortRange "5500-5550"

Then open the port range to the firewall
FOR /L %I IN (5500,1,5550) DO NETSH FIREWALL ADD PORTOPENING TCP %I FTPPort%I

Finally reset the IIS
iisreset

That's all. Easy, isn't it ;-)

Java EE 6 on Microsoft Azure

2011-01-19T12:32:00.001+01:00

David Chou, a Microsoft architect, describes how to run Java EE 6 with GlassFish in the Microsoft cloud Windows Azure.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2011/01/17/run-java-with-glassfish-in-windows-azure.aspx

Improvement of Java Will Continue

2010-11-17T09:32:00.000+01:00

There are for new JSRs announced on jcp.org

It seams that Java will be continued by Oracle.

Spring to Java EE

2010-10-12T08:45:00.000+02:00

I found a nice article from Lincoln Baxter III:
Link to the article

It's about moving from Spring to Java EE and the differences between them.

IEEE 1028 Standard for Software Reviews

2010-10-06T11:05:00.001+02:00

In these days quality assuarance in software development projects is more important then ever.
Reviews are a good thing beside tests to check if the software under development meets the definied architecture and standards.
IEEE has a standard for reviews. It's called IEEE 1028 (2008) standard for software reviews.

The IEEE 1028 defines five types of reviews:
- Management reviews
- Technical reviews
- Inspections
- Walk-throughs
- Audits

The standard describes the purpose of these five types and defines how to use these review technics. It's really worth reading.

I've found a copy of IEEE 1028 (1997) for free: http://membres.multimania.fr/benoitouellet/Peer_rev.pdf

If you would like to have the newest version you can buy it form IEEE here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4601584

Integrating SeleniumHQ and Maven2

2010-08-04T19:59:00.011+02:00

After some days with SeleniumHQ and Maven2 I want to share the finally working configuration. Maybe this could help someone doing the same.

Add Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
<groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
<artifactId>selenium</artifactId>
<version>2.0a4</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Run Configuration

I used the maven-failsafe-plugin to run the SeleniumHQ regression tests in the integration-test phase. The Selenium RC is started with the plugin on port 1234. If you run the tests on a Linux build server without x-server you can find information on the plugin page.

The maven-failsafe-plugin runs any tests with the pattern *IT.java (Surefire uses *Test.java).

<build>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>selenium-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>start-server</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<background>true</background>
<port>1234</port>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<systemPropertyVariables>
<buildDir>${project.build.directory}</buildDir>
<selenium.server>${selenium.server}</selenium.server>
<selenium.port>${selenium.port}</selenium.port>
<selenium.browser>${selenium.browser}</selenium.browser>
<selenium.url>${selenium.url}</selenium.url>
</systemPropertyVariables>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>integration-test</id>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>verify</id>
<goals>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</build>

Remark
To run the regression tests against several browsers and Selenium RC servers I added some system properties:

<selenium.server>${selenium.server}</selenium.server>
<selenium.port>${selenium.port}</selenium.port>
<selenium.browser>${selenium.browser}</selenium.browser>
<selenium.url>${selenium.url}</selenium.url>

They can be used in the JUnit Selenium tests like that:

@BeforeClass
public static void startUp() {
String server = System.getProperty("selenium.server", "localhost");
int port = Integer.parseInt(System.getProperty("selenium.port", "1234"));
String browser = System.getProperty("selenium.browser", "*iexploreproxy");
String url = System.getProperty("selenium.url", "http://www.xyz.com:8080/");
selenium = new DefaultSelenium(server, port, browser, url);
selenium.start();
}

These properties will be set in be default as you can see above or via profiles in the POM:

<profiles>
<profile>
<id>localhost</id>
<properties>
<selenium.server>localhost</selenium.server>
<selenium.port>1234</selenium.port>
<selenium.browser>*chrome</selenium.browser>
<selenium.url>http://localhost:8080/</selenium.url>
</properties>
</profile>
</profiles>

Simply run the build i.e. mvn install -P localhost to activate the profile.

Skipping Integration Tests

If you need to skip the integration tests you can do this by adding -DskipITs=true. I.e

mvn -DskipITs=true <goal>

Lambda Expressions in Java

2010-07-15T08:25:00.000+02:00

As you may know I'm not a big fan of adding closures to the next Java release. Or in other words: don't put stuff to the Java programming language that is not really necessary. In my opinion there are a lot of other missing features but this will come in another blog entry.

A few days ago Brian Goetz wrote about the state of lambda in Java and I think it's worth to check it out - even for lambda opponents:
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/lambda/lambda-state-2.html

EJB 3.1, JUnit and GlassFish Embedded incl. JPA and JDBC DataSource

2010-06-14T08:56:00.000+02:00

Today I have my JUnit tests with GlassFish embedded up and running and like to share how to configure it.

First we have a look at how to run the tests with the EJBContainer from EJB 3.1:

public class ConfigurationServiceTest {

   private static EJBContainer container;
   private static ConfigurationService service;

   @BeforeClass
   public static void setUpClass() throws Exception {
   container = EJBContainer.createEJBContainer();
   service = (ConfigurationService) container.getContext().lookup("java:global/classes/ConfigurationService");
   }

   @AfterClass
   public static void tearDownClass() throws Exception {
   container.close();
   }

   /**
   * Test of findConfiguration method, of class ConfigurationService.
   */
   @Test
   public void testFindConfiguration() throws Exception {
   Configuration configuration = service.findConfiguration();
   System.out.println("From Configuration: " + configuration.getNextNewsletterSendDate());
   }
}

The most important line is the lookup of the EJB:

container.getContext().lookup(
"java:global/classes/ConfigurationService");

Every found EJB is deployed to the embedded server and the JNDI name is built using java:global/classes and then the simple class name of the EJB.

That was all very straight forward. But then I had a problem configuring the JDBC datasource that the service needs using JPA.

And again the solution was very simple. Just create the path org/glassfish/embed in classpath and add the domain.xml file from your "normal" GlassFish server. After copying you may want to do some cleanup with the file. You can delete everything that is under <system-applications /> and <applications /> because your application will run based on the classpath.

That's it.

When you want to us it with Maven2 simply put a new dependency in pom.xml.

Hint: In some situation it is best to have it as the first dependency!

<groupId>org.glassfish.extras</groupId>

<artifactId>glassfish-embedded-all</artifactId>

</dependency>

Have fun!

Google I/O: App Engine, VMware, SQL

2010-05-19T20:37:00.000+02:00

In my opinion today at Google I/O two incredible announcements were made.

1. Google and VMware are working together on a PaaS clound:
http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2010/05/google-and-vmwares-open-paas-strategy.html

Until yesterday I was sure that Java EE 6 will kill Spring Framework in the next few years, but now we have a clear statement for a PaaS (Platform as a Service) cloud based on Spring Framework. In contrast there is no PaaS solution based on Java EE 6. This will make Spring Framework more popular again!

2. Google App Engine Business
http://code.google.com/appengine/business/

Google announced a business version of their app engine. This is not very revolutionary on a first view, but they will add SQL database support to the business app engine. This will make it possible to port existing applications to the app engine. Which was till now nearly impossible because one had to use BigTable and a migration from RDBMS to BigTable is a complete refactoring.

Spring and SQL DB in the Google app engine will make the killer platform for a lot of applications at a very low cost. I'm curios what the reaction of Oracle, IBM, RedHat/JBoss will be...

Missing Feature in Bean Validation

2010-05-17T10:47:00.000+02:00

After using Bean Validation for some month I had a problem that I couldn't solve.

It's not possible to add "dynamic" parameters to the validation message. For example if you want to pass the id of your entity that fails and want to use that id in your custom MessageInterpolator.

We solved this be adding the parameters at the end of the message separated by #. So we could extract them in our MessageInterpolator and exchange {0}...{n} to the parameters passed.

But in my opinion this is an evil hack!
My suggestion is to change the type of the message in the method interpolate of the MessagInterpolator to something like ValidationMessage that could have a collection of object as parameters.

I will post this as a feature request to the JSR 303 expert group.

First Thing I'm Missing in Java EE 6 Web Profile

2010-05-16T14:33:00.000+02:00

After several weeks weeks using Java EE 6 Web Profile I discovered the first missing spec: JAX-RS.

I'm currently developing a simple web application and now wanted to add an interface for a PHP CMS. But how to create an interface without web services capabilities?

I think I will have to move to a full featured Java EE 6 application just to have JAX-RS :-(

NetBeans vs. Eclipse (Again)

2010-03-27T11:28:00.000+01:00

Because of some driver problems I had to reinstall Windows 7 on my notebook (Yes, I use Windows!). This took a while and then I was ready to install my IDEs. I use Eclipse an NetBeans in parallel, depending on what the customer uses.

Again I recognized an extreme difference in the installation procedure. Here the steps I had to do:

NetBeans

Download IDE and, hey surprise, GlassFish is bundled as well!
Install it
Run NetBeans
Check out project from SVN. NetBeans asks me to download/install SVN. After a click and a restart NetBeans is ready to use.
Start developing using Maven2, Java EE 6 and GlassFish

Eclipse

Download Eclipse
Download GlassFish
Run Eclipse
Decide if I want to use Subversive or Subclipse. I prefer Subclipse.
Install Subclipse
Install m2eclipse
Install GlassFish integration
Restart IDE
Checkout project from SVN
Start developing using Maven2, Java EE 6 and GlassFish

As you can see, NetBeans brings all you need and it's very easy to install and use. Where as Eclipse doesn't contain any plugins that are used these days in the industry (Maven2, Subversion, etc.)

To do a quick start I recommend NetBeans. And if you want to use Eclipse make a backup after you have installed all the plugins!

How JavaBean Properties Should Look Like

2010-03-17T11:35:00.003+01:00

During a discussion about JavaBean properties in JSF managed beans and entity classes I had an idea for simplify the usage of properties. Because specially in managed beans the getter and setter are annoying and make the code hard to read.

In my opinion the C# way is straight forward:

public class TimePeriod {
    private double hours;

    public double Hours {
        get { return hours; }
        set { hours = value; }
    }
}

But for a simple case like this the C# way is still to complicated.
So why not use annotations and a new modifier called property. For example

public class TimePeriod {

@Get @Set
    property double hours;
}

With the annotations one defines if a property is read-write, write-only or read-only. The new keyword "property" defines how to access the property.I like the possibility in C# to use = operator for getting and setting the properties value. So "property" indicates that one can use = to access the value.

And if you don't like the default behavior you could still override the get and set method for the property.

NetBeans toString() Generator Plugin Moved

2010-03-17T10:19:00.000+01:00

Due to the ambiguous information of Oracle/Sun concerning Project Kenai I decided to move all my projects from Project Kenai to Google Code.

Please find the NetBeans toString() Generator Plugin there.

JPA and Bean Validation

2010-03-03T14:28:00.000+01:00

Nice article from Antonio Goncalves about integration Bean Validation and JPA:
http://agoncal.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/bean-validation-with-jpa-1-0/

In JPA 2.0 the integration is defined but It describes an easy integration with JPA 1.0 as well.

1000+ Downloads of NetBeans toString()

2010-01-09T11:06:00.001+01:00

My NetBeans toString() plugin seams to be a great success.
This week I had more than 1000 downloads.

More information and download of plugin can be found here:
http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=21008

Article on Java EE 6 from Dirk Weil

2009-12-18T11:08:00.000+01:00

On JAXEnter Dirk Weil published an article about Java EE 6 which was released as final on December 10th.
http://it-republik.de/jaxenter/artikel/Java-EE-6-auf-einen-Blick-2759.html

He (and also I do) hope that the disrepute of J(2)EE will disappear because Java EE 6 is really a lean framework with just everything you need to develop an enterprise application.
In my opinion frameworks like Spring are no longer needed if you can use a Java EE 6 compliant application server like Glassfish 3 or JBoss 6.
And even the backing beans of JSF can be avoided with EJB 3.1 now. Read more about that topic:
http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/ejb_3_1_killed_the

Great Article why to use Java EE 6 from Adam Bien

2009-12-16T09:17:00.003+01:00

In his most recent post Adam Bien descibes 9 reasons why Java EE 6 is a lightweight and investment protecting solution for building scalable enterprise applications.
I completly agree with these arguments and hope that many developers will continue or start to use Java EE.

9 Reasons Why Java EE 6 Will Save Real Money - Or How To Convince Your Management

If you live in Switzerland and want to learn about Java EE there is a great course at the University of Applied Science in Bern.
CAS Enterprise Application Development Java EE

NetBeans toString() Generator in Plugin Spotlight

2009-10-21T14:18:00.001+02:00

We are proud to announce that since Monday our toString() Generator plugin is listed the current plugin spotlight on NetBeans.org.

Create Custom JSF Facelet Component

2009-09-29T13:56:00.002+02:00

Because it took me a while to find the right steps I don't want to hold back my findings:

1. Create a facelet taglib:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE facelet-taglib PUBLIC
"-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Facelet Taglib 1.0//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/dtd/facelet-taglib_1_0.dtd">
<facelet-taglib>
    <namespace>http://unibe.ch/tags</namespace>
    <tag>
        <tag-name>publikation</tag-name>
        <component>
            <component-type>unibe.PublikationComponent</component-type>
        </component>
    </tag>
</facelet-taglib>

2. Add taglib to web.xml

<context-param>

  <param-name>facelets.LIBRARIES</param-name>
  <param-value>/WEB-INF/facelets/publikation.taglib.xml</param-value>

</context-param>

3. Add component to faces-config.xml

<component>

  <component-type>unibe.PublikationComponent</component-type>

  <component-class>ch.unibe.search.ui.PublikationComponent</component-class>

</component>

4. Implement Component. (I just extended UIOutput for my purposes):

public class PublikationComponent extends UIOutput {

    private PublikationTO getPublikation() {
        ValueExpression ve = getValueExpression("item");
        if (ve != null) {
            return (PublikationTO) ve
                    .getValue(getFacesContext().getELContext());
        } else {
            return null;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void encodeBegin(FacesContext context) throws IOException {
        final ResponseWriter writer = context.getResponseWriter();
        PublikationTO publikation = this.getPublikation();
        if (publikation != null) {
            writer.startElement("p", null);
            for (AutorTO autor : publikation.getAutoren()) {
                if (autor.getId() == null) {
                    writer.writeText(autor.getName() + ", "
                            + autor.getVorname(), null);
                    writer.writeText(" ", null);
                } else {
                    writer.startElement("a", null);
                    writer.writeAttribute("href", "result.jsf?autorId="
                            + autor.getId(), null);
                    writer.writeText(autor.getName() + ", "
                            + autor.getVorname(), null);
                    writer.endElement("a");
                    writer.writeText(" ", null);
                }
            }
            writer.writeText("(" + publikation.getJahr() + ") ", null);
            writer.writeText(publikation.getTitel(), null);
            writer.endElement("p");
        } else {
            writer.write("Fehler");
        }
    }
}

5. Use your component

<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
    xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
    xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
    xmlns:unibe="http://unibe.ch/tags" template="/template.xhtml">
    <ui:define name="content">
        <h1>Resultate</h1>
        <h:dataTable id="items" value="#{search.results}" var="result">
            <h:column>
                <unibe:publikation item="#{result}" />    
            </h:column>
        </h:dataTable>
        <h:messages layout="table" style="font-size:12px;" />
    </ui:define>
</ui:composition>

That's it ;-)

NetBeans toString() Generator Version 0.3.0

2009-09-11T13:40:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Christians help we could release a new version of the toString() generator for NetBeans. You can download it here.

Please also find the release notes on the NetBeans plugin portal.

Currently we just have all features of Eclipse 3.5 toString() generator implemented.
You can find out what keeping us busy in JIRA.

Any feature requests are highly appreciated!

Chrisitan Pervoelz joined NetBeans toString() Generator Project

2009-09-09T14:09:00.000+02:00

Today Chrisitan Pervoelz from Berlin joined the Kenai project nbtostring
Welcome to the team!

With his help we will able to release faster new versions. Today we release 0.2.0. It contains two improvements: 1) existing toString() well be overwritten 2) you can choose how the toString() is generated (String concatenation or StringBuilder)
Download 0.2.0

First very basic version of toString() Generator for NetBeans released

2009-09-07T16:32:00.003+02:00

I was faster than expected and released a first version of the toString() generator. It is very basic in the moment but I'm working on it to add all features of Eclipse 3.5 toString() generator.

nbtostring in the News

2009-09-07T10:36:00.002+02:00

Today my NetBeans toString() generator is mentioned in the German news of JAXenter.

I will try to hurry and release a first version next week.

Open Source Discussion in Swiss Government

2009-09-03T10:40:00.002+02:00

In the last few month there were several discussions about open source usage in government or educational sector in Switzerland. Even the parliament is discussion about that topic.
My question in this debate is if the parliamentarians now what open source really means?!

A lot of people think that first of all open source software is free respectively that closed source software isn't free of charge. But both expectations are wrong!

If we have a look at the Java EE application server market we see that some vendors like JBoss or Sun have open source licenses but if compare them the whole package with support, patches etc. with vendors with closed source licenses there is sometimes not a big difference between these two.
That's an important fact, because if you have problems with the product in production you are dependent on patches from the vendor. And you wont get these if you don't pay for it!

As a conclusion if you are just a user of the software and are not able to change or even read the code, there is no difference between open and closed software.

Don't get me wrong, because I'm a big fan of open source and collaborate in several open source projects but keep my argument in mind if you discuss with "non IT people".

Your opinion is highly appreciated.

NetBeans toSting() Generator Plugin: Project Started

2009-08-25T10:35:00.001+02:00

The toString() generator in Eclipse Galileo is very good.
Unfortunately in NetBeans this functionality is missing.

That's why I decided to start a Kenai project:
http://kenai.com/projects/nbtostring

Creating code generators in NetBeans is very easy. There is a project template that will create everything to start. Now I will have a look how Eclipse implemented the toString() generation.

Two Weeks with NetBeans 6.7

2009-07-24T14:01:00.002+02:00

Because of Adam Biens Java EE patterns and best practices project on Kenai i started to use NetBeans 6.7.

In earlier days I had a bad impression of NetBeans. I thought it was slow and so completely different compared to Eclipse. Maybe it was my age making it harder to switch from on IDE to another ;-)

Now I started a new project and decided to use NetBeans and Maven2. I used it very extensively during the last weeks.

And I'm impressed! The integration of Maven2 in NetBeans is really great! It doesn't create additional project configuration it simply uses the pom.xml!

On the other hand I mostly used JUDE UML for UML modeling. But with NetBeans it's no longer necessary to use an external tool because there is an UML plugin that really works! Even the synchronization with the source code is not to bad.

Compared with Eclipse NetBeans feels like an Integrated Development Environment and not like a platform with some plugins in it.

After this time with NetBeans I will go one working with it. But I will use Eclipse for my "legacy" code.

Google Chrome Operating System

2009-07-08T11:38:00.000+02:00

What I always expected becomes true!
Google will develop his own operating system called Google Chrome OS.
Read more in the offical Google Blog.

JPA Constructor Expression Quiz

2009-06-02T19:25:00.006+02:00

Assume the following query with constructor expression:

SELECT NEW jpa.to.ContainerTO(p, e.name) FROM Employee e JOIN e.phones p

Question: What is the Type of p in the constructor expression?

1. Collection of Phone
2. Object
3. Phone
4. none of the above

The correct answer is 3!

I would like a collection of Phone because that's what I expected and what the navigation to e.phones tells me. But in reality it returns a cartesian product of Employee and Phone which means that I have to care myself.

I asked Mike Keith and here's his answer:

The spec defines identification variables such that they represent instances, not collections.
When you alias a JOIN the alias represents each instance of the collection, so in your example "p" represents each phone in the collection (for each row in the cartesian product).

There is a section in Chapter 4 in the spec on "Identification Variables" that explains this if you like going to the spec for reference.

Thanks a lot to Mike for his clarification!

Java 6 Annotation Processor API

2009-05-25T16:27:00.002+02:00

In JPA 2.0 the Java 6 Annotaion Processor API will be used to generate the meta model.

Today I found a nice introduction to this Annontation Processor API on java.net. Read on.

@Inject Posted to JCP

2009-05-21T17:11:00.004+02:00

Today Bob Lee et al. posted the proposal of @Inject to JCP.

In the updated version they for see some additional XML configuration to tell the injecter what it should inject. That makes it much saver in bigger environments.

That's what I always had in simject. I don't trust the magic of some other DI frameworks when they do some auto injection.

Dependency Injection Standardized

2009-05-05T23:19:00.000+02:00

Today Bob Lee (founder of Google Guice) announced the proposal for a java specification request (JSR) to standardize the annotations for dependency injection. Google and SpringSource will collaborate in this specification.
This spec will help to make DI portable and framework independant. simject will for sure base on this spec ;-)

gted 1.5.4 with Advanced Domain Support

2009-04-28T12:55:00.000+02:00

In gted 1.5.4 the --default-domain setting is now used all over the gted tools integration.
Which means that it's now longer necessary to name .po and .pot files messages.po or messages.pot.
The filename will be the same as --default-domain value.

Please let me know if you have more features that you like to have in gted!

Oracle Buys Sun!

2009-04-20T14:53:00.000+02:00

Today Oracle announced the acquisiton of Sun! Read offical news.

What does this mean to the Java community?
First Oracle has no one of the biggest open source databases in his portfolio: MySQL!
In the past few month Sun always compared the TCO of MySQL with Oracle.
What will be the postion of MySQL for Oracle?

From the Java language side I think it doesn't matter wether Oracle or IBM owns Java because both are mighty players in the Java Community Process.

On the operating system side maybe Oracle can enhance the status of Solaris as the standard OS for Oracle.

I'm very currios what will happen during the next few month...

Where Does the Eclipse Code Comes From?

2009-04-14T10:43:00.003+02:00

Currently there is a debate about the future of Eclipse.

Did you ever wondering where the code of Eclipse comes from?
On the Eclipse Company/Project Dashboard you find the answer.
Around 50% of the code comes from IBM!

For me that's no surprise because IBM was the initiator/founder of Eclipse.

Maven How-Tos

2009-04-14T10:40:00.001+02:00

There is a post in the Sonatype Blog which summarizes very useful how-toes for Maven.
A must for every Maven user!

Have a look.

Google App Engine with Java Support

2009-04-08T09:44:00.001+02:00

A while a go I wrote about my first steps with Google App Engine. This was a quite impressive experience but I don't really like to program in Python.

Now Google provides Java support for the App Engine. Read more

8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography in Your Design

2009-04-07T10:55:00.001+02:00

Antonio Carusone wrote an interesting article about typography improvement. Read his article

JPA 2.0 Proposed Final Draft

2009-04-01T11:28:00.001+02:00

Spec lead Linda DeMichiel describes in her blog all the new features.

Specially the Criteria API will change the way queries could be exposed:

For example:

QueryBuilder qb = em.getQueryBuilder();
CriteriaQuery q = qb.create();
Root customer = q.from(Customer.class);
Join item = customer.join(Customer_.orders).join(Order_.items);
q.where(qb.equals(item.get(Item_.product).get(Product_.productType), "printer"))
 .select(customer.get(Customer_.name));

You may wonder what Customer_.orders or Oders_.items is. This comes from the new Metamodel API also introduced in JPA 2.0. The classes with the prefix _ contains alle the meta information of your entities which looks like that:

import javax.persistence.metamodel.*;
@TypesafeMetamodel
public class Customer_ {
    public static volatile Attribute custId;
    public static volatile Attribute name;
    public static volatile Set orders;
    ...
}

Together with the Metamodel API the Criteria API becomes no type save!
This comes very close to .NETs LINQ! Which in my opinion is a big step for JPA!

Do you know all HTML Tags?

2009-03-24T12:45:00.001+01:00

Glen Stansberry wrote an article about 10 rare used HTML tags.

To be honest I didn't knew any of these ten tags and I use HTML since more than 12 years!

How to build a performing dream developer team

2009-03-22T17:24:00.002+01:00

In Computerwoche there is an interesting article about a session that Adam Bien held on the OOP conference.

For the most part I agree with the conclusions.

My experience shows that one of the most important fact is to have people how speak the same language. And with language I don't mean English or German. I mean the way they think, work together etc.

If you have a team member who is not accepted by the team or does not follow the team rules he should not stay in the team. Because the team spirit is at risk and the project can fail because of one inacceptable person.

What's your experience and what did you do if you had some one who didn't fit into the team?

How to Improve Web Typography

2009-03-17T12:46:00.001+01:00

Mindy Wagner posted a very interesting post about improving typography on websites:
5 Simple Ways to Improve Web Typograph

I will for sure adapt his proposals to my websites!

EJB 3.1: Proposed Final Draft available

2009-03-13T12:27:00.001+01:00

Since March 6th the proposed final draft of EJB 3.1 is out.

You can send comments to jsr-318-comments@jcp.org

Google Android

2009-03-11T15:00:00.001+01:00

I found a very interesting article in German from Konrad Hübner and Henning Böger about Google Android on JAXenter.

When I have time this spring I will for sure try Google Android and I hope that in a the near future there will be smart phones available in Switzerland!

JPA TopLink and Cache

2009-03-10T08:29:00.002+01:00

Most of the JPA implementations are using one or more caches to improve performance.
Wonseok Kim describs in his block the behavior of TopLink Essentials.

Reading this article gives you a good idea how caching could affect the behavior of your application.

Proposals for Java Language Changes: Project Coin

2009-03-09T12:45:00.001+01:00

In Joseph D. Darcy's Sun Weblog one can find a list with the proposals for project coin.

In my opinion there are some very useful extensions like Lightweight Properties proposed.

Have a look and let me or better Joseph know what you are thinking.

Scrum Tools

2009-03-08T09:21:00.003+01:00

For all of you how are using Scrum there is a list and reviews of current Scrum Tools.

Check it out!

simject and JSR 303 Bean Validation

2009-02-23T09:10:00.001+01:00

Currently I'm working on a new feature to inject the Validator of JSR 303 Bean Validation using the @Resource annotation. e.g.

@Resource

private Validator validator;

I think this is useful extension, because in my opinion JSR 303 will become a very important part of the Java API in the future.

Eclipse e4 0.9M1 released

2009-02-11T14:40:00.007+01:00

The first milestone of the next Eclipse generation e4 is out now!
They are rebuilding Eclipse to make it a better application platform and enable it for use in web applications.

Version Control for Solo Developers?

2009-01-28T13:33:00.012+01:00

In his post Ernie Leseberg describes the advantages of version control even for small to one developer teams.
I never thougth about that before! Because in my opinion it's common to use version control and it doesn't matter how big the team is! We have year 2009!

Jetty Proposed as Eclipse Project

2009-01-28T11:06:00.005+01:00

The popular web container Jetty is proposed to be an Eclipse project. Read more.

gted 1.5.0 released

2009-01-13T20:54:00.001+01:00

Today I made a new version of gted. It includes to new options for xgettext and msgfmt:

#1993779: .pot file name as option
#2500775: Added -r option for Java output.
Thanks a lot to Martin for his patch!

Public Review of JSR-303 Bean Validation Started

2009-01-07T13:58:00.004+01:00

You can find the spec on the JSR page.

Because Bean Validation will have impact on how validation is done in Java EE it contains a section about integration in JPA 2.0. There will several changes related to the DDL generation. See the extract of this proposal:

The list of constraints that must be understood by persistence providers are as followed:

@NotNull should be considered equivalent to @Column(nullable=false) / @JoinColumn(nullable=false)
@Size.max should be considered equivalent to @Column.length for String properties
@Digits (which contains integer and fraction) should be considered equivalent to @Column.precision = integer+fraction, @Column.scale = fraction for decimal columns

Persistence Provider should optionally recognize and try to apply the following constraints as well:

@Min / @Max on numeric columns (TODO String too?)
@Future / @Past on temporal columns
@Size for collections and array (not sure it is feasible)

JPA 2.0 will become even better!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T22:17:00.001+01:00

I wish you all a successful new year!

Personally 2009 will be a big challenge for sure! There will be a lot of work on my new job and maybe there will be some surprises...

gted 1.5.0 will be released soon

2008-12-22T14:22:00.003+01:00

New feature:
--default-domain will be configurable. So the files no longer need to be named messages.po

Prototyp with NetBeans RCP Started

2008-12-16T20:39:00.001+01:00

We decided to use NetBeans RCP for a first prototyp of our new GUI platform.
The main reason behind the decision is that NetBeans RCP is based on Java standards and we hope that it will support all new specs like Beans Binding and Bean Validation in the future.

I hope to publish first experiences soon.

To RCP or not to RCP

2008-11-13T11:46:00.001+01:00

In my current project we are thinking about the use of a new GUI framework.
Unfortunatly I can't find a framework that fits our needs.

Our requirments are:

Swing
Plugin mechanism
Validation
Data binding
Event listening
Eclipse IDE for development

I think the first and the last requirement conflict. So there is NetBeans RCP wich uses Swing but it's not simply possible to develop in Eclipse IDE and on the other hand we have Eclipse RCP but this uses SWT instead of Swing. So none of them are 100% match.
Then I found Java Plugin Framework which looks good. But there is the problem that there are no predefined Extensions to use.

So it's a dilemma! Any suggestions are very welcome!

Are EJBs Cool?

2008-10-29T18:00:00.001+01:00

This is the question in Adam Beans articel on JavaWorld.

And yes they are ;-) But read it yourself.

New Java Date

2008-09-19T10:25:00.002+02:00

In JSR 310 a new Date API will be defined. It is proposed to replace java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar in Java SE 7.

Read on at java.net

Last Day at Swiss Railways

2008-09-18T08:00:00.000+02:00

Today is my last day at Swiss Railways.
After 18 years I decided to look for a new challenge and I found a new job as teamleader at ACS Solutions Switzerland Ltd.

ACS provides ticketing systems for transportation companies all over the world.
In my new job starting on October 1. I will be responsable for a small team of software developers working on the backend system.

The time at Swiss Railways was very interesting an I will enjoy my last day.

New version of simject without external dependencies

2008-08-28T07:02:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I released simject 1.3.0.

From this version simject doesn't depend on any third party libarary or framework.
Commons HttpUtil, XStream and Log4j were replaced by standard Java SE features like HttpUrlConnection, XMLEndoder and XMLDecoder and java.util.logging

This alows to use simject in any environment and it's even more simple.

gted 1.4.1 with Java 5 support

2008-08-18T19:00:00.000+02:00

gted 1.4.0 unfortunately only supported Java 1.6 and above.
I like to aplogise to all Java 5 users!

Now 1.4.1 fixes that bug. You can find more information on gted.org

gted 1.4.0

2008-08-12T19:00:00.002+02:00

A new version of gted is available now.

It adds a highly requested feature --from-code to specify the codepage.

Please help me improve gted by adding feature requests and bug reports on the SourceForge project site.

JSR 303

2008-08-11T18:38:00.002+02:00

Today I found the very interesting JSR 303 Bean Validation.

There is a presentation from Emmanuel Bernard from this years JavaOne which gives a very good overview.

The main idea is to provide annotaions for validaion support like @NotNull, @Length(max=30) etc. This validation will also be used in Java Persistence API to define the constraints and also for the automatic database generation.

simject 1.1.0 with additonal remoting configuration

2008-08-01T14:55:00.002+02:00

In the new simject 1.1.0 release I added some advanced remoting configuration.

By adding either xml: or bin: before the http://... one can definie if simejct should use XStream for XML serialization or if it should do normal Java serialization.

The binary protocol can improve the performance when sending or receiving large objects.

simject new version 1.0.5

2008-07-31T21:50:00.003+02:00

I made some Maven2 project refactoring and released 1.0.5 of simject.

Any comments are welcome!

simject 1.0.0 released

2008-07-30T16:30:00.001+02:00

Today I released the first version of simject.

Have a look and let me know what you are thinking.

New OpenSource Project started: simject

2008-07-29T21:07:00.003+02:00

During my private studies on dependency injection, JPA, dynamic proxies and remoting I decided to create a very simple dependency injection framework:

simject : SIMple dependency inJECTion

If you don't need a complex, full featured framework like SpringFramework - check out simject!

gted tutorial online

2008-07-19T14:07:00.002+02:00

Today I put a gted tutorial online: www.gted.org

It's written by Pavel Mendl. It's great to have a small gted community!
Thanks a lot!

EclipseLink 1.0 available

2008-07-10T08:24:00.003+02:00

Great news from EclipseLink: 1.0 is availabe for download here.

EclipseLink no longer incubator project

2008-06-27T10:34:00.002+02:00

Tonight EclipseLink graduated from incubator to a "real" Eclipse project.
Congratulations!

EclipseLink is based on Oracles TopLink which was donated to Eclipse. We at Swiss Railways are using TopLink since 2001. Historically TopLink was developed by the The Object People (thats the Top part in TopLink) . Then it was overtaken by WebGain (VisualCafe if someone can remember) and finally after the disappearance of WebGain Oracle took TopLink and made it a part of their application server product. (btw VisualCafe was taken by Borland to get WebGains customers)

Read more on EclipseLink project website

Simon @ Jazoon #2

2008-06-26T15:56:00.003+02:00

Yesterday the program at Jazoon was quite ok. Ted Neward held a keynote about "Rethinking Enterprise". He's a great speaker the speech was very enjoyable. The many message was that most people are using some sort of pattern to match new requirements (eg. to a software architecture) with known cases. It would be better to have a higher view to the problem and then to try choosing the appropriate solution.

Then Juergen Hoeller presented the new features of Spring 2.5. In short the main advantage of this release is that you no longer need any XML configuration file. One can do all the config stuff using annotations. (And yes, they do support the common annotations of Java EE!)

Today the keynote was presented by Joshua Bloch. He has finished his new Effective Java Book and talked about wildcards in generics and the correct use of enumerations.
After that Dan Allen held a speech about bijection in JBoss Seam. Very interesting extension of the common dependency injection pattern.

The last session I went in was Adam Biens speech about Glassfish. I must say that from day to day I like Glassfish more, because it's very simple to use and the deployment is quite very fast.

In conclusion this years Jazoon was better than the one last year, but there is a long way to reach the quality of a conference like JAX! But hopefully I'll be there next year...

Simon @ Jazoon #1

2008-06-24T15:17:00.002+02:00

This week I'll be at Jazoon in Zurich.

Yesterday (Monday) I was on a tutorial about Glassfish and I was very impressed about this application server. Currently I think, that Glassfish is the most innovative Java EE server on the market.
On Thursday I will visit a session of Adam Bien about Glassfish. More about it then.

Today (Tuesday) there was an opening session with three very interesting key notes. In the first one Martin Odersky held a speech about his programing language Scala. It's a very interesting but in my opinion very academic approach to use Java more dynamic.

In the second key note Simon Phipps form Sun talked about how Java became open source and the benefits of open source software in the hole. This was really a good speech!

The third and last speech was held by Rod Johnson founder of SpringSource (formerly Interface21) and the man behind Spring Framework.
I was a big fan of Spring Framework since 2005. "Was" because in my opinion SpringSource is moving from a very innovative startup building a great framework to a normal application server vendor.
Rod talked about Java EE 6 profile capability. There are three possible profiles:

A: Webcontainer eg. Tomcat
B: Webcontainer plus JPA, JTA, JSF and some more eg. SpringSource Application Platform or JBoss Seam
C: fully featured application server eg. Glassfish

The confusion for me is in the fact, that Rod sayes EJB is useless (he always said that and with EJB 2.1 and earlier I totally agreed!) but in contrast the SpringSource Application Platform uses also a sort of component container: Spring BeanFactory.
Why not use the "standard" component model of Java EE: EJB 3.x?

Comparing SpringSource Application Platform as a member of Profile B to Glassfish as a member of Profile C I think that Glassfish is the better choice. Even if you don't use all the features that comes with it - you will have it on board. Addional to that the newest version of Glassfish is embeddable and it starts very fast.

So I'm curios about the future of Spring and EJB 3.x. Maybe one day they will come together...

First steps with Google App Engine

2008-06-17T21:33:00.003+02:00

This evening I discovered Google App Engine.
It's a complete application platform using Python, YAML and some Google API.
With the Google API one can create web applications incl. template engine and persistence and one can make use of the Google users.
It also provides a "Dashboard" where one can configure and monitor the applications.

I followed the tutorial and created my first app a simple guestbook.
My first opinion is, that Google App Engine is a great environment for developing smaller web applications. But I don't have any idea how usefull it will be for bigger applications...

Try it out and let me know what you are thinking!

Heavyweight EJB?

2008-06-15T17:48:00.003+02:00

Today I read a post in Adam Biens blog about heavyweightness of EJBs.

His conclusion is that EJB are even lightweight as any other "container" such as Spring, Guice, Pico etc.

And I think his right because the only thing that is really to heavy is the application server and its overloaded functionality! For example IBMs WebSphere with all the possibilities to cluster and and other things that smaller application normally doesn't nead!
But there are better options such as Glassfish.

If I reflect the only feature I really need from frameworks like Spring is Dependency Injection. And this is also provided by EJB3. Additional I need a Persistence Framework such as JPA - but stop - this is also EJB3 and it doesn't matter if I use Spring or EJB3. In contrast with EJB3 I have the Dependency Injection of the EntityManager and this is a big advantage!
Adam writes that Glassfish V3 will be embedable. Then it's no problem to do any JUnit-Tests with my EJBs!

My conclusion is that EJB3 are simpler to use than frameworks like Spring and they have a main advantage: they are based on a standard! So why using any other non standard framework?

Problem with enum in JPQL solved!

2008-05-30T20:11:00.003+02:00

Mike Keith solved my enum problem in JPQL.

I forgot to fully qualify the enum. So if the query is correct it works:

String queryString = "SELECT a FROM Address a " +
"where a.addressType = jpa.model.AddressType.OFFICE";

Thanks a lot Mike!

New features in JPA 2.0

2008-05-30T15:05:00.004+02:00

Today I had a look at the early draft of the JPA 2.0 spec and like. Here are my highlights of the new features:

Added support for persistently ordered lists using OrderColumn and provider-managed ordering column.
-> Greate! That was really missing!
Defined support for foreign key mapping strategy for unidirectional one-to-many relationships.
-> Very good. It's not very handy to use a relationship table in a one-to-many mapping
Added clear method to EntityManager interface to allow entities to be evicted from the persistence context; added CLEAR cascade option.
-> Bulk Update and Delete will be even more useful
Added Cache interface.
-> I'm not sure if it's a great idea, but who knows...
Added support for pessimistic locking and new lock mode types.
-> I hope JPA will also provide support for SELECT FOR UPDATE
Added overloaded find and refresh methods added to support locking with standardized and vendor-specific properties and hints.
-> Very good, it's no longer required to define an extra query
Added standardized hint javax.persistence.lock.timeout for use in locking configuration.
-> Great idea!
Added the standardized properties javax.persistence.jdbc.driver, javax.persistence.jdbc.url, javax.persistence.jdbc.user, javax.persistence.jdbc.password for use in persistence unit and entity manager factory configuration.
-> Super! It will be simpler to change the persistence provider in standalone environment. And it will be easier for the tools provider to support persitence.xml properties completion.
Added Query getNamedParameters and getPositionalParameters methods.
-> good thing, at least for debugging

I hope there will be more of them in the next version of the spec...

Missing features in JPA

2008-05-30T13:08:00.004+02:00

During the past JPA course at the university of applied sciences in Bern I discovered two missing features in JPA:

1. static inner classes in constructor expressions

Example:

// Constructor Expression
String queryString =
"SELECT NEW Outer.Inner(e.name) FROM Employee e";
Query query = em.createQuery(queryString);
List outer = query.getResultList();
for (Outer.Inner inner : outer) {
...
}

Where Outer.Inner is a static inner class in Outer:

public class Outer {
public static class Inner {
private String name;
public Inner(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
}
}

In my opinion this should work. Because I can instanceiate Inner like this:
Outer.Inner in = new Outer.Inner("Simon");

2. Enumerations in JPQL

For example, this works fine:

String queryString =
"SELECT a FROM Address a where a.addressType = :type";
Query query = em.createQuery(queryString);
query.setParameter("type", AddressType.OFFICE);

But this does not:

String queryString = "SELECT a FROM Address a where a.addressType = AddressType.OFFICE";
Query query = em.createQuery(queryString);

Surprising this works in Hibernate but not with TopLink:

String queryString = "SELECT a FROM Address a where a.addressType = 'OFFICE'";
Query query = em.createQuery(queryString);

I hope this two features will be contained in the next JPA relase!

Only two reasons for declaring an interface

2008-05-29T17:52:00.004+02:00

I had several discussions about when it makes sense to declare an interface in Java.

I only found two possible reasons!

If you could have more than one implementation of this interface (I think this is the original intention for interfaces)
If you want to use proxies. (i.e. remoting or dynamic proxies)

In any other cases you should think twice if there is really a need for an interface!
This sounds very simple in a way, but I think this is an important finding.

If you know any other important reason - please let me know!

Even more lecturing

2008-05-12T16:21:00.004+02:00

I will start two new courses at the University of Applied Sciences of Bern this Fall.

One will be a database basic course in the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Medical Technology class and the other is an advanced database concepts course for a MAS in Information Technology class.

It will be some hard work to prepare but I'm sure to learn a lot of databases techniques for my daily work!

Again new version of gted

2008-04-07T20:38:00.003+02:00

gted 1.3.0 contains two new features:

#1848616: Ctrl + Click on references in source editor

#1848621: more than one keyword for xgettext

I hope these are usefull!

gted project rank 192 at SourceForge

2008-04-06T20:03:00.003+02:00

Again gted project is a top 200 project at SourceForge!

Today the statistics shows rank 192 for gted.

Thanks a lot for visiting the website and downloading gted.

gted 1.2.0 released

2008-04-03T19:55:00.002+02:00

After two days I released the next version of gted with the following bugfixes:
#1931731: Plural-Form correctly saved
#1844311: All .po files are merged
#1927276: Whitespaces are now untouched

Now all currently know bugs are fixed. If you find some bugs, please let me know!

Java SE 6 ServiceLoader

2008-04-03T09:54:00.011+02:00

Today I had a look at the ServiceLoader class in Java SE 6.

The ServiceLoader is a generic factory that can be configured with a simple file located in META-INF/services. The filename must be the full qualified name of the interface and contains a single line with the full qualified name of the implementation ch.simas.impl.MyServiceImpl.

The usage is also very simple:
ServiceLoader loader = ServiceLoader.load(MyService.class);

for (Iterator it = loader.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
MyService myService = it.next();
}

Try it out!

gted 1.1.0 released

2008-04-01T21:23:00.006+02:00

Today gted 1.1.0 was released.

It contains fixes for these two bugs:
[1889727] no entry if line number is not specified in the .po(t)
[1886392] msgstr not escaped

Thanks to Zoran for his help!
If you have any comments on gted, please let me know!

qlb project joined!

2008-03-30T20:07:00.003+02:00

On Friday I joined Adam Biens qlb project!

qlb is a utility to generate JPQL queries in a more type safe way.
I will use the the experiences made in this project in my JPA courses.

Quaere == LINQ?

2008-03-25T11:40:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago I discovered LINQ in C# .NET. This is a very nice lean approach to integrate queries into the language. Here's an example:

var emps = from emp in edb.Employees
where emp.name.StartsWith("S")
orderby emp.name
select emp;

foreach (var emp in emps) {
}

Today I found Quaere that seams to be the same:

Iterable groups = from("city").in(cities).
group("city").by("city.getContinent()").
into("g").select("g");

for (Group group : groups) {
}

Unfortunately it's far from beeing the same, because LINQ in C# is strong typed! emp in the first example is a variable but city in the second is a string!

It needs a lot of integration in the programing language to achieve the functionality of LINQ as it is done in C#.

Maybe Sun will integrate LINQ as well in Java. We'll see ;-)

So the answer of Quaere == LINQ? is FALSE!

NetBeans again

2008-03-23T09:48:00.007+01:00

It seams that I'm not the only one thinking that NetBeans is a really competitive IDE.
There is a comparison that shows that NetBeans is better in editing and scripting and is easier to use. The main advantage of Eclipse is the huge eco system. But honestly sometimes this can also be a disadvantage, i.e. when you are looking for UML Plugin.

Have a look at the article in Adam Bien's Weblog for more information. There is an other interesting post from Adam: Thinking loud about Eclipse and NetBeans

I totally agree with Adam when he is speaking about the "Plugin hell" in Eclipse. There are too much plugins for the same purpose.
NetBeans comes with the main features for daily use and normally you don't need to install further plugins.

NetBeans 6.1

2008-03-21T13:41:00.003+01:00

A few days ago I downloaded NetBeans 6.1 and I'm very impressed!

I'm a strong Eclipse user but NetBeans has a few features they are extremely useful:

UML Modelling
GUI Builder

These two features (and there are a lot more) makes NetBeans very interesting because these they are really missing in Eclipse and you always have to pay for them. Ok, there are some free UML Plugins, but they are not as good as the NetBeans built-in are.

I will keep on evaluating NetBeans and will blog further findings!

Happy Easter, everybody!

Checked vs unchecked Exceptions

2008-02-24T09:47:00.002+01:00

Once again I had a discussion about using checked or unchecked Exceptions in Java.

In my opinion the solution could be simple:
Use checked Exceptions only for business faults. They are part of the interface contract.
But any other Exception thrown by JRE or any other framework should be derived from RuntimeException!

What do you think? Comments are welcome!

Zoran Regvart joined gted project!

2008-02-10T21:09:00.001+01:00

Great news from the gted project:

Today Zoran Regvart joined the project! Now we are two people working on gted and we hope to release new and better versions faster and more often!

gted has an active community!

2008-02-08T18:50:00.001+01:00

Today the bug 1889727 (no entry if line number is not specified in the .pot or .po) was posted by zregvart. And what a surprise - a patch was attached!

Special thanks to zgrevart. It is great to know that gted has a community!

gted 1.1.0 on track

2008-02-04T20:06:00.001+01:00

I'm working on gted 1.1.0 which will contain some major bugfixes.

I hope to release it at the end of February.