An Ant Modular Build Environment for Enterprise Applications  Most Java developers already use Ant for their builds, but are you getting everything you could out of this tool? With a complex enterprise application, in which classes may be used in several tiers, it's important to control where the code lives and how it gets built, so you can build .jars with just the code needed for each tier. Les Hazlewood shows how this approach leads to faster builds and downloads, and even catches errant dependencies.   [ONJava.com]

Java City: The Java Enterprise Ecosystem  Should we worry about promoting a healthy Java community? Or is everything just fine in Java City? Jim Farley asks you to weigh in on these questions, and others, in the Talkbacks, and next week at JavaOne. He plans a followup article summarizing what you have to say. Your comments may help to shape content in Jim's upcoming book, Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition, due out in the fall.   [ONJava.com]

Decorating Servlet Request Objects  The Decorator design pattern can be usefully applied to J2EE projects. In this article, Budi Kurniawan shows how to decorate Servlet request objects.  [dev2dev]

Exploring Laszlo Classes, Attributes, and Events  Laszlo offers an interesting option for rich client-side GUIs--XML markup of widgets and their event handling, which is then converted into a Flash executable that is run with the Flash plugin in the user's browser. Satya Komatineni introduces Laszlo and shows how to get started writing web applications with it.   [ONJava.com]

How to Talk About Jini, J2EE, and Web Services at a Cocktail Party  Heard about distributed technologies for Java, but not sure what they are or why they're important? Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, authors of Head First Java, 2nd Edition, present this cocktail-party overview. Hold your own in conversation with Java geeks.   [ONJava.com]

Securing Web Services with mod_security  Web services build atop HTTP to allow more flexible applications. However, their flexibility and ubiquity do not always protect against vulnerabilities due to the way HTTP works. Fortunately, the mod_security module and some planning can block potential attacks at both the protocol and application level before they start. Shreeraj Shah explains.  [ONLamp.com]

Prevalence: Transparent, Fault-Tolerant Object Persistence  Want to persist your objects, with transactional integrity? You probably assume you're going to be using a database, but not so fast--for lighter uses, particularly for prototyping and testing, the idea of "prevalence" may make more sense. Jim Paterson introduces it by way of Prevayler, a popular prevalence framework.   [ONJava.com]

Playing Movies in a Java 3D World, Part 2  In part one of this two-part series, Andrew Davison walked through how to use JMF to play movie clips inside of a Java 3D scene. In this second and final installment, he discusses another version of the movie screen, using QuickTime for Java. Andrew is the author of Killer Game Programming in Java.   [ONJava.com]

A Firefox Glossary  Brian King, with some help from Nigel McFarlane, covers everything from about:config to "zool" in this fun, fact-filled Firefox glossary. It's by no means exhaustive, but you'll find references to specific chapters or hacks throughout the glossary to Nigel's book, Firefox Hacks. When you're ready to dig deeper, check out his book.   [O'Reilly Network]

Domain Searching Using Visitors  Modern applications typically require domain searching functionality--the ability to search for data within the context of the application domain. In this article, Paul Mukherjee describes an approach to domain searching using the Visitor pattern, and explains its advantages.   [ONJava.com]

Playing Movies in a Java 3D World, Part 1  The ability to play a movie clip inside of a Java 3D scene opens up opportunities for richer, more interesting 3D content. Andrew Davison, author of Killer Game Programming in Java, describes how he implemented a Java 3D movie screen, using the Java Media Framework (JMF) Performance Pack for Windows v.2.1.1e, as well as J2SE 5.0 and Java 3D 1.3.2.   [ONJava.com]

Parallel task execution in J2EE using the Work Manager specification  As it stands, the J2EE specification provides no easy way to initiate the execution of parallel tasks. JSR 237, the Work Manager for Application Servers specification, changes this. In this article, Dmitri Maximovich introduces the specification, and provides an example of how to use it. His code runs on the current beta of WebLogic Server 9.0.  [dev2dev]

Constructing Services with J2EE  Web services are a popular means of deploying service-oriented applications, and the standards in J2EE 1.4 make it easier to develop services that are portable and interoperable. Debu Panda shows you how, and takes a look at how things will get easier in J2EE 5.0.   [ONJava.com]

Developing for the Web with Ant, Part 2  In this second installment of a two-part excerpt from Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, Steve Holzner covers the tasks for deploying web apps with get, serverdeploy, and scp.   [ONJava.com]

Features: Errors and AJAX  AJAX is hot, but is it real? How mature are the techniques, and can you use them right now? Joshua Gitlin offers a method for trapping client-side JavaScript errors and logging them, server-side, with AJAX.  [XML.com]

Wire Hibernate Transactions in Spring  The proper handling of transactions across multiple data stores, supporting multiple application flows, is the kind of heavy lifting J2EE servers were built for. But what if you're using the lighter-weight Spring framework? Binildas C. A. shows how you can wire Spring and Hibernate together to achieve the transaction support you desire.   [ONJava.com]

Developing for the Web with Ant, Part 1  Developing for the Web is bread and butter for Ant developers. In part one of this two-part excerpt from Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, author Steve Holzner covers the tasks specifically designed for packaging web applications, including war, cab, ear, and jspc. And stay tuned for part two next week, which will cover the tasks for deploying web apps, including get, serverdeploy, and scp.   [ONJava.com]

Setting up a Secure Subversion Server  You've finally persuaded your users to stop emailing documents back and forth when they need to collaborate, but you've had to recover three overridden versions on the shared network drive this week. Dru Lavigne has an answer; this month's FreeBSD Basics column demonstrates how to allow users to collaborate on documents with safe and secure version control provided by Subversion.   [ONLamp.com]

Configuring Database Access in Eclipse 3.0 with SQLExplorer  It's 2005 and you're using Eclipse. Should you still be creating your database tables and seeding them with data by hand, from an SQL command-line utility? Deepak Vohra introduces the SQLExplorer plugin for Eclipse, which allows you to put a GUI on your development-time database access.   [ONJava.com]

Five Things I Love About Spring  For hardcore enterprise development, Bruce Tate turns to Spring, the topic of his latest collaboration, Spring: A Developer's Notebook. In this article, Bruce describes five reasons why he is hooked on Spring.   [ONJava.com]

Business Rules Engines Within Enterprise Platforms  This article compares ILOG JRules to the XML-based rule engine within BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1. The article also discusses the role of Java Specification Request (JSR) 94 for the integration of rule engines into a J2EE platform.  [dev2dev]

Quick and Easy Custom Templates with XDoclet  Got Ruby-on-Rails envy? With XDoclet templates, you can automate the creation of all kinds of boilerplate Java code: beans, controllers, services, and more. Jason Lee used XDoclet to help his Spring development, and in this article he shows you how to get started.   [ONJava.com]

Generic Types, Part 2  In part one of this two-part excerpt from Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition, David Flanagan described how to use generic types. This week David details how to write your own generic types and generic methods, and concludes with a tour of important generic types in the core Java API.   [ONJava.com]

Building Cocoa-Java Apps with Eclipse  Eclipse is a gloriously powerful, open source IDE, which is a joy to use when working with Java. It makes sense, then, when writing Java-based Cocoa apps, to use Eclipse. But how? What does Eclipse know about the esoteric world of Cocoa-Java? Well, with a little help from Ant, the flexible build system, you can tell it everything it needs to know. Mike Butler shows you how.  [MacDevCenter.com]

The REST of the Web  REST, Representational State Transfer, is a collection of design principles that use simple, stateless HTTP for data transfer, without the method-call-like abstractions of RMI or SOAP. Jason R. Briggs shows how you can use this simple architecture, with Jython and Velocity, to develop nimble, loosely coupled web applications.   [ONJava.com]

Generic Types, Part 1  In part one of this two-part excerpt from Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition author David Flanagan explores the basic use of generics in typesafe collections, and then delves into their more complex uses. In addition, he covers type parameter wildcards and bounded wildcards. In part two next week, David tackles how to write your own generic types and generic methods.   [ONJava.com]

XML Namespaces Don't Need URIs  Mike Day argues that using URIs to identify XML namespaces was a terrible mistake that's caused far more trouble than it's worth.  [XML.com]

Five Favorite Features from 5.0  A lot has been written about Java 5.0's great new features, leaving David Flanagan to focus on this review of five of his favorite new API features: the Callable and Future interfaces, new APIs for varargs and autoboxing, new ability interfaces, the @Override annotation, and MatchResult. Read to the end, where David reveals a bonus sixth feature, a new language syntax supported by Java 5.0 but known to very few. David is the author of Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition.   [ONJava.com]

Enterprise Streaming  The Java Message Service is a lynchpin of J2EE, but is in some ways more difficult and less flexible than more basic forms of communication, like the stream model of the java.io package. However, as Amir Shevat writes, the two are not mutually exclusive--you can write to JMS topics and queues with streams.   [ONJava.com]

Simplifying Java with Jakarta Commons Lang  Harshad Oak provides an overview of the Jakarta Commons Lang project and shows how the components in this project can simplify and accelerate development.  [dev2dev]

Managing Component Dependencies Using ClassLoaders  Use of the Class-Path entry within a JAR file's manifest can help you manage external dependencies--to a point. Once you start using multiple JARs that need incompatible versions of external JARs, problems quickly ensue. As Don Schwarz shows, you can get out of this problem by using your own class loader to manage the dependencies.   [ONJava.com]

Regular Expressions in J2SE  Java applications that perform text searching and manipulation using String and StringTokenizer classes often result in complex code, leading to a maintenance nightmare. Another alternative is regular expressions. Hetal Shah explains how to implement regular expressions using the java.util.regex package, and how it can make your code easier to write and maintain.  [ONJava.com]

Form Your Own Design Pattern Study Group  Like most complex subjects, design patterns are best learned over a period of time, not in a few sittings. Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Freeman, coauthors of Head First Design Patterns, suggest one way to ease the learning curve (and have some fun along the way): form a study group, using their book. If you're ready to get your engineering team together, the Freemans get you started in this article with a plan to follow and chapter-by-chapter questions to help generate discussion.   [ONJava.com]

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