java.net Projects and Communities Archive

August 21, 2007

Now Available: JT Harness 4.1.1 Milestone Release
JT Harness is a general purpose, fully-featured, flexible, and configurable test harness, and its 4.1.1 milestone release includes functionality that makes it easier to extend and customize the harness. JT Harness 4.1.1 features include: customizable test output rendering, customizable menus and toolbars, logging support, report merging, and enhanced template functionality. JT Harness 4.1.1 also has the JT Harness tutorial integrated into the repository and binary image.

Learning JavaFX Script, Part 2: Remote Communication Using RMI
The SDN is continuing its introduction to JavaFX with the tutorial Learning JavaFX Script, Part 2: Remote Communication Using RMI. "This article will draw on your knowledge of JavaFX Script, invoking the Java platform's Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI) libraries to allow a JavaFX graphical user interface (GUI) to communicate remotely. Using RMI with JavaFX Script is very straightforward, and it provides a quick and easy way to demonstrate and test client-server functionality with JavaFX Script technology."

August 20, 2007

Multi-Core Mythbusters
Think the rise of multi-core CPU's will save or kill your Java app? Cory Isaacson and Ted Neward cut through some popular bunk in their recent DevX article Multi-Core Mythbusters. "Some pervasive myths about running Java applications on multi-core systems are misleading developers, and it's time to shine the bright light of truth on these falsehoods."

Java Posse's GlassFish Interview
Episode 138 of the Java Posse is highlighted by a 55-minute interview with Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart and Jerome Dochez of the GlassFish Community. In it, they discuss the history and goals of the project, the community, eliminating the last bits of native code dependencies, their relationship to Java EE 6 and its schedule, what's in the upcoming GlassFish v2, and more.

August 17, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 134
The latest edition of the Java Tools Community Newsletter, issue 134, rounds up tool-related news from around the web, lists new projects in the community (NBString and ON), and offers a Tool Tip about web site optimization with YSlow.

August 16, 2007

A short Primer to Java Memory Pool Sizing and Garbage Collectors
A blog from Sun's Stefan Schneider offers A short Primer to Java Memory Pool Sizing and Garbage Collectors. He says the "Java SE 6.0 is doing a wonderful job in picking the right options for a system based on the available system resources." He explains the various HotSpot memory pools, their purposes, and their tuning, and then goes on to artificially misconfigure several pathological cases and show what problematic memory management looks like. But most users will never see cases like this, because 'the Java SE 6 Hotspot VM is doing an outstanding job to optimize its behaviour based on the existing hardware platform. The configuration of the maximum heap size ( -Xmx option) will be sufficient for most applications."

Mobility Podcast 15: MSpot brings the world of entertainment to the mobile phone
In the latest installment of the Java Mobility Podcast, MSpot brings the world of entertainment to the mobile phone. Derek Lyon of MSPOT shares their experience in using JavaME technologies on multiple phones, the custom frameworks the company developed, marketing, and how they identified the demographics of their target audience in delivering a whole host of entertainment products in both audio and video formats. For more information about MSPOT go to their website.

August 15, 2007

JSR-286 (Portlet 2.0) in Public Review
The public review ballot begins next week for for JSR-286, Portlet Specification 2.0. The new version aligns with the standards introduced by J2EE 1.4, along with introducing access to CC/PP data (via JSR-188), portlet filters, inter-portlet communication and render parameters as defined by WSRP 2.0, enhancements to caching support and the portlet tag library, and more. Balloting begins Tuesday, August 21 and ends on August 27.

Poll: What Do You Want To See in the Consumer JRE?
The JavaDesktop Community page is linking to a poll launched by Dieter Krachtus' blog AOT-CL and Democracy in Java - let's vote! The poll asks readers to "Tell us your 5 'Greatest Hits' for the future Consumer JRE", and includes choices relating to the JRE download and startup times, performance, modularity, self-updating behavior, and other proposed features. A good road-map to the current efforts may be found in Chet Haase's blog Consumer JRE: Leaner, Meaner Java.

Your Balcony in GlassFish Screencast Theater
Arun Gupta has set up a wiki page collecting all the known screencasts about GlassFish. In Your Balcony in GlassFish Screencast Theater, he writes: "These screencasts range from Getting Started to Web services development, jMaki-enabled Mashups, JRuby, and Clustering feature." Readers are invited to edit the page and add their own GlassFish-related screencasts.

August 14, 2007

Java Programming Language: Design Principles and Proposals
"In light of some of the recent discussions about potential enhancements to the Java language, there has been general concern that the Java language will get too complicated and will be filled with esoteric features that only a few people want and will use." Danny Coward looks at current proposals and the ideas behind them in Java Programming Language: Design Principles and Proposals. "As stewards of the Java Programming Language, we welcome such discussions and highlight some proposals here. " The article highlights the work being done in the Kitchen Sink Language project, and also links to some alternative views.

JSR-291 (Dynamic Component Support for Java SE) Released
The JSR-291 (Dynamic Component Support for Java SE) expert group has posted their final release of the OSGi-based JSR. The spec defines a dynamic component framework for Java SE. "The dynamic component model supports assembly of applications from components and supports implementation detail hiding between components as well as lifecycle management of those components." An OSGI JSR-291 page hosts the spec, a reference implementation, and a TCK.

August 13, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 133
The latest edition, issue 133, of the JavaTools Community newsletter is available, with tool news from around the web, new projects in the community and a graduation from the incubator (GAJET), and a Tool Tip on integrating Subversion with your Ant scripts.

How to Create a Mac OS X Installer for a Java Application
Center Key Sofware has posted a tutorial on How to Create a Mac OS X Installer for a Java Application. "With some simple steps you can turn your Java Swing program into a proper Mac application with a native installer. The instructions below step you through the process from scratch with a sample program called "It's Showtime!", which simply displays the current time. Once you have successfully completed the tutorial with the sample Java program, modify the steps to work for your Java program."

PreAnnouncing new GlassFish Subproject for JSP
GlassFish's Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart has heard requests from JSP developers and is now PreAnnouncing new GlassFish Subproject for JSP. "Separate projects encourate reuse and contributions but are more work and can create confusion so we wait before creating them. We have received several requests for a JSP project so we are going to create one. Please let me know (or just post here) if you are interested in this project."

August 10, 2007

Ask The Experts: Mobile Service Architecture (MSA), JSR 248
Got a question about MSA? Then save the date. August 20 - 24th is your opportunity to Ask the Experts! MSA is the Java ME optional package that defines the next generation Java ME platform. Your questions will be answered by Java ME Community Project Owners Hinkmond Wong (phoneME Advanced) and Mikhail Gorshenev (cqME), and E-ming Saung, Product Line Manager for Java ME SDKs. For more information about this event and how to participate, go to the Ask the Experts page.

New OpenJDK Community Technology Compatibility Kit License
Sun has announced the immediate availability of the OpenJDK Community Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) License. "The OpenJDK Community TCK License will enable developers to test the compatibility of their contributions to the OpenJDK project. It will also allow distributors to test complete implementations that are substantially derived from OpenJDK and distributed under GPLv2. Organizations or individual developers that use the OpenJDK Community TCK License and then successfully pass compatibility testing, will also have the option of branding their implementation with Sun's "Java Compatible" trademark and logo." Early commentary on the license and the thinking behind it has already been posted by Rich Green, Simon Phipps, and Dalibor Topic.

August 09, 2007

Project jMaki: TheServerSide Video Tech Brief
Project jMaki is an AJAX framework that provides a lightweight model for creating AJAX-enabled web applications compatible with most server-side technologies, from Java to PHP. In Project jMaki: TheServerSide Video Tech Brief Greg Murray, jMaki's project lead, discusses how to use it and participate in its development.

GlassFish v2 RC1
The GlassFish team has promoted their first release candidate of GlassFish v2. This promotion includes Clustering functionality and Microsoft Interoperability using WSIT. The download of RC1 (AKA "b58 Promoted Build") is available as source, and as binaries for Solaris on Sparc or Intel, Windows, Linux, and Mac.

August 08, 2007

Corba: Gone But (Hopefully) Not Forgotten
ACM Queue's post-mortem for CORBA, Corba: Gone But (Hopefully) Not Forgotten, cautions developers of web services and other distributed systems not to assume that all the Big Problems are already solved for them. "Using Web Services is no more a guarantee of building a good distributed system than using CORBA was a guarantee of building a bad one. Web Services cannot magically confer on a system design the ability to effectively deal with limitations in latency and bandwidth. It cannot remove the difficulties that arise from partial failures and dependencies on systems that may be temporarily inaccessible. "

Mobility Podcast 14: Java Tools Community
The latest Java Mobility Podcast takes a look at the Java Tools Community. Fabiane Nardon and Daniel Lopez, the Java Tools Community Leaders, talk about their community, mobile projects in the community, and how the Mobile and Embedded Community and Java Tools Community can work together. They also share their experiences in developing mobile applications.

August 07, 2007

JSR-297 (Mobile 3D Graphics API 2.0) Early Draft Review
The Early Draft Review is underway for JSR-297, the Mobile 3D Graphics API 2.0. "This new revision of M3G (JSR-184) will expose the latest graphics hardware features on high-end devices, while improving performance and memory usage on the low end." Among the JSR's goals are reducing the performance difference between Java and native apps, improving compression of 3D art assets, and maintaining the compactness and simplicity of the earlier version of the API. The Early Draft Review closes on August 25.

SOA Without SOAP: The Java ME Perspective
Web applications use HTTP to exchange data, which means that the HTTP-supporting Java ME is perfectly capable of using web apps. But what about the format of the data? In SOA Without SOAP: The Java ME Perspective, Eric Giguere argues that inconsistent support for the Web Services API's for Java ME (WSA) and the implicit overhead of SOAP should have pragmatic ME developers looking for alternatives, ultimately concluding that "the ideal web service for our purposes is one that uses a simple REST-like interface."

August 06, 2007

MochaCode Preview 2 Released
Yori Mihalakopoulos has released Public Preview 2 of MochaCode a Mac-only Java IDE. The new version improves syntax highlighting, error highlighting, code completion and editing in general, has a new look and feel for code completion, adds error and warning icons to the gutter and tabs, adds a crash reporter, and fixes a number of bugs. Version 2.1, released a day after 2.0, fixes a few more bugs.

James Gosling at San Diego JUG Tomorrow
The San Diego JUG is announcing an appearance by Java founder James Gosling, at a special meeting tomorrow, August 8. The meeting, held at 6PM at Intuit, has cleared out a two-hour block for "conversations with James", wrapped up with prize drawings and a mixer. Would-be guests are asked to RSVP in advance.

August 03, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 132
The latest edition, issue 132, of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is available, with tool news from around the web, announcements of new projects in the community, and a Tool Tip on integrating ant scripts with your Maven 2 builds,

Introduction to JavaFX Script
ONJava has posted an Introduction to JavaFX Script by Anghel Leonard, which introduces basic syntax, looks at IDE support, and walks through the creation of a simple application. He writes, "JavaFX Script is a capable new language for the Java platform. With it, you can easily build rich, dynamic interfaces in much less time than you could build something comparable in Java with Swing and Java 2D."

August 02, 2007

On The Naming Of Java Versions
Java 5 or 1.5? J2EE, JEE, or Java EE? Java's various naming methodologies have been a point of controversy and confusion over the years. In a recent blog, David Herron reflects On The Naming Of Java Versions. "In the beginning there was Java and all was good. Then there was Java2 (just be thankful it didn't become named Java2000). And now there's Java5, Java6, etc. What happened to Java3 and Java4? It's the same thing which happened to Solaris3, Solaris4, Solaris5, Solaris6?" He wraps up with helpful links to the current naming scheme and justification, along with some naming-methodology pages of historical interest.

JSR-286 (Portlet 2.0) Public Review
JSR-286, the Portlet 2.0 specification, has entered its public review period. Features in the new spec include portlet filters, inter-portlet communication, EE 1.4 support, tag library enhancements, shared render parameters, and an event system. Visit JSR-286's download page to learn more about the draft spec. Public Review runs through August 27, with the Public Review Ballot beginning on August 21.

Learning JavaFX Script, Part 1: An Introduction to JavaFX Script for Java Programmers
The SDN has kicked off a series of articles to help you get started with the JavaFX programming language. Learning JavaFX Script, Part 1: An Introduction to JavaFX Script for Java Programmers is targeted to those who are already familiar with Java technology and the basics of scripting languages. In Part I, you'll look at the JavaFX Pad sample application as a means of studying the basics of the language, including attributes, triggers, iteration, and more.

August 01, 2007

The Life of a Spec Lead: Part III, Cycling Through the Draft Reviews
Have you ever wondered what it is like to lead a JSR through the JCP program? Or are you a current Spec Lead who is interested in tips based on the experience of others? Learn more as the JCP continues its profile of the JSR process in The Life of a Spec Lead: Part III, Cycling Through the Draft Reviews

NetBeans Podcast #32: All-Ruby with Tor Norbye
Episode 32 of the NetBeans Podcast is an all-Ruby session as developer Tor Norbye joins evangelists Roman Strobl and Gregg Sporar. Listen in as Norbye discusses his work on Ruby support in the NetBeans IDE, features he wants to implement, why Java developers should consider Ruby, ways for the community to contribute to the project, and more.

July 31, 2007

Vodcast: Filthy Rich Clients: An Inteview With Chet Haase
A new SDN Vodcast features an interview with Chet Haase, co-author of Filthy Rich Clients. In the 20-minute program, Java.sun.com writer Ed Ort interviews Chet about what's new and cool for developing compelling desktop applications.

James Gosling at San Diego JUG on August 8
The San Diego JUG is announcing an appearance by Java founder James Gosling, at a special meeting on August 8. The meeting, held at 6PM at Intuit, has cleared out a two-hour block for "conversations with James", wrapped up with prize drawings and a mixer. Would-be guests are asked to RSVP in advance.

July 30, 2007

Welcome on Board NetBeans Air!
In the NetBeans community article Welcome on Board NetBeans Air!, Tim Boudreau met the platform specialist Tom Wheeler to chat about Tom's latest "little" project: He ports applications that analyze mass properties of aircraft for Boeing. His Mass Toolkit project is expected to ultimately replace a native application running on Cray supercomputer, dispelling any concerns about Java performance.

Meet Tom Marble, OpenJDK Ambassador for Sun Microsystems
The latest in a series of SDN interviews is Meet Tom Marble, OpenJDK Ambassador for Sun Microsystems. In a conversation with Janice J. Heiss, he talks about the OpenJDK community and the projects it has spawned, including the Kitchen Sink Language project, RedHat's IcedTea project to replace JDK encumbrances with GNU Classpath equivalents, and a proposed, lightweight framebuffer-based peer implementation for AWT called fbtoolkit. He also discusses copyright concerns for open-source, benchmarking, and his interest in Tae Kwon Do.

July 27, 2007

dcoat project
Despite still being incubated, the dcoat project's owner tells us it's "ripe" and ready for some attention. This ActiveRecord-inspired framework is a object-relation mapping layer, whose distinguishing features are its ease of learning and use, high performance, clean API's, and high productivity.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 131
The latest edition, issue 131, of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is available, with tool news from around the web, a new community project, and a Tool Tip on "JEditorPain" relief: "If you are using JEditorPane in your application to display html and you are suffering from the rendering limitations of this otherwise nice component, then you might consider Cobra as a replacement."

Java Mobility Podcast 13: Mauricio Leal on Mobility and the Mobile and Embedded Community
The latest Mobile & Embedded Community Podcast features Mauricio Leal on Mobility and the Mobile and Embedded Community . "Mauricio Leal, Mobility Application Developer and Advocate, discusses the challenges and issues for Developers and Carriers, shares his insight on ever emerging role of mobile devices, and its impact to help bridge the digital divide in developing countries."

July 26, 2007

Effective Development of Java Conformance Tests Meta-programming
The JDJ article Effective Development of Java Conformance Tests Meta-programming presents a case study of the use of meta-programming in Java compatibility testing. It shows how parts of the source code can be shared between different products and modified to generate programs targeting specific functions and describes the approach Sun Microsystems has used for building Technology Compatibility Kits (TCK) for more than five years.

cq3G - New Mobile and Embedded Project
The cq3G project is a suite of 48 tests based on 24 Test Cases for GSMNA Test Specifications for JAVA Micro Edition, Revision 1.0.3 February 20, 2007. The tests in the cq3G test suite are based on the Java Requirements of the Global System for Mobile Communications North America (GSMNA) - 3G Americas (3GA). This set of requirements delivers a defined and verifiable platform for the wireless community in the Americas.

JSR reviews for EJB 3.1, JPA 2.0
JSR review balloting is underway for JSR-317 (Java Persistence API 2.0) and JSR-318 (Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1). JPA 2.0 intends to add additional object/relational mapping functionality and query language capabilities, a criteria-based query API, and to standardize features that are currently optional. Meanwhile, EJB 3.1 aims to simplify the EJB architecture, with a focus on the core session bean and message-driven bean component models and their client API. Balloting for both JSR's ends on Monday, July 30.

July 25, 2007

Patrick Curran Takes Over as New JCP Chair
The JCP office notes that the organization has a new Chairperson. "Starting this month Onno Kluyt is stepping down as Chair of the JCP moving on to new roles and responsibilities within Sun. Onno led the community as Chair since July 2004 and managed the JCP Program in several capacities prior to that. Patrick Curran is the new Chair of the JCP. He has a long-standing record in the software industry and in conformance testing. Find more about Patrick on his JCP profile page. The formal handover will take place at the next JCP EC meeting in August in Munich, Germany."

java.net Help Wanted Ads
The java.net Help Wanted section "is both for developers looking for an interesting project to work on and for those involved in a java.net project who are looking for someone to fill a particular need." Current postings seek developers skilled in file processing, converting to EE, testing, and documentation... and you can visit the page to add your own. Note that this service is limited to the open-source projects on the site; commercial job postings should use our JobsWiki.

July 24, 2007

Sun Java EE Engine: Bridging Java EE Web Services and JBI Components
The SDN article Sun Java EE Engine: Bridging Java EE Web Services and JBI Components describes "the synergy between the Sun Java EE Engine (formerly Java EE Service Engine) and Java EE in the Java Business Integration (JBI) environment." It covers the concepts and features of the Sun Java EE Engine and, through examples, illustrates how to use it in a JBI composite application.

JavaFX Updates: IM Client Demo, SVG to JavaFX Translator, NetBeans Plug-In
A What's new list on the JavaFX project page lists some of the new features available in the July 2007 release. These features include Casual, a demo of an InstantMessaging (IM) client written in JavaFX Script; SVG to JavaFX Translator, which converts an SVG document into a single JavaFX class; and updated JavaFX plugins for NetBeans 5.5 and NetBeans 6.0 (M9 and beyond) releases.

July 23, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 130
The latest edition, issue 130, of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with tool news from around the web, announcements of new projects in the community and one graduation (SecureJSH), and a tooltip about the XML Developer Toolbar for XML work in Firefox.

OpenJFX Compiler Project
The OpenJFX Compiler Project is an OpenJFX incubator project to create a JavaFX compiler to translate JavaFX scripts into JVM class files (bytecode). Currently, the compiler is still in the early stages of its design and there is no compiler available yet. As Tom Ball explains in his blog, The Birth of the JavaFX Script Compiler, "our team wants to open not just its source, but the design and development of the compiler itself. We are also asking for feedback on the JavaFX Script language to make it fully specified and compilable."

July 20, 2007

Java Mobility Podcast 12: Loopt the Social Networking Application
In the latest Java Mobility Podcast, Roger and Terrence talk about Loopt the Social Networking Application wih Mark Jacobstein, EVP Corporate Development and Marketing. He describes Loopt social networking application for mobile devices and the development issues of permissions, safety, and working with operators and other third party developers. He also discusses the various changes in social behavior that software like this are likely to bring.

Bragging Time: 883.66 JOPS@Standard on GlassFish V2
Indulge a little bragging... at 883.66 JOPS@Standard, GlassFish v2 now has the best SPECjAppServer 2004 on T2000. The team notes, "this is the first time that GlassFish (or any other open source application server) has lead the SPECjAppServer 2004 benchmark results." A blog by Scott Oaks has further details, noting that "this result is almost 70% higher than our previous score of 521.42 JOPS@Standard on a Sun Fire T2000" (although the new results are on a 1.4 GHz machine, versus 1.2 previously). Still, he adds "we are quite substantially faster and are quite pleased to have the highest ever score on the Sun Fire T2000."

July 19, 2007

How to integrate the FindBugs plug-in for NetBeans
A new NetBeans tutorial shows you How to integrate the FindBugs plug-in for NetBeans. "FindBugs is an open source static analysis tool to search your code (exactly your compiled bytecode) for various bug patterns." The tutorial shows how to configure a new Update Center for the FindBugs-Plugin, install the plugin and start to find some bugs.

A Conversation With Ray Gans of the OpenJDK Community Program
Few have been closer to the day-to-day processes involved in open sourcing the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) than Ray Gans, a manager at Sun Microsystems with a long history of working with Java compatibility programs. He currently manages the OpenJDK and Mobile & Embedded community programs, where he works to improve the collaboration between Sun and the open-source Java developer community. In A Conversation With Ray Gans of the OpenJDK Community Program, interviewer Janice J Heiss talks with him to gain a better understanding of how the open sourcing of the Java SE platform is going and where it is headed.

Java EE 6 JSR Approved
JSR-316, Java EE 6, has been approved, but not without some controversy. As noted by JavaLobby, the Apache Software Foundation voted against the JSR as a protest over licensing issues. In its vote, Apache commented "The Apache Software Foundation's vote is based on the point of view that this spec lead -- Sun -- is in violation of the JSPA [Java Specification Participation Agreement] and therefore shouldn't be allowed to start another JSR [Java Specification Request] until the above matter is resolved." This brought a sharp rebuke from Bill Barker on Apache's JCP-OPEN mailing list: "And now we look like the FSF, playing politics with our vote..."

July 18, 2007

Java Content Repository 2.0
Java Content Repository 2.0 is now in public review as JSR-283, with a public review ballot scheduled to begin on September 4. The previous version, JSR-170 is doing well, and that prompted InfoQ to do a JCR roundup article, in which they talk with David Nuescheler, CTO of Day Software and the spec lead for JSRs 283 and 170 about Java Content Repositories.

Write scalable Comet applications with Jetty and Direct Web Remoting
Ajax applications driven by asynchronous server-side events can be tricky to implement and difficult to scale. In Write scalable Comet applications with Jetty and Direct Web Remoting, Philip McCarthy shows an effective approach: The Comet pattern allows you to push data to clients, and Jetty 6's Continuations API lets your Comet application scale to a large number of clients. You can conveniently take advantage of both Comet and Continuations with the Reverse Ajax technology in Direct Web Remoting 2.

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 300
The NetBeans Weekly Newsletter has hit a milestone with the release of the 300th issue. Features of this edition include a celebration of the 300th issue, 300 Reasons to Read the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter, a look at which IDE Won the Cologne Shootout, a call to help shape the next plug-in portal, a Project Tango overview, using selection lsts in Rails, and more.

July 17, 2007

Reworking the Icon Demo
The Java Tutorials Weblog has a new entry about Reworking the Icon Demo. "During the JavaSE 6 update to the Swing Tutorial, a decision was taken to convert a number of the old applets to stand-alone applications. We also converted the majority of them to NetBeans projects. I got to convert the IconDemoApplet..."

Java and Developers are Winners of IDE Shootout
The NetBeans teams recaps their participation in a head-to-head IDE comparison, in Java and Developers are Winners of IDE Shootout. "On a recent July evening in Cologne, Germany, more than 70 developers gathered to witness an unprecedented event: four rival IDEs--NetBeans, Eclipse, Oracle and JetBrains--together on one stage. The IDE shootout, the first of its kind, was hosted by JUG Cologne. Representatives from each IDE were given 30 minutes to make a presentation about the merits of their product. Roman Strobl, the first evangelist to take the stage, spoke on behalf of NetBeans."

OpenDS 0.9 Provides Java Implementation of LDAP, DSML
Over on Artima, Frank Sommers takes note of the java.net OpenDS project in OpenDS 0.9 Provides Java Implementation of LDAP, DSML. "The Open Directory Service (OpenDS) is a Java directory service implementation project hosted on java.net. Initially a Sun project, the code base is currently available under Sun's CDDL license. The project released its 0.9 version last week, with significant new features." Summarizing its features, he then asks the Artima community, "Do you think it's important to have a Java implementation of a directory service? In what situations would you favor a Java-based directory implementation over a native LDAP or DSML server?"

July 16, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 129
The latest edition of the JavaTools Community newsletter is out, with tool news from around the web, an introduction to four new community projects (SecureJSH, Migrate-Data, QuickCheck, and Roma), and a Tool Tip on automating your build with Hudson, the extensible continuous integration engine hosted on java.net.

July 13, 2007

Roman Kennke: Contributing to OpenJDK, no thanks
Presumably in the spirit of openness, the JDK community has posted a blog from Roman Kennke, who expresses his frustration at OpenJDK's contribution review time in Contributing to OpenJDK, no thanks: "It is such a ridiculous pain to get a patch into OpenJDK, I get the feeling that this is not the kind of project, I would feel comfortable with. Both of the above linked patches have been rather trivial. Davids patch even came with a testcase. And still it has to go through a week-long process before it can show up in the build. This will scare off most voluntary contributors quickly I guess."

Jonathan Knudsen is Kicking Butt
"Kicking Butt with MIDP and MSA is the latest in a string of technology books from the accomplished technical writer and author Jonathan Knudsen. As the title implies, his latest (yet to be released) book addresses the API’s for MIDP devices that are included in JSR 248, aka Mobile Services Architecture (MSA)." In the 360mobile.us interview Jonathan Knudsen is Kicking Butt, he talks about the books he's written, his current work on JavaFX Mobile, and his system for getting things done with small pockets of time.

July 12, 2007

Project Tango: An Overview
The WSIT project has posted a comprehensive introduction to web services interoperability, Project Tango: An Overview (PDF, 624 KB). "This document provides an overview of Project Tango. Project Tango is an open source implementation from Sun Microsystems of the key enterprise Web services specifications, commonly known as WS-*, that provides interoperability with .NET 3.0. "

Using the Swing Application Framework (JSR 296)
"If you've developed many applications using a Swing-based graphical user interface (GUI), you've probably solved some common problems over and over again. Those problems include managing the application life cycle, event handling, threading, localizable resources, and maybe even persistence." Ideally, these are the kinds of common concerns that can be better handled by a framework, namely the Swing Application Framework. In the SDN article Using the Swing Application Framework (JSR 296), John O'Conner introduces the project and shows how to dig into it.

July 11, 2007

Building a Java Desktop Database Application
The NetBeans tutorial Building a Java Desktop Database Application shows how to create a desktop Java application through which you can access and update a database. The tutorial takes advantage of support in NetBeans IDE 6.0 for the Java Persistence API, Beans Binding (JSR-295), and Swing Application Framework (JSR-296). The tutorial shows how to create a database CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application with a custom component used for visualizing the data (car design preview).

JavaFX Bidirectional binding
Chris Oliver's latest blog on JavaFX focuses on new features, including bi-directional binding: "In addition to corrections to local variable binding, the next update of the JavaFX interpreter will include extended bidirectional binding, including of logical negation, unary minus, arithmetic, and sequence indexing. Here's a JavaFXPad example you can try out.."

IcedTea Graphics and Fonts
The Fkung blog reports ongoing progress with the IcedTea project's unencumbering of graphics rasterization, in order to offer a fully IP-unencumbered OpenJDK. "Graphics are a major encumberence in the OpenJDK; however the encumbered parts are only critical bits and pieces - not wholesale packages. This makes their replacement all the more difficult." The IcedTea Graphics entry reports a major milestone, with the first successful use of Java2D and Swing. An entry from last Friday, More Fonts, reports success on another pain-point: "the rendering problems from my last post have been cleared up, and IcedTea now has basic font support looking quite decent."

July 10, 2007

Declaring the WS-* vs. REST War Over
Heard enough of REST vs. WS-*? David Chappell's blog declares the war over, citing REST adoption by the already WS-inclined Sun and Microsoft. "The war ended in a truce rather than crushing victory for one side--it's Korea, not World War II. The now-obvious truth is that both technologies have value, and both will be used going forward." Elliotte Rusty Harold stretches this analogy in North and South: "That's a nice analogy. Take it one step further though. WS-* is North Korea and REST is South Korea. While REST will go on to become an economic powerhouse with steadily increasing standards of living for all its citizens, WS-* is doomed to sixty+ years of starvation, poverty, tyranny, and defections..."

Gavin King's EE 6 Wish List, Parts II and III
Continuing a series from earlier this year, Hibernate creator Gavin King has posted two more installments in his Java EE 6 Wish List series. Part II focuses on JSF. "I'm a fan of JSF, not because JSF is by any means perfect, but because I like the overall architecture, and judge its warts and limitations to be more "fixable" than those of other Web Framworks I've used." He calls for asynchronous partial submits and renders, an annotation-based programming model, improved orchestration and error handling, an enhanced lifecycle for non-faces requests, and more. In Part III, he turns his attention to the Expression Language (EL). "While a lot of effort was put into designing the Java-level APIs for working with Unified EL, the expression language itself hasn't changed much since the earliest days of JSP. It is now well past time for some new features."

Beans Binding Proposes Removing EL Requirement
The Beans Binding project, which is developing both the spec and implementation of JSR-295, is making a major change of course by eliminating the required use of the the JSP Expression Language (EL). in a message to the beansbinding developer list, Shannon Hickey proposes a new API to bind properties together. "We all know the two current hot problems with JSR 295: the EL requirement, and the use of ad-hoc parameters rather than subclasses. [...] This is a proposal for resolving these issues, and a request for comments."

July 09, 2007

Apple sneaks Java support onto the iPhone
ZDNet's Ed Burnette has a surprising revelation in Apple sneaks Java support onto the iPhone. "Despite public comments by Steve Jobs that "Java's not worth building in [to the iPhone]", it turns out that Apple did just that by using an ARM-based CPU that supports Java natively. Programmers cannot (yet) take advantage of this, but Apple could, if they wanted, ship a software upgrade to enable it."

Hot or Not: Widgets in the Java Portlet World
An open question on TheServerSide asks Hot or Not: Widgets in the Java Portlet World. "As a portlet fan at my company, I was wondering how the current widget hype affects the portlet market. As widgets, in my view, have the same principles as portlets we have been creating for years, I don't really see why widgets became such a hyped thing in the blogosphere and beyond [...] Java portlets are in this same markets: exposing partial functionalities of bigger (bank-end) systems, like CRM systems, HRM systems and so on. So why didn't portlets get "bigger?""

July 06, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 128
The latest issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with tool news from around the web, announcements of new projects in the community (QN Plot and JavaDS), and a Tool Tip on creating Jasper Reports using NetBeans.

Using NASA's World Wind Component in Your Java Technology
World Wind is open-source software, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that allows you to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on earth. But it's not just a toy. As the SDN article Using NASA's World Wind Component in Your Java Technology points out, "World Wind is a Java technology component that you can integrate into your applications to incorporate 3D earth modeling. World Wind does all the hard work for you, such as dynamic image selection and retrieval for images of the earth's topography. In addition, because the software is open source and written in the Java programming language, you can build into the NASA World Wind Java 3D visualization technology. You are also free to extend or embed the component architecture for business, research, or education. "

JSR-275 (Units Specification) Draft and Reference Implementation
Before the early draft review for JSR-275 (Units Specification) ends on July 8, there are several places interested developers can go for more information. The jsr-275 project is the home for the expert group's collaboration, and hosts the current draft spec (PDF, 296 KB). You can also check out JScience.org, which is hosting the reference implementation for javax.measure.*.

July 05, 2007

Martin Brehovsky - SVG and NetBeans
A recent interview on 360Mobile.us, Martin Brehovsky - SVG and NetBeans, features a discussion of mobile tools in NetBeans and support for JSR-226 SVG in mobile devices. Martin, an engineer on the NetBeans mobility team, says "the coolest thing about SVG is not the fact it is vector, but the fact it is interactive and animated, so one can create very flashy UI with it. A great thing also is the graphics can be designed in designer's tools like Adobe Illustrator or Ikivo Animator and then brought to the NetBeans IDE and used in the visual designer."

XQuery Java API JSR 225 Available for Public Review
In XQuery Java API JSR 225 Available for Public Review, InfoQ reports "the first public review draft of JSR 225: XQuery API for Java has been posted for review. The spec (being led by Oracle) aims to provide standard programmatic access for XQuery implementations in Java. XQJ is a generic XQuery data access framework, which provides a uniform interface on top of a variety of different XQuery implementations." The article goes on to cover early feedback from industry experts and related JSRs.

java.net JavaOne Booth Interviews on Java Posse Podcast
Equipped with recording gear, members of the Java Posse podcast stopped by java.net's booth several times during JavaOne, and the results of their interviews are now available to all. In Java Posse #129 - Walking around JavaOne 2007, Part 1, they talk with Aaron Houston, Paul Webber, Mike Van Riper, Chris Maki, Felipe Gaucho, and Michael Hutterman about JUG's and Java Champions. In Java Posse #131 - Walking Around JavaOne 2007, Part 2, Posse member Joe Nuxoll returns to the booth to talk with Robotics Community leader Bruce Boyes and Eric Arceneaux about SunSpots, TrackBots, and other Java-based robotics technologies.

July 04, 2007

Swing Explorer
The incubated Java Desktop Community project Swing Explorer offers "visual exploring of Swing-based application internals. It finds all windows in explored Swing application and displays their component hierarchies as a tree. Each component in the tree can be displayed in the Swing Explorer's work area and visually inspected. Swing Explorer helps to determine sub-components when user moves mouse over them and provides additional information about currently selected component (layout, size, coordinates, border and other things)."

New Concurrency Features for Java SE 7
Although the contents of Java SE 7 are still in flux, early candidates of concurrency features for inclusion are are already taking shape: a fork/join framework and a transfer queue. In New Concurrency Features for Java SE 7, InfoQ's Geoffrey Wiseman details a discussion with Doug Lea about these features and concurrency in Java SE 7.

Java EE 6 (JSR-316) Released for Public Review
Public review is now underway for JSR-316, Java EE 6. Among the top goals for JSR-316 are extensibility, a concept of "profiles" to deliver targeted subsets of EE 6, and a process for pruning obsolete API's from EE. The JSR also anticipates folding in JSR's 196, 236, 237, 299, and 311, as well as making updates to EJB, JPA, Servlets, JSF, JAX-WS, and the Java EE Connector API. This JSR replaces JSR-313, which was proposed and then withdrawn in April. JSR-316's review balloting closes on July 16.

July 03, 2007

Notebook project
The still-incubated Notebook project shows a lot of promise, offering a simple program to organize notes, to-dos, lists, and anything else you need to jot down. "Notebook is designed to be small, fast, and portable. This makes it ideal to keep on a USB thumb drive, and use on any computer with Java 1.5 or higher installed. Notebook is also designed to be simple and easy to use. No extensive menus, no complicated options, and no fluff." The first release offers executables for Mac and Windows, as well as a plain JAR file.

NetBeans IDE 6.0 Milestone 10 (M10) Available
Milestone 10 of NetBeans 6.0 (M10) is now available for download. Milestone 10 comes up with many new features and improvements, including: New default color scheme and syntax coloring, Ruby Debugger enhancements (global vars, watch view, locals view), Redesigned Find / Replace dialog, Integrated Visual Design for Web Applications, and more. More details about all features can be found on the NetBeans Wiki. The overall report for M10 is available as well.

July 02, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 127
The latest edition of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with tool news from around the web, new tools in the community, announcements of two graduations (DotNetFromJava and JEasyTest), and a Tool Tip on updating your project's info in the JavaTools project directory.

Java Tech Tips: Drag and Drop
The latest Core Java Technologies Tech Tips column covers cookie handling in Java SE 6 and advanced drag-and-drop. On the latter topic, author John Zukowski describes how to handle drag-and-drop with complex components like trees. "The text components offer built-in drop support, as does the JColorChooser component, but adding drop support to any of the other Swing components -- like JList, JTable, or JTree -- requires a little bit of extra work. The task might sound complicated, but thanks to the help of the new to 1.6 inner DropLocation class of TransferHandler, the task is relatively easy."

June 29, 2007

Java 3D 1.5.1 now available
Version 1.5.1 of the Java 3D API is now available for download. Highlights of this release include: Windows Vista Support, Automatic fallback to D3D pipeline if OpenGL unavailable, JOALMixer-based audio engine, Automatic mipmap generation, Pack200 support for Java Web Start applications, Support for new JNLPAppletLauncher utility (based on JOGLAppletLauncher), etc. See the release notes for more information.

NetBeans To Take on Rival IDEs at JUG Cologne Shootout
NetBeans will be taking on rival IDE's at a JUG Cologne shootout on July 3. "The rules are simple: Get on stage and give a 30-minute presentation. At the end of all segments, the panel and the audience will have an hour-long open discussion. The event will be held at the University of Cologne (Germany), with NetBeans Evangelist Roman Strobl representing the NetBeans IDE."

June 28, 2007

Interview with Mobile & Embedded Community Leader Roger Brinkley
The 360Mobile.us blog has published an interview with Mobile & Embedded Community Leader Roger Brinkley. "Roger and I had a chance to visit recently and talk more about his involvement in leading the community. Read on to learn a little more about what goes on behind the scenes in this thriving community..."

Filthy Rich Clients demo code
The Filthy Rich Clients project hosts sample code for the upcoming book of the same name by Chet Haase and Romain Guy. On his blog, Romain recently announced the availability of demos for chapters 5 (Performance) and 6 (Composites). Ultimately, the project will host the complete collection of demos and examples found in the book

June 27, 2007

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 297
Issue 297 of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter is out, with a preview of the IDE Shootout at JUG Cologne on July 3, the Dream Team Profile of Edgar Silva, Putting Flickr on Rails, Resolving Java ME Device Fragmentation Issues, NetBeans Google Toolbar Module Tutorial, Extending the NetBeans API Wizards, and more.

JSR 275 (Units Specification) Project
The JSR-275 project is the home page for the JSR-275 (Units Specification) expert group's collaboration, and has updated versions of the draft spec in its documents and files section. JSR-275 specifies one or more Java packages for the programmatic handling of physical quantities and their expression as numbers of units.

June 26, 2007

GlassFish Plugins Project
The GlassFish Plugins Project enables IDE users to develop, deploy and run their Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications using their favorite IDEs. Available plugins support NetBeans (included with NetBeans 5.5.1 and 6.0 M9), Eclipse 3.3 Europa with WTP 2.0 RC3, Eclipse IDE 3.2 and MyEclipse. There are also NetBeans plugins for jMaki, Phobos, and more. The project is also actively seeking more developers to develop plugins for other IDE's.

MouseOver Animations in JFXBuilder/JavaFX
The JFXBuilder blog talks about the latest feature effort, MouseOver Animations in JFXBuilder/JavaFX: "This week we've been playing with a user friendly way to easily configure graphical and animated actions for common input events, like MouseOver and MousePressed. JFXBuilder already has a shape custom tailored for this called a "SwitchShape". The basic idea is to select a group of shapes that we want to react to a mouse event, select the menu item "Group in SwitchShape", then simply configure the look of the different "versions" (MouseOver, MousePressed, etc.)."

June 25, 2007

Use-Cases for Portlets
Portlets define a streamlined way to aggregate content from several sources into a single Web application. In an MP3 interview with Artima, Use-Cases for Portlets, Brian Chan, chief architect of open-source portlet vendor Liferay, describes the use-cases for portlets.

Servlet 3.0 JSR Submitted
Work has begun on a new version of the Servlet API with the submission of JSR-315, Java Servlet 3.0 Specification, to the JCP. "Servlet 3.0 specification will work on extensibility / pluggability. Web framework pluggability will be a key driver of the Servlet 3.0 specification. As part of the revision for Java EE 6 we would like to revise the Servlet specification to support the Ease of Development (EoD) using the newer language features. Also along with EoD there have been requests for enhancements in other areas as well to support the modern next generation web application development." Balloting for this JSR closes on July 2.

JSON Support for JAX-WS
The JAX-WS Commons project, part of Project Metro, has added JSON Support for JAX-WS. "JAX-WS supports a "pluggable encoding" -- meaning it can use formats other than textual XML. This extension takes advantage of this and allows JAX-WS services to be exposed via JSON. JSON support is implemented as a custom binding. So just like there are SOAP/HTTP binding or Plain Old XML binding, you can specify JSON binding to expose a service as JSON service."

June 22, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 126
The latest issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter has been posted, with tool-related news from around the web, announcements of new community projects and one graduation (WebLEAF) from the JavaTools incubator, and a Tool Tip on putting a scripting language in your Java webapp.

Jsasb Project
Jsasb (Java Standalone Application Service Bus), is a framework for Java stand-alone applications. It is inspired by various J2EE technologies, meaning it could be used bridge stand-alone Java code with EE. Jsasb applications consist of components (in containers) employing publish-and-subscribe or request-and-reply communications patterns. The framework also uses an ESB-like approach to separate development and assembly into two phases.

JUG Leaders BOF at Jazoon Conference
Fabrizio Gianneschi writes, "members of the JUGs Community are invited to the JUG Leaders BOF, which will occur on June, 26 during the Jazoon Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. It will be a special opportunity to discuss JUG-related topics, be updated about the latest java.net initiatives and, last but not least, to see the new three Community Leaders for the first time together on the stage."

June 21, 2007

Java Mobility Podcast 9: A Swarm of Cheap Robots on Mars (Or Wherever You Need Them)
In the latest Java Mobility Podcast, entitled A Swarm of Cheap Robots on Mars (Or Wherever You Need Them) , Bruce Boyes, CEO of Systronix, describes TrackBot, a small robotic device with built-in sensor modules that provide beaconing, obstacle avoidance, spatial awareness, communication, and navigation. Add a SunSPOT device to TrackBot, and the result is a powerful but affordable strategy for large-scale deployments in swarms and collaborative robotic behavior (see also TrackBot on YouTube).

Hybrids Combine GNU Classpath and OpenJDK
InfoQ reports that the first GNU Classpath/Sun Java hybrids have begun to appear. In Hybrids Combine GNU Classpath and OpenJDK, Xandy Johnson reports "The hybrids combine GNU Classpath with Java code that Sun has recently released under the GPL either to improve an existing project or to further the goal of having a completely Free JDK." The article covers projects from IKVM, CACAO, and Red Hat.

Jersey Project
Jersey is the open source JAX-RS (JSR 311) Reference Implementation for building RESTful Web services. Jersey also provides additional APIs and extension points (SPIs) so that developers may extend Jersey to suite their needs. Jersey is currently available as an early access implementation. Jersey cannot go to version 1.0 until JAX-RS reaches the final release and is an approved JSR. Until that point Jersey will track the JSR 311 API and will regularly update according to 311 Expert Group agreed snapshots of the API

June 20, 2007

NetBeans Google Toolbar Module Tutorial (Part 2)
Building on top of the concepts and principles learned in the NetBeans Google Toolbar Module Tutorial, a new "Part 2" tutorial shows you how to develop a more advanced Google search plugin that will display its results inside applications built on top of the NetBeans Platform, such as NetBeans IDE. In this tutorial, you create a more advanced version of the plugin in part 1, by recreating it and then adding support from the JDIC native browser, which is part the JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) project, to it.

GlassFish Web Services Stack Tango with JavaSE6
Aran Gupta explains EE-free web services in GlassFish Web Services Stack Tango with JavaSE6. "The Web services stack in GlassFish V2 uses JAX-WS 2.1 and JAXB 2.1 as the core Web services platform. WSIT extends this core by providing an implementation of key WS-* specifications. Since JavaSE 6 has Web services support through the JAX-WS 2.0 and JAXB 2.0 specifications, it allows to build basic Web services using only JavaSE 6 but does not have any of the WSIT capabilities. But now that's possible! Fabian explained how a WSIT endpoint be easily deployed using the JAX-WS Endpoint API. In a follow up post, I provide a detailed writeup with complete working code."

June 19, 2007

jai-operators New Release
The jai-operators project recently posted a new build. jai-operators provides extension operators for use with the Java Advanced Imaging library. "It contains among other things an operator to apply any point operation (such as pow() and sqrt()), an operator to apply the same operation on a collection of images (the first renderable collection operator!), a pipeline operator and the famous DFT3D and IDFT3D along with a 3d periodic shift."

JSR 275 (Units Specification) in Early Draft Review
JSR 275, Units Specification, is in Early Draft Review, which specifies the programmatic handling of physical quantities and their expression as numbers of units. "Developers frequently encounter the need to model units of measure, because objects in the real world are subject to these measures. When working with units, developers need to understand the mathematics of units, how to convert between systems, and how to format and parse string representations of units. Most of this work can be consolidated into one or two Java packages, which is a primary aim of this JSR." The Early Draft Review ends on July 8.

June 18, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 125
The latest issue of the JavaTools Community newsletter has been posted, with tool news from around the web, announcements of new community projects and one graduation from the community's incubator (Jarvis), and a "Tool Tip" on enabling GZIP compression on Apache.

Has Matisse Really Changed Anything?
Over on JavaLobby, Michael Urban has touched off an intense debate by asking the open question, Has Matisse Really Changed Anything?" Even I, one of the people originally singing its praises, have found that I don't actually use it. Oh sure, I will use it for quickly mocking up a UI as a "proof of concept" screenshot of what a UI on an application will look like. But when it comes down to writing the app, I don't actually use it."

What's new in ME Framework 1.2
Vladimir Sizikov has an update on What's new in ME Framework 1.2. "We (the ME Framework team) are getting closer and closer to the release date of ME Framework 1.2, and I thought that it would be useful to provide a high-level list of most important changes, improvementns and new features that we implemented in this upcoming release." His list includes a new Text Export feature, a "Debug Agent", a major Distributed Test Framework update, and more.

June 15, 2007

Chet Haase on ITConversations Podcast
Swing Team member, Filthy Rich Clients co-author, and java.net blogger Chet Haase is the subject of an ITConverstations podcast interview, in Technometria: What's New in Java. "Chet first reviews his background and how he came to work for Sun Microsystems. The talk then turns to the company's applet strategy. The group also evaluates the status of JavaFX scripting. The conversation is technical in nature, but interesting in its review of an important tool in online technology."

Ruby Developers Get Productive with NetBeans' Ruby Pack
Jim White looks at NetBeans' Ruby support in the DevX article Ruby Developers Get Productive with NetBeans' Ruby Pack. "The simplicity and power of Ruby and Ruby on Rails have become renowned. However, finding a suitable IDE has sometimes left them wanting. With NetBeans, Ruby developers may find the productivity gains of their language are finally matched by an IDE."

June 14, 2007

HDcookbook - a place for Blu-ray Disc Java and GEM
Inspired by an upcoming book on developing Blu-Ray Java apps, the HDCookbook project is a code repository "to gather useful code for Blu-ray Java, and other GEM terminal specifications like MHP, OCAP, and GEM-IPTV." The project is currently converting from cvs to Subversion, so interested users may want to hold off checking out code until that migration is complete.

Layout Management: Use an IDE or Code by Hand?
Stuart Clements seeks feedback on the Swing tutorials, asking Layout Management: Use an IDE or Code by Hand? "Have you seen this cool video about the frustrations of coding a GridBag layout manager? We on the Swing tutorial team think this is a pretty accurate portrayal of how frustrating hand-coding a GUI can be, which is why in the latest update of the Swing trails we've decide to encourage the use of NetBeans as much as possible, especially where layout management is concerned. So, do you agree with this approach?"

June 13, 2007

Using the Persistence API in Desktop Applications
John O'Conner has written a new SDN article about Using the Persistence API in Desktop Applications. "The Java Persistence API facilitates your use of POJOs as entity beans and significantly reduces the need for complicated deployment descriptors and extra helper beans. Additionally, you can even use the API in desktop applications. [...] This article describes the Java Persistence API and how to use it in Java SE desktop applications that require object persistence."

Can iTunes Accomplish What Jini Couldn't?
Artima Senior Editor Frank Sommers compares self-networking technologies and their approaches as he wonders Can iTunes Accomplish What Jini Couldn't? "iTunes is far more than a desktop music player and organizer: it is also a path through which over 300 million users have already installed Apple's open-source dynamic networking software, Bonjour. Has the time for spontaneous networking finally arrived?"

Java 3D to be open sourced under GPL
In a message in the Java 3D forum, Kevin Rushforth announces Java 3D to go open source under GPL: "We are pleased to announce that the source code for the j3d-core and vecmath projects will be made available under the same open-source license that OpenJDK is now, using GPLv2 plus CLASSPATH exception. This gives software vendors more flexibility is releasing their products. You will be able to choose to use the existing binary SLA license, which will still be available for each fcs release, or you will be able to use the GPLv2 + CLASSPATH license to release your product with a pre-released (daily, alpha, beta) version of Java 3D, or with a version that you modify and build."

June 12, 2007

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 Part 0: Primer
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 Primer. "This document is a companion to the WSDL 2.0 specification (Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 Part 1: Core Language [WSDL 2.0 Core], Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 Part 2: Adjuncts [WSDL 2.0 Adjuncts]). It is intended for readers who wish to have an easier, less technical introduction to the main features of the language. This primer is only intended to be a starting point toward use of WSDL 2.0, and hence does not describe every feature of the language."

NetBeans 6 Rocks!
Over on JavaLobby, Michael Urban reports that NetBeans 6 Rocks! "After working with NetBeans 6 over the last week, I have to say I am very impressed. This is not simply a minor upgrade, as is so common in IDEs these days even when they are given a new major version number. Quite the contrary, NetBeans 6 is a major new release, and a major improvement over NetBeans 5.5."

June 11, 2007

Amobee Delivers Ad-Funded Mobile Java Apps and Services
The Java Mobility Podcast continues in its eighth episode, Amobee Delivers Ad-Funded Mobile Java Apps and Services. "In this interview at 2007 JavaOne conference, Amobee Media Systems' Ziv Eliraz describes the company's unique operator-centric system for ad-funding mobile services and applications. Developers can integrate Amobee's handset API ("HAPI") in their Java applications and generate revenue in a way that is contextually sensitive and user-friendly."

OpenJDK Community Cosmology
Mark Reinhold explains the "big bang" that will expand into a full-blown community around OpenJDK in his blog OpenJDK Community Cosmology. "So. Here we are. We have a Charter for the OpenJDK Community. The Charter creates an Interim Governance Board, with three members from outside Sun and two from within. The Charter empowers the Board to write a Constitution, get it ratfied by the Community, and then hold elections for the three non-appointed seats. In the meantime Sun will strive to be the very model of a modern benevolent dictator. "

ME developer contests
Several current contests allow ME developers to show off their stuff. The bd-j-application-contest project is home to discussion and submission forums around the FOX JavaOne BD-J Sweepstakes announced at JavaOne. Submissions for this contest are due July 6. Meanwhile, Qusay H. Mahmoud blogs about a number of student contests hosted by Vodafone Betavine, including competitions to develop social networking, information and entertainment, B2B, and social-impact applications. The deadline for these contests is September 30.

June 08, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 124
The 124th issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, with tool news from around the web, announcements of new projects in the community, and a tool tip explaining why you should move your project's source control to Subversion.

Key Frame Animation in JFXBuilder/JavaFX
Jeff Martin's latest JavaFX update is on Key Frame Animation in JFXBuilder/JavaFX: "In the last week we've been adding animation support to JFXBuilder. Fortunately, JFXBuilder’s existing key frame animation model matches well with JavaFX - in particular, using the JavaFX "dur" statement. [...] JFXBuilder already has an animation panel that lets you animate almost any shape attribute: x, y, width, height, rotation, scale, skew, opacity, color, stroke color and stroke width. To define an animation, you simply draw a shape or drop a component, move the animation time slider to a different time, and change the attributes for the new time. JFXBuilder will automatically interpolate all the values between the two key frames."

The GlassFish Community Delivering a Java EE Application Server
The white paper The GlassFish Community Delivering a Java EE Application Server (620 KB, PDF) takes a high-level look at one of java.net's most active communities. "A year and a half after the initial launch, the GlassFish community has already delivered its first final release and is on its way to its second. In this article we will provide an overview of all the aspects of the GlassFish Community and the GlassFish AppServer."

June 07, 2007

Geronimo passes Java EE 5 Compatibility Test Suite
InfoQ reports Geronimo has passed the Java EE 5 compatibilty test suite. "The Apache Geronimo project has passed a significant milestone in that their latest release candidate (2.0-M6-rc1) has passed all tests in the Java Enterprise Edition 5.0 Compatibility Test Suite, making it the first open source application server other than Glassfish to pass the tests."

Nimbus L&F; Update
Jasper Potts has posted a Nimbus L&F; Update: "So it has been a while since I blogged about Nimbus, Java One has come and gone and I am sure you are all wondering whats happening to it. Well things have changed for Nimbus since it was announced at Desktop Matters conference in March. The initial plan was for Nimbus to be a open source project jointly run by Ben Galbraith and myself. In early prototype I hacked together thats available from nimbus.dev.java.net was very well accepted both inside Sun and in the swing community. As a result a decision was made to bring the Nimbus L&F; into the JDK as part of the new Consumer JRE."

Geronimo passes Java EE 5 Compatibilty Test Suite
InfoQ reports Geronimo has passed the Java EE 5 compatibilty test suite. "The Apache Geronimo project has passed a significant milestone in that their latest release candidate (2.0-M6-rc1) has passed all tests in the Java Enterprise Edition 5.0 Compatibility Test Suite, making it the first open source application server other than Glassfish to pass the tests."

June 06, 2007

New JavaFX Script Build Posted To OpenJFX
Chris Oliver announces a new update to JavaFX: "We just posted a new build of JFX which contains the following fixes and features: UI -- Shape Morphing, JavaFXPad to search for dependent classes, Mouse Wheel support in Canvas, and Baseline alignment of Text. Interpreter -- Bind is now only allowed in initialization contexts, Fixed array assignment problem reported on openjfx forum, Fixed bug with while condition of dur expression reported on openjfx user list. JSR 223 -- Fixed problems reported on openjfx user list."

Java Mobility Podcast: OpenLaszlo and Project Orbit
The Java Mobility Podcast has reached episode 7, OpenLaszlo and Project Orbit, in which Max Carlson, Laszlo Systems co-founder, and Hinkmond Wong, Sun senior staff engineer, discuss OpenLaszlo and Project Orbit. Designed to free content developers from worrying about runtime issues, OpenLaszlo supports zero-install deployment of Ajax applications in multiple environments. Project Orbit is the Sun Java ME viewer for Laszlo Web 2.0 content on set-top boxes and smart cell phones.

June 05, 2007

Java Web Start Technology and Application Clients in the GlassFish Application Server
A new SDN article by Tim Quinn and Rick Palkovic looks at Java Web Start Technology and Application Clients in the GlassFish Application Server. "To make this capability available, you do not need to develop your application differently or distribute any files to end-user systems yourself. Launching application clients with Java Web Start software overcomes the distribution problems that have historically impeded widespread use of application clients. The GlassFish application server provides Java Web Start support automatically, providing the feature without any extra effort from you as a developer or administrator."

JSR 314 (JavaServer Faces 2.0) Approved
The JCP Executive Committee has voted 11-0 (with five non-votes) to approve JSR 314, JavaServer Faces 2.0. This new version of JSF aims to improve productivity, integrate Ajax, support non-JavaScript clients, use the Java Persistence API, and leverage modularity to better integrate with other client- and server-side technologies. ONJava blogger Shashank Tiwari describes the JSF 2.0 kick-off in his blog JSF 2.0 is here!

June 04, 2007

Open Possibilities
This year's JavaOne slogan was "Open Possibilities." In the interview Open Possibilities, Artima asks Sun's JCP Chair Onno Kluyt to tell us about new possibilities that some Java developers may find surprising. Specifically, Kluyt describes three Java technologies that allow developers to build new kinds of applications.

Voting for Checked Exceptions
Calling it "yet another hideous idea from the closures camp," Café Au Lait's Elliotte Rusty Harold dismisses Neal Gafter's thoughts about removing checked exceptions from Java in order to make closures easier to implement. In Voting for Checked Exceptions, he writes "can we take the idea of removing checked exceptions from the language off the table? They are far more important to developing reliable, comprehensible, robust code than closures ever could be."

NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 BlueJ Edition
NetBeans.org and BlueJ.org are proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 BlueJ Edition. The NetBeans IDE BlueJ Edition is targeted at teachers and students familiar with the popular BlueJ tool. The NetBeans BlueJ Edition helps you "make the jump" from BlueJ to a full-featured IDE, either when your projects have grown too big to fit comfortably into BlueJ, or when you want to use features such as code completion and drag-and-drop GUI building, which BlueJ doesn't directly support.

June 01, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 123
The 123rd issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with tool news from around the web, a list of new projects in the tools community, and a Tool Tip on converting your CVS-based java.net project to use Subversion.

Is the Mac really a good dev platform?
Frustrated by the long wait for a final JDK 6 on the Mac, JavaLobby's Matthew Schmidt asks Is the Mac really a good dev platform? He's kicked off a lengthy discussion by asking "besides having a slick command line and nice interface, is the Mac really worth it for Java development? Your JVM version will always be behind, you're paying a premium for the Mac hardware and Apple has always treated Java like a bit of a second class citizen. So, why do you keep sticking with your Mac?"

Java Mobility Podcast #6: Vodafone Introduces Betavine Developer Portal
In Java Mobility Podcast #6: Vodafone Introduces Betavine Developer Portal, Roger and Terrence interview Steve Wolak and Peter Thompson from Vodafone about the new Betavine site, a research and development space that encourages collaboration in mobile and internet communications. As a Betavine user, you can download and test applications, create your own projects and blogs, and interact with other users.

May 31, 2007

JavaFX sends Sun back to the future?
Builder.au interviews Bob Brewin in the article JavaFX Sends Sun Back to the Future? "Can Java's new eye candy engine -- JavaFX -- be the tonic to revive Java's flagging fortunes client-side? Sun's chief technology officer for software, Bob Brewin, certainly thinks so as he discusses the issues facing Sun with JavaFX, will it put Java back on the desktop and if the GPL licensing of Java warrants a re-license for CDDL projects. BuilderAU caught up with Brewin at the recent JavaOne conference."

Removing Language Features?
Neal Gafter's work on a closures proposal for JDK 7 has led him to a surprising consideration of the why and how of Removing Language Features, specifically checked exceptions. "Fellow Googler Matt Shulman asked me a question about the Closures for Java specification. He observed that much of the complexity arises because of support for checked exceptions in the spec. [...] Matt clarified that he was asking not just about removing support for checked exceptions from the Closures spec, but from the entire programming language."

May 30, 2007

NetBeans Podcast Episode #29
Hot topics discussed in the 29th episode of the NetBeans podcast include the release of NetBeans 5.5.1; a Glassfish debate and demo; the goldmine of technical articles loaded into the third issue of NetBeans Magazine; and what happens to those who bet against NetBeans. And as always, the NetBeans Puzzler.

Charles Ditzel: JavaFX PDF Viewer
Charles Ditzel links to a video with a revelation of a suprising JavaFX feature, in JavaFX PDF Viewer: "I forgot all about this and I shouldn't have - at Chris Oliver's talk on JavaFX Script at JavaOne he showed a very elegant application for viewing PDF files. The way he showed it was quite interesting, he went through a number of slides and then showed a demo of the Swing PDF version - then everyone expected him to show the JavaFX Script version and he surprised everyone by pointing out that the elegant app he was using for his presentation was the JavaFX PDF viewer..."

Alex Miller: Make static typing work for you
In a blog linked from the JDK community, Alex Miller argues for Make static typing work for you: "Java is statically typed and this pervades the design and code written in it (regardless of whether you think that is a good thing). If you try to subvert this using reflection, you are working against the language and losing the major benefits of static typing, such as the ability to refactor, compile-time type checking, etc..."

May 29, 2007

JavaFX: New WYSIWYG Editor + Ramani Updates on License
ONJava blogger Timothy M. O'Brien continues his series on digging into JavaFX with a pair of updates in JavaFX: New WYSIWYG Editor + Ramani Updates on License. "Think we have to wait a few years for good tool support in JavaFX? Think again, there’s a pretty capable tool from Reportmill Software."

Lexical Scope of Java Inner Classes and Closures
A new article at Artima, Lexical Scope of Java Inner Classes and Closures, is comprised mostly of a big table, one which compares and contrasts an intresting and important concept in the debate over the various closure proposals for JDK 7. "One of the key differences between the different Java inner class and closure proposals is the lexical scope of names, this blog compares the scoping of the major proposals (CICE + ARM, C3S, FCM + JCA, and BGGA in both its forms). The order in the comparison table[....] from left to right, is how large a change is made to Java."

ME Application Developers Project
The ME Application Developers Project within the Java Mobile & Embedded Community is solely dedicated to the business of application and content development on mobile and embedded Java platforms. It contains a gallery of ME applications, and popular links to help, and can help you find the resources you need -- demos, source code, tools, and tips -- and learn how to connect with the community.

May 28, 2007

Is There a Consensus on Fixing Generics for Java 7?
A JavaLobby discussion asks Is There a Consensus on Fixing Generics for Java 7? "Seeing as closures and properties are still quite disputed, I was wondering whether there was any consensus on introducing Reified Generics for Java7 instead."

Jacob Lehrbaum Explains JavaFX Mobile
Sun's biggest announcement at JavaOne 2007 was its renewed interest in the client and, specifically, a client-side framework the company dubbed JavaFX. Obligatory keynote demos notwithstanding, many conference attendees were baffled as to just what JavaFX meant. in a six-minute audio interview with Artima entitled Jacob Lehrbaum Explains JavaFX Mobile, Sun's client systems group product line manager describes the mobile version of JavaFX, and provides the big picture of where JavaFX fits in with other client-side Java technologies.

May 25, 2007

JavaOne and the "Debate from the Blogosphere"
The Mobile & Embedded community home page is featuring C. Enrique Ortiz's blog from the last day of the 2007 JavaOne conference, in which he discusses his participation in a debate during Motorola's keynote session, with Padmasree Warrior from Motorola and Ajit Jaokar from Open Gardens. You can also view the webcast of the debate.

JavaOne and the "Debate from the Blogosphere"
The Mobile & Embedded community home page is featuring C. Enrique Ortiz's blog from the last day of the 2007 JavaOne conference, in which he discusses his participation in a debate during Motorola's keynote session, with Padmasree Warrior from Motorola and Ajit Jaokar from Open Gardens. You can also view the webcast of the debate.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 122
Issue 122 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is available, with tool-related news from around the web, updates from community projects, announcements of new projects that have joined the community, and a Tool Tip on finding bugs on Web applications with FireBug.

RedHat's Plans for OpenJDK
A blog at fitzsim.org spells out RedHat's Plans for OpenJDK. "Our team at Red Hat has been doing some planning now that OpenJDK has been released..." After summarizing the post-JavaOne state of OpenJDK, the blog spells out RedHat's intermediate goals: package OpenJDK as "IcedTea", build it with free software, set up a related project on classpath.org, test without the encumbrances, try to replace encumbrances with parts from GNU Classpath, and more. "We’re in an investigation stage right now, so precise timelines will have to wait until we’ve had more time to discuss the OpenJDK codebase and Sun’s timelines."

JavaOne and the "Debate from the Blogosphere"
The Mobile & Embedded community home page is featuring C. Enrique Ortiz's blog from the last day of the 2007 JavaOne conference, in which he discusses his participation in a debate during Motorola's keynote session, with Padmasree Warrior from Motorola and Ajit Jaokar from Open Gardens. You can also view the webcast of the debate.

May 24, 2007

Supporting SCA's Java Component Model: Which Vendors Will Do It?
Blogger David Chappell has a followup question following JavaOne's warm fuzzies: Supporting SCA's Java Component Model: Which Vendors Will Do It? "This year's JavaOne conference included a panel on Service Component Architecture (SCA), for which I was the moderator. Representatives from BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Sun, and Tibco spent an hour answering questions posed by the audience and me. It quickly became apparent that even though all of these vendors supported SCA, they had quite different ideas about what this meant."

Java Mobility Podcast: A Talk With Java ME Expert C. Enrique Ortiz
The latest installment of the Java Mobility Podcast offers A Talk With Java ME Expert C. Enrique Ortiz, "a recognized mobility expert, renowned blogger, developer, and author, who touches on a range of mobility topics in this interview, including: moving to CDC; the latest JSRs that are important to mobile developers; mobile AJAX; and the issue of device fragmentation."

May 23, 2007

Rethinking JSF - The Real Problem
"JSF - JavaServer Faces, JCP's component framework for the presentation layer - has had a long and fairly controversial road so far. There's still a lot of dislike floating around for it, as you can see on various TheServerSide threads that deal with it head on. The problem isn't JSF - not for the most part, at least. The real problem is the perception of JSF, as well as how it's being shown and taught." In an article on TheServerSide, Rethinking JSF - The Real Problem, Joseph Ottinger argues "The real problem is that JSF, for a component framework, has so few components."

May 21, 2007

Augusto Sellhorn: JavaFX Clock
I slightly modified the clock example Chris Oliver wrote, and added some artwork to it so it looks somewhat like one of the Google desktop gadgets I use. The gadget is very low res, so I decided to make the image files much bigger so users can resize it without it looking like a pixelated mess. I made the seconds hand jump every second instead of moving continuously, and like the gadget, it has a very quick animation that moves the hand back a bit to give it a "spring" feel...

Neal Gafter: A Limitation of Super Type Tokens
There was a coincidental adjacency between two slides in Josh Bloch's talk that made me think a bit more about the idea of Super Type Tokens. The last slide of his discussion of generics gave a complete implementation of the mind-expanding Typesafe Heterogenous Containers (THC) pattern using Super Type Tokens...

More New I/O APIs for Java
JSR 203 promises more new I/O APIs for Java, including several new I/O abstractions and a new I/O programming model. In the interview More New I/O APIs for Java, JSR 203 spec lead Alan Bateman explains how JSR 203's file API solves current shortcomings with java.io.File, the new Watchable interface, and asynchronous I/O programming. Bateman is an engineer in the SE Core Technologies team at Su

JUG events overview
Cologne JUG leader Michael Hutterman points out the recently updated JUG Events Overview wiki page, allowing you to add your JUG event or look for events nearby. He also points out that you can submit your JUG event to the main java.net events listing via an online form.

Java Mobility Podcast 4: Meet Vringo
In Java Mobility Podcast #4, you can catch Roger Brinkley's and Terrence Barr's interview with Vringo, an independent software vendor (ISV) who launched a video-sharing community that enables you to share video ringtones (or "Vringos") with your buddies.

Jxta-Overlay Project
The jxta-overlay project is an effort to use JXTA technology for building an overlay on top of JXTA offering a set of basic primitives (functionalities) that are most commonly needed in jxta-based applications. This set of basic functionalities is intended to be as complete as possible regarding the needs of jxta-based applications. The overlay is built on top of JXTA layer and provides a set of primitives that can be used later by other applications, which on their hand, will be built on top of the overlay

May 18, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 121
Issue 121 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, featuring tool-related news from around the web, announcements of new tools in the community, and a "Tool Tip" on how to get statistics for your project.

Building Applications with NetBeans Visual Library
In a slideshow hosted by JavaLobby, Building Applications with NetBeans Visual Library, NetBeans' Roman Strobl returns with some super slick demos of the new NetBeans Visual Library in NetBeans 6.0. Watch as he shows you what makes their Mobility and JSF tools tick.

JIDE Common Layer open-source release
JIDE Software has released a set of open-source GUI components as the JIDE Common Layer project. They write in: "JIDE Common Layer is a layer above Java/Swing/AWT. When we first started working on JIDE components, we found many missing or wrongly implemented features in Swing/AWT. So we created such a layer and built all JIDE products on top of the layer. As time goes by, this layer grew into a module with over 100k lines of source code and over 30 components. Since most of the features we provided in this layer are so commonly used and probably should be included in Swing anyway, we decide to open source it so that everyone can use it and contribute to it."

May 17, 2007

Ed Burnette: Interview with Bob Brewin on JavaFX and Java Kernel
At JavaOne, Sun Microsystems unveiled a new consumer-oriented product line called JavaFX, which among other things has a new language for interactive user interfaces (JavaFX Script). Sound a little like Flash? That's the idea, says Sun CTO of Software Bob Brewin, and a new streamlined runtime system will help make it a reality. In ZDNet's Sun CTO promises Flash-like experience from JavaFX and new runtime, Ed Burnette talks with Bob about how all this will work together to improve the experience for the user and developer.

What Are Your Java ME Pain Points, Really?
Artima's Frank Sommers asks What Are Your Java ME Pain Points, Really? "A billion Java-enabled devices in use, and the many more non-PC devices through which billions of people will experience the Internet, represent a potentially big opportunity for developers. Yet, relatively few developers work on Java ME applications today. What makes it hard to develop for mobile Java devices?"

The Working Developer's Guide To Java Bytecode
A detailed new article on TheServerSide offers The Working Developer's Guide To Java Bytecode. Noting all the changes in the Java programming environment -- new languages atop the JVM, features like generics, etc. -- Ted Neward notes "one thing that hasn't changed, however, is the basic fact that all of these languages, despite all their interesting features or capabilities, eventually end up in the lingua franca of the Java Virtual Machine, the JVM bytecode set. In this article, we're going to examine the JVM bytecode set, disassemble some code to see how it works, and play with some tools that allow us to manipulate bytecode directly."

May 16, 2007

JavaFX and NetBeans
JavaFX is a new family of Sun products based on Java technology and targeted at the high impact, rich content market and is initially comprised of JavaFX Script and JavaFX Mobile. Project OpenJFX is a project of the OpenJFX community for sharing early versions of the JavaFX Script language and for collaborating on its development. Plug-ins are already available through the Update Centers for both NetBeans 5.5 and NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 9, with install instructions available on the Project OpenJFX site.

JavaFX: First Steps
ONJava blogger Timothy M. O'Brien is working through introductory JavaFX code on his blog. The first entry, JavaFX: First Steps - "Hello OnJava" App, features "a very simple JavaFX application that parses the OnJava ATOM feed and just draws an array JavaFX Script Groups containing a Rect an two Text nodes." In a followup, JavaFX: First Steps - Correcting a Swing Mistake, he eliminates what appeared to be a bug by moving his script-execution code off the Swing event-dispatch thread.

May 15, 2007

Community Participation Drives Evolution of Java Micro Edition Platform
Sun today announced the immediate availability of the Milestone Release (MR2) of the phoneME Feature project in the open source Mobile & Embedded Community. MR2 also contains a high performance implementation of Java bindings for the OpenGL ES API, which provides access to high-end 3D graphic functionality on the device. These capabilities facilitate the creation of graphically rich and compelling entertainment, business, and social networking mobile applications.

JavaFX in Perspective
Bryan Young's blog aspires to put JavaFX in Perspective: "The large number of discussion about JavaFX over the last few days seems be very polarized. So far I have only read two opinions repeated over and over: JavaFX is the competitor to Flash and SilverLight that we've all been waiting for, andJavaFX is a weak attempt to cash in on the recent SilverLight announcements and has no chance for success. What most people don't seem to get, is that JavaFX isn't even in the same market as Flash and SilverLight."

May 14, 2007

Mobile & Embedded Community on java.net White Paper (PDF)
This new white paper (PDF, 64 KB) introduces the Mobile & Embedded Community, describes the benefits of participating in it, suggests ways to get involved, and explains the differences between working with the open-source implementation and the commercial implementation of the Java ME platform.

Dave Gilbert: My First OpenJDK Bug Fix
Dave Gilbert blogs about contributing to the now fully open-sourced OpenJDK in My First OpenJDK Bug Fix . "The sources for OpenJDK are available today, which is great news! Even better, the build process is relatively painless (I'm using Ubuntu Linux 6.10) and it didn't take long to have my own version of OpenJDK up and running. Sun have done a good job of making this "just work", so I can get on with other things...like fixing bug 6463712. This is a bug I uncovered (and reported to Sun last year) while working on the javax.swing implementation in GNU Classpath..."

NetBeans Magazine Issue 3, May 2007
To commemorate the largest NetBeans Day ever, the NetBeans community has put together a special issue of NetBeans Magazine with a whopping 84 pages of in-depth technical articles. Issue Three showcases the flexibility and versatility of the IDE and Platform, and the upcoming features in NetBeans 6.0. You can view the magazine as a whole or as individual articles. And now you're also able to access simplified HTML versions of each article, or get the full visual experience from the PDF's.

May 04, 2007

JCP 5th Annual Awards Nominations
The JCP has announced nominees for its 5th Annual Awards. This years award adds a new category, JCP Participant of the Year, for which the nominees are Wayne Carr, Jean-Marie Dautelle and Doug Lea. Nominees for JCP Member of the Year are the Apache Software Foundation, Nokia and Orange France. Nominees have also been announced for Most Innovative JSR for SE/EE and ME, and Most Outstanding Spec Lead for SE/EE and ME. Winners will be announced at the JCP JavaOne event on May 9.

CommunityOne
Next Monday, the day before JavaOne's official opening, Sun is sponsoring CommunityOne, a new event that expands on NetBeans Day by adding tracks for GlassFish, OpenJDK and Mobile & Embedded, and more. Tim O'Reilly will deliver an opening keynote address, and the Java Posse will do their podcast as the lunch-time entertainment. The day closes out with a beer-and-conversation community reception. The event is free, but space is limited, so you should register in advance.

May 03, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 120
Issue 120 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with a schedule of when the Tools people will be at the java.net booth at JavaOne, tool news from around the web, a list of new projects that joined the community in the last week, and a tool tip about the project owners' "How Do I..." forum.

May 02, 2007

Java 7 and Beyond
Elliotte Rusty Harold's recent presentation to the NYC Study Group, Java 7 and Beyond, offers one of the most concise and thorough tours yet compiled of possible JDK 7 features. The HTML version of his slides covers proposed language changes like closures, property literals, and type inference, and possible library additions like a new date and time API, the Swing Application Framework, and long-awaited filesystem API's to expose and preserve file metadata.

QuickTime 7.1.6 Closes QuickTime for Java Security Hole
Now available for Mac OS X and Windows, QuickTime 7.1.6 closes the QuickTime for Java security hole that was exposed 10 days ago as part of the CanSecWest security challenge. With a fix now available, Matasano Chargen has posted Details on Dino's QuickTime Advisory, which shows how the QTHandleRef.toQTPointer() method can use an integer overflow from Java to overwrite process memory. A Zero-Day Initiative advisory tracks the history of this vulnerability.

Mobile & Embedded Community Podcast: Report From Brazil
In the second Mobile & Embedded Community Podcast, Report from Brazil, Community Leader Roger Brinkley and Tech Evangelist Terrence Barr highlight the latest community news and report on the April events in Brazil at Sun Tech Days and the FISL conference. Don't miss Roger's interview with Bruno and Lucas, project owners of the Marge Project, a Java Bluetooth Framework that shows how to create Bluetooth-enabled applications in a simple way.

May 01, 2007

Top 10 Java EE performance problems
TheServerSide notes the conclusion of a series of blogs on the Top 10 Java EE performance problems. "For the last two and a half months, Vincent Partington has been blogging about the top ten Enterprise Java Application Performance Problems. [...] Now he wraps up the countdown with some conclusions about Enterprise Java performance in general."

NetBeans Plugin Portal
The "Plugins" tab on the NetBeans home page now takes you to the newly implemented NetBeans Plugin Portal. You can use the new NetBeans Plugin Portal to add your own plugins, comment on plugins, rate plugins, and add the Plugin Portal as an Update Center to your NetBeans IDE. More details about the new portal are available in NB Evangelist Dave Botterill's blog Check Out The New NetBeans Plugin Portal.

Robosapiens Developer Contest: Java-Powered Humanoid Robots
Two contests being held at JavaOne will let developers program the RS Media Java ME powered Robosapiens robot from WowWee Robotics. The RS Media Robosapien robot provides a complete multimedia robotic experience with the unique ability to be fully customized and programmable. The robot is equipped with a head-mounted camera, a color LCD screen in his chest, a full speaker system embedded in his armor. The robot is capable of playing MP3, taking and displaying photos and videos, recording and playing audio clips, and comes with Java games. The goal of the contests are to build Java midlets that control robot movements (arm, leg, head), access and play media contents, capture new images via the robot camera, and react to external sensor events.

April 30, 2007

Victims of J2EE Success
Is EE the right hammer for every nail? Dan Creswell's blog Victims of J2EE Success criticizes some EE developers for assuming an incorrect set of beliefs, namely that "there is nothing beyond the database, POJOs focused purely on business logic, this is distributed programming, Ops is someone elses problem, [and you just] deploy more or bigger boxes to scale." He goes on to say "once you’re beyond a certain level of challenge the J2EE way of thought and patterns of design don’t work," and lists a series of language/framework-agnostic traits that developers need to handle new and challenging enterprise work.

Direct Web Remoting 2.0 Released
The Direct Web Remoting project has released the long-awaited version 2.0. DWR 2.0's marquee feature is "Reverse Ajax" (explained in a java.net feature article), and also features a JavaScript Proxy API to dynamically generate JavaScript from a Java API. Security improvements help guard against cross-site request forgery and cross-site scripting attacks. Other new features include a much expanded WAR file, support for Spring namespaces and Guice, Jetty continuations, servlet session timeout support, new annotations, and more.

Consensus Reached on Java Closures Proposal
Artima reports that consensus has been reached among the competing JDK 7 closures proposals. They cite a blog entry from Neal Gafter, A Consensus Closures JSR Proposal, which he says "comes as close to achieving consensus as I believe possible. All but one of the authors of the three widely-discussed closures proposals have agreed to support it." The proposal defines the problem to be solved but does not mandate a specific solution, though it does offer Closures for Java as an example solution.

April 27, 2007

Meet the Dream Team Members: Joerg Plewe
In January, the NetBeans community announced the 11 charter members of the NetBeans Dream Team, a community-oriented group of highly skilled NetBeans users devoted to promoting NetBeans and working on the NetBeans Project. The first installment of a new Meet the Dream Team Members series introduces Joerg Plewe, who discusses the strategies of NetBeans evangelism and his 3D flight simulator Flying Guns.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 119
Issue 119 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is now available, featuring tool news from around the web. It's a slow week with only one new project in the community and no graduations, perhaps in advance of JavaOne, and on that topic, the newsletter has a call for community members to send in photos for use in the java.net Community Corner slide show. Finally, the newsletter offers a Tool Tip on executing your application using Maven.

Java Mobile Application Video Contest Closes Tonight
Friday (April 27) is the last day to submit entries for the Java Mobile Application Video Contest. This contest seeks example of great Java ME applications or services. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules for more information and specifics of submitting your video.

April 26, 2007

JSR 203 (More New I/O API's) in Early Draft Review
Scratching long-lingering itches of many developers, JSR 203, More New I/O APIs for the Java Platform (aka "NIO.2") is in its Early Draft Review. This draft, available for download, finally revises the filesystem API with a java.nio.filesystems package to add metadata awareness and a metadata-preserving copy method. The spec also adds asynchronous channels, the completion of the socket-channel functionality, multicast support, and buffer classes capable of containing more than Integer.MAX_VALUE elements. The review closes on May 27.

Mobile & Embedded "Meet & Greet / Un-BOF and Bloggers Social" at JavaOne
Among the many events at JavaOne this year (see the Java ME Guide to JavaOne 2007) the "Meet & Greet/Un-BOF and Bloggers Social" on May 9 at the Thirsty Bear restaurant is a chance for the diverse Mobile & Embedded Community to get together, socialize, exchange ideas, and give feedback. Terrence Barr's blog offers an information and a link to a wiki page to add yourself to the attendee list.

April 25, 2007

Roger Brinkley and Ray Gans on Open-Source at JavaOne
OpenJDK Program Manager Ray Gans and Mobile and Embedded Community Leader Roger Brinkley discuss Sun's Java open-source efforts in a seven-minute video discussion recently posted to the JavaOne site. The video can be watched in-line with a Flash player, or downloaded as an MP4 video or MP3 audio file. They discuss the ongoing effort to get the full JDK released as open-source, the advantages of an open-source ME, the prospects for community development of the platforms, and more.

How to Plug Memory Leaks in Java Applications
Are you plagued by slow-running Java applications? You could have a memory leak. The latest issue of Software Test & Performance Magazine features an article, Baffled By Brain Drain in Your Java Apps? (PDF, 6 MB, p. 22) by NetBeans Evangelist Gregg Sporar and A. Sundararajan on how to plug memory leaks in Java applications.

April 24, 2007

Reactions to Apache "Open Letter"
Apache's Open Letter to Sun Microsystems about licensing terms for a Java SE TCK has touched off a number of reactions. Dave Gilbert gives Five Reasons Why Apache Will Regret That Open Letter, while Ian Skerrett has posted his concerns about The Silence from an Open Sun, a post that drew A Response from Sun (namely, from Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer). Geir Magnusson, who wrote the initial open letter, discusses the issue further on Episode 28 of the Feathercast podcast, while former Harmony member Mark J. Wielaard shares his thoughts in the blog OpenJCK.

Mobile and Embedded Podcast 1: Introduction to the Community
This week we launch the new Mobile and Embedded Community podcast series with an Introduction to the Community. Leader Roger Brinkley and Technical Evangelist Terrence Barr describe the resources available for Mobile and Embedded developers. They also explain how to get started hosting a project on java.net, how to get your questions answered in the forums, and how to stay up to date with the world of Mobile and Embedded development. Hosted by Daniel Steinberg.

Reactions to Apache "Open Letter"
Apache's Open Letter to Sun Microsystems about licensing terms for a Java SE TCK has touched off a number of reactions. Dave Gilbert gives Five Reasons Why Apache Will Regret That Open Letter, while Ian Skerrett has posted his concerns about The Silence from an Open Sun, a post that drew A Response from Sun (namely, from Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer). Geir Magnusson, who wrote the initial open letter, discusses the issue further on Episode 28 of the Feathercast podcast, while former Harmony member Mark J. Wielaard shares his thoughts in the blog OpenJCK.

April 23, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 118
Issue 118 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is out, with news from around the web, including the release of version 1.1 of HDIV (the HTTP data integrity validator), announcements of new projects in the community and a graduation from the incubator (Rmic-Eclipse-plugin), and a Tool Tip on enabling GZIP compression on Tomcat.

Java Implicated in Safari-based Security Exploit
Dino Dai Zovi and Shane Macaulay have won the CanSecWest conference's security challenge by gaining shell-level access to an up-to-date MacBook through use of a malicious web page. According to the Matasano Chargen blog page tracking the story, the current work-around to the security hole is to turn off Java in the browser, implying that the exploit uses Java in some way. While the original attack worked through Safari, Matasano reports the attack affects Firefox as well. Details about the specifics of the vulnerability to follow at a later date.

April 20, 2007

Free eBooks on your cell
Got a Java-powered mobile phone, and the ability to read? The jkOnTheRun blog points out a mobile e-book service, in Free eBooks on your cell: Manybooks is mobile!, which points out that "Manybooks.net (a public domain / free eBook site) provides a mobile version of their offerings for Java-based cellphones! Point your browser to http://mnybks.net and you can download an eBook in .jar format for reading on the go. If you use Mobipocket reader on a handheld, you can also use the mobile site for Mobipocket format books."

Top Destinations at JavaOne 2007
The SDN is publishing a series of articles in advance of JavaOne, listing top technical sessions and BoF's in a number of areas of interest. For Top 10 Desktop Destinations at the 2007 JavaOne Conference, John O'Conner recommends a "state of the union" presentation, updates on JSR's 295 and 296, filthy-rich clients, makeovers, and more. For new Java developers, Dana Nourie's Top 10 Destinations for New Java Technology Developers at the 2007 JavaOne Conference recommends talks on concurrency, architecting Swing apps, Ajax, deployment, and six others.

April 19, 2007

JavaChecker 2.0
JavaChecker is a static analyzer of Java source code, allowing you to detect code defects, such as inaccurate exception handling, style defects, violations of standard usage contracts (such as overriding equals() without also overriding hashCode()), and inaccurate resource usage. The project's goals are to discuss approaches detecting common java code defects and to build an open framework for applying rewriting rules to source code analysis.

Should JSRs be developed in the open?
Offering praise for java.net's JSR-295-implementing Beans Binding project and the Swing Application Framework for implementing JSR-296, Patrick Wright asks the JavaLobby audience Should JSRs be developed in the open? "The JCP, to my knowledge, does not require opening up the process, but seeing the high-quality feedback on JSR 296 (and how well Hans fields and incorporates it), I'm tempted to say that the default should be to require open access to mailing lists and code, even if read-only. "

April 18, 2007

Video: Getting Ready for NetBeans Day San Francisco
In the latest SDNtv episode, Coolest Beans Yet, Sun's Tim Boudreau and Tor Norbye discuss what's new in NetBeans 6.0, including a revamped editor that's faster than ever and includes semantic highlighting. A new integrated profiler targets specific code, saving time and generally making a developer’s job easier. You can see 6.0 firsthand on May 7 at NetBeans Day the day before JavaOne.

Getting the Bugs Out: A Conversation With Bug Fixer Brian Harry
Iowa developer Brian Harry, also known as "leouser" on java.net, is renowned for the bug fixes he contributed to Java SE 6, which number well into the hundreds and won him a Duke's Choice award for outstanding platform contributions in 2006. His method was simple: He scanned Sun's openly available bug database for intriguing bugs, primarily in the Swing user interface (UI) code, printed them out, and put the bug reports on a stack beside his computer. Then, he fixed them one by one, submitting them through the standard JDK Community contribution process. In the interview Getting the Bugs Out: A Conversation With Bug Fixer Brian Harry, he discusses his bug fixing strategies and shares anecdotes of what he's discovered in the JDK along the way.

Java EE 6 JSR Withdrawn
Java EE 6 was proposed to the JCP as JSR 313 on April 3, then withdrawn on Monday. An InfoQ story speculates on the issues behind the retraction: "The retraction was apparently caused by TCK licensing; the EC wanted it clarified. The JSR will be resubmitted when the TCK licensing terms are clarified. Chances are good that everyone is more sensitive to licensing issues thanks to Apache's open letter to Sun on the subject."

April 17, 2007

Open-jbi-components Graduates from Incubator to Java Enterprise Project
The open-jbi-components project has graduated fom the incubator to a Java Enterprise project. The overall goal of Project Open JBI Components is to foster community-based development of JBI components that conform to the Java Business Integration specification (JSR-208). You can join this project as a JBI component developer or as part of an existing JBI component development team.

Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.1 for CLDC Early Access
Sun has posted an Early Access release of version 2.5.1 of the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit . As noted by Richard Gregor in his blog, the big news in this release is support for Linux. Of course, 2.5.1 also fixes a number of bugs, and contains Nokia's Scalable Network Application Package (SNAP) Mobile API and the SNAP Mobile Sample Application for development of networked, community-enabled multiplayer games.

April 16, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 117
Issue 117 of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is available, with announcements of five new community projects, one graduation from the incubator (JFeature), tool-related news from around the web, and a Tool Tip on editing your java.net project web site through a Web user interface, via Content Editor

JUG Leaders BOF with Sun Technology Outreach
The JUG community is holding a BOF, JUG Leaders BOF with Sun Technology Outreach, at JavaOne. Notable attendees/speakers include: Michael Húttermann (JUGC and java.net JUG Community Leader), Leonardo Galvao (SouJava Brazil, Java Magazine, and java.net JUG Community Leader), Stephan Janssen (Belgian JUG), Paris Apostolopoulos (Hellenic Greek JUG), Klaasjan Tukker (Dutch NL JUG), Matt Thomson (Director of Technology Outreach) and Aaron Houston (Program Coordinator) from Sun Microsystems, and many many others.

Direct Web Remoting (DWR) 2.0 RC4
Direct Web Remoting (DWR) creator Joe Walker has announced the release of DWR 2.0 RC4, with several new features. "The biggy is Guice support. If it wasn't for the fact that we could add this in without touching the core of DWR, I'd say this was too big a change at this point in the release cycle, however Tim Peierls (who you might know from this project) has done a stack of work to make DWR and Guice play really well together." Security and Reverse Ajax have also been improved.

April 13, 2007

Project Mango graduates from incubator to Java Enterprise Project
Project Mango has graduated from the incubator to a Java Enterprise project. Mango is the open source alternative for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) software (also known as SCADA, HMI, or domotics). Mango is browser-based, Ajax-enabled M2M software that enables users to access and control electronic sensors, devices, and machines over multiple protocols simultaneously. It provides an interface with which diverse data sources can be created and configured along with an intuitive rules engine for setting up access, monitoring, alerts, data logging, control, transformation, and communication.

Controlling Threads by Example
The methods people commonly think of for controlling threads were deprecated long ago, and are not safe to use. In the ONJava article Controlling Threads by Example, Viraj Shetty shows the appropriate techniques for starting, pausing, resuming, and stopping activities taking place in a multithreaded application.

Jini and OSGi, yet again
"There is a raging debate about OSGi and Jini, yet again. Which isn't necessary or helpful." In Jini and OSGi, yet again, Jim Waldo writes, "I had been ignoring the discussion within the Jini community, hoping it might be simply local or just go away. But seeing someone be reasonable gave me hope that it might be time to think about these things in a clear way for a change."

April 12, 2007

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 286
Issue 286 of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter offers "Another Reason to Attend NetBeans Day" (hint: it involves prizes), and has features on NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 RC, the UML modeling module, securing communications in web services, a mobile MSN project, a new NetBeans book, building a Ruby sample for NetBeans, Rails & database migrations, and a new screencast.

ROME Propono
The ROME Propono subproject is a Java class library that supports publishing protocols, specifically the Atom Publishing Protocol and the legacy MetaWeblog API. Propono includes an Atom client library, an Atom server framework and a Blog client that supports both Atom protocol and the MetaWeblog API. A blog post at Artima notes its release and has a brief discussion of its API.

New Beans project: Properties For Java
The recently-graduated bean properties project reinvents the concept of JavaBeans while maintaining backwards compatibility with Java SE 5. Bean properties allow a whole new type-safe syntax for using JavaBeans. Support is included for UI binding/factories/validation, JDBC binding (ORM, proof of concept), XML integration etc. "The code within this project aims to simplify the development of current JavaBeans with binding annotation [...] while leading the way to a whole new way of thinking about bean properties."

April 11, 2007

Managing Personal Information - An Introduction to the PIM API for Java ME, Part 1
Mobile handsets such as cellphones typically have an address book to keep track of people we like to stay in touch with, a calendar to keep track of important events, and a to-do list to keep track of items we don't want to forget. This type of personal information is one of the most important functions found in a handset, just second to voice. You can use the PIM API for Java ME to enable your mobile Java applications to read and write to/from the locally stored personal information databases. You can even write synchronizers to keep your handset PIM data in-sync with remote PIM data stores. C. Enrique Ortiz's Managing Personal Information - An Introduction to the PIM API for Java ME, Part 1, the first part in a series of articles on using the PIM API for Java ME, provides a comprehensive introduction to the PIM API.

JNXD: Object Oriented Framework for XML DataSources
The incubated jnxd project is a Java persistence framework for XML DataSources. Specifically, it's "a Java Framework to persist objects in XML DataSources without any OO-XML-like mapping. For this purpose, Native XML Databases and others supporting the concept of XML DataSource are the integration layer considered here. This simplifies the insertion, searchig, updating and deletion of XML documents and Nodes using a simple API called XML:DB API, and XQuery API for Java(XQJ)".

JSR 313: Java EE 6 Specification
The next version of Java EE is kicking off with the JSR review ballot for JSR 313. The stated goals for the release are extensibility (specifically the addition of more extensibility points throughout the platform) and profiles (standard definitions of subsets of EE, possibly folding in other JCP-approved API'S). Also on the agenda is a little pruning: the JSR suggests marking some EE API's for removal in future versions of the spec, such as EJB CMP and JAX-RPC, which effectively been replaced by Java Persistence and JAX-WS, respectively.

April 10, 2007

WestECC
The WestECC project aims to provide an open platform that supports applications in many kinds of environments, from the webapp to the mobile device. The concept supports three "specialities": ECC-UA (Universal Assembly Language), ECC-UE (Universal Extendable Language), and ECC-UP (Universal Page Language). The idea is that "on the ECC foundation, we will more conveniently make mathmatical graphics, figure algebra expression, [and] establish 3D scene(JOGL+SWING+AWT) to assist education."

EJB 3.0 Timer Services - Timer Services API
A recent article by Shunmuga Raja looks at EJB 3.0 Timer Services: "Starting from EJB 2.1, Timer Services are available for building J2EE Applications that depends on time based services. Time based services are mostly used in scheduling applications. Technically, these scheduling applications are called workflows. A workflow defines a configurable sequence of activities or tasks that will take place at a particular point of time. Before EJB 2.1, one has to manually code for building and deploying time-based workflow systems. But, with the invent of EJB 3.0, thanks to Annotations and Dependency injections, life has become [...] easier for creating such applications."

April 09, 2007

Blu-Ray / Java ME site
The goal of the Blu-ray BD-J Application Development using Java ME site is "to serve as an introduction to the development of Java ME (formerly J2ME) applications on Blu-ray systems using the BD-J specification, and to provide up-to-date news and analysis on the technology and its commercial applications." Among its initial content is a conceptual guide to Java ME and reviews of the first titles to make use of BD-J, such as the game Dragon's Lair and the highly-interactive Blu-ray version of Disney's Chicken Little.

NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 RC Now Available
NetBeans.org is proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 Release Candidate. This release supports the "v2" release of the open source GlassFish server, which is the basis for Sun Java System Application Server 9.1. In addition, 5.5.1 also contains many bug-fixes to NetBeans 5.5. NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 RC is available in English and has been localized into simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese. The final NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 release is planned for the end of May, 2007

Meet Peter von der Ahé, Tech Lead for Javac at Sun Microsystems
The latest SDN interview article is Meet Peter von der Ahé, Tech Lead for Javac at Sun Microsystems, in which the well-known spec lead and compiler engineer discusses the Kitchen Sink Language project, JSR-199 (the Java Compiler API), generics, and his wish-list for Java SE 7.

April 06, 2007

UML Modeling Module Ships
The NetBeans 5.5 UML Modeling module is now available for download from the NetBeans Update Center. The module provides UML modeling features to the NetBeans IDE. It allows analysts and designers to design applications using a standard modeling language. Developers are then able to generate source code from the UML model and update the model from changes made in their source code. A Flash demo shows NetBeans' UML Modeling in action.

UML Modeling Module Ships!
The NetBeans 5.5 UML Modeling module is now available for download from the NetBeans Update Center. The module provides UML modeling features to the NetBeans IDE. It allows analysts and designers to design applications using a standard modeling language. Developers are then able to generate source code from the UML model and update the model from changes made in their source code. A Flash demo shows NetBeans' UML Modeling in action.

The Java Compiler API: A Conversation with Peter von der Ahé
Most developers think of the Java compiler, javac, as an unobtrusive command-line tool to invoke when you want to turn Java source code into class files. The Java Compiler API, JSR 199, released in final form last December, opens up the Java compiler to programmatic interaction as well. In The Java Compiler API: A Conversation with Peter von der Ahé, Artima's Frank Sommers speaks with JSR 199 spec lead and Sun engineer Peter von der Ahé about what programmatic compiler access means for developers.

April 04, 2007

MochaCode: Mac-exclusive Java IDE
Yori Mihalakopoulos has posted a first preview release (.dmg, 8.5 MB) of MochaCode, "a new Java IDE designed specifically for developers who like to get their work done on a Mac." Aside from the typically-attractive Cocoa appearance, MochaCode offers context-sensitive code completion, background project building, quick access to project files, editor window/pane flexibility, and more. Yori has also kicked off a MochaCode blog.

java.net Upgrade
The java.net upgrade is now complete. The upgrade offers better performance, online authoring of project pages, and updates such as Subversion 1.4.3. Try it out, and if you find any problems, please let us know via the contact information on the upgrade page .

April 03, 2007

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 285
Issue 285 of the NetBeans Newsletter is out. Contents include: NetBeans @ FISL, NetBeans Day St. Petersburg and Sao Paulo, new modules on Update Center, GWT Support Plug-in, Charlie Nutter on Ruby, JRuby, and JRuby on Rails, Tips and Tricks Contest, 6.0 keyboard shortcuts, using IRB in NetBeans,using a drop down list to display data, instant Rails with NetBeans and much more...

Java SE 6 Update 1
Java SE 6 Update 1 is now available for download. A release notes page details the bugs fixed in this release, including many relating to Swing, and others dealing with US Daylight Savings Time changes that had previously been addressed by a separate patch.

April 02, 2007

Early Look at JSP 2.0 JSF draft
The JavaServer Faces Spec project has released an early pre-JCP version of the JSF 2.0 draft specification. As noted by spec lead Ed Burns in a recent blog, the draft "has been through several rounds of Sun internal review and also was reviewed by the JSF 1.2 Expert Group"; Ed invites readers to post comments about the draft directly to his blog.

java.net Upgrade on Wednesday
java.net will be down for 24-48 hours on Wednesday for an upgrade to the latest edition of CollabNet's Community Edition software, as described on an upgrade page The upgrade will offer better performance, online authoring of project pages, and updates such as Subversion 1.4.3. You can test the new site on the staging server by adding "stage." before the "dev." in your project URL; note that you'll be looking at a snapshot of your project from a few weeks ago. If you find a bug on the staging server, report it via the upgrade page and you could win one of two iPods. Thursday's WebEx discussion of the upgrade is available as the java-net project's Upgrade - Find-a-bug Win-an-iPod file.

March 30, 2007

Austrian JUG Launches New Site
The Austrian Java User Group has announced the launch of their new web site. They write in: "we do now have a home for our community. The site is still under heavy development, because we are missing content and also the design is not satisfying as well. But it is a start and we are really looking forward to see our community grow. To support our goals we will organize presentations, meetings, and so forth."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 116
Issue 116 of the Java Tools Community newsletter is out, with tool-related news from around the web, announcements of nine new projects and two graduations (AgentSmith and GWT4NB), and a Tool Tip on how to stay apprised of java.net infrastructure upgrades by way of the announcements mailing list.

March 29, 2007

java.net upgrade WebEx discussion recording now available
Wednesday's WebEx discussion of next week's java.net upgrade is available as the Upgrade - Find-a-bug Win-an-iPod file in the "Upgrade Information" folder of the java-net project. Unzipping this file will create an Upgrade.wrf file, which you can play with the WebEx player. The discussion includes details on how you can win one of two iPods if you find bugs on the upgrade staging server. Remember: java.net will be down for 24-48 hours on April 4 for an upgrade to the latest edition of CollabNet's Community Edition software, as described on an upgrade page.

Project PropertyTree
The PropertyTree project offers a Swing component for organizing and editing properties of different types. "The default Swing JTree implementation uses one single JLabel over and over to paint its tree nodes, and it is impossible to use graphical components like a JCheckBox therein. The PropertyTree aimes at solving this problem by using different JPanels instead of one single JLabel to paint the nodes. The result is a nice JTree that takes care of your property hierarchy."

March 28, 2007

Mini Java EE server
The jmin project describes itself as a "mini" Java EE server, whose purpose is to share understanding and design concepts for application servers. " At present, we find some implementations inside other application servers are very complex and very difficult to catch the whole flow. Here, our goals are not only affording a very simple implementation [of Java EE], but also providing the design documents, so that it is easy to read by general java programmers."

java.net Upgrade on April 4
java.net will be down for 24-48 hours on April 4 for an upgrade to the latest edition of CollabNet's Community Edition software, as described on an upgrade page The upgrade will offer better performance, online authoring of project pages, and updates such as Subversion 1.4.3. You can test the new site on the staging server by adding "stage." before the "dev." in your project URL; note that you'll be looking at a snapshot of your project from a few weeks ago. If you find a bug on the staging server, report it via the upgrade page and you could win one of two iPods. Finally, for those who want to discuss the upgrade, we'll have a WebEx meeting today (March 28) at 10 AM PDT.

March 27, 2007

JBookPanel and the page turn effect
Pieter-Jan Savat has duplicated a popular graphic effect in his blog entry JBookPanel and the page turn effect: "Probably every magazine or newspaper that is available online uses a Flash animation together with the page turn effect to make the experience as realistic as possible for its readers. So I thought it might be neat to try and recreate this effect in Java. The result is the JBookPanel. It's basically a JPanel that uses a fixed set of images to draw its pages."

International Enhancements in Java SE 6
A new SDN article takes a look at International Enhancements in Java SE 6. "One important strength of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) has always been its internationalization and localization support. The platform continues to evolve, and Java SE 6 provides developers even more control over how they access and use locale-sensitive resources in their applications. Java SE 6 provides the following major enhancements to its internationalization support..."

March 26, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 115
Issue 115 of the Java Tools Community Newsletter is out, with tool-oriented news from around the web, welcomes to four new projects in the community, and a Tool Tip on setting up Cenqua FishEye for tracking your project and providing reports.

Nimbus - A New Look-and-Feel for Swing
As announced in Jasper Potts' blog, the new Nimbus project offers a spec for the new Nimbus look-and-feel for Swing. "Nimbus is the name of a look-and-feel designed by Sun for the Java Desktop System; it's implemented as a GTK theme in the latest Solaris 11 pre-release builds. In 2007, Sun's Swing Team and Ben Galbraith jointly launched an open-source project to implement the Nimbus specifications as a Swing look-and-feel."

March 23, 2007

NetBeans Wins Three Jolt Awards
NetBeans nabbed three Jolt Awards at the 17th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards ceremony. NetBeans took top honors in the following categories: Best Development Environment (NetBeans 5.5 IDE), Best Mobile Development (NetBeans Mobility Pack 5.5), and Best Web Development (NetBeans Visual Web Pack). Jeetendra Kaul, Vice President of Developer Products and Programs for Sun Microsystems, accepted the awards on behalf of NetBeans and thanked Jolt judges and the software industry for acknowledging NetBeans at an opportune time.

Deadline for Google Summer of Code / SIP Communicator
Monday is the deadline for joining the Google Summer of Code SIP Communicator project. The SoC program provides stipends to students working on open source projects, and java.net's SIP Communicator is one of the approved projects. If you're a student, join in, pick a project idea, and you can get paid to help contribute to this Java-based audio/video internet phone and instant messenger project. And if you're not communications-savvy, you might be interested in OpenOffice.org's Summer of Code projects instead.

Help Test java.net Upgrade
Java.net has begun the upgrade process to the newest CollabNet software version. Testing is underway on the staging site, stage.dev.java.net through April 3, and we'd like you to confirm that your project's pages look and behave as they should. To visit the staged version of your project, add "stage." before "dev" in the URL; for example, https://phoneme.dev.java.net becomes https://phoneme.stage.dev.java.net. Note that the pages on the Staging Site are light blue-green, so that you know you're on the staged upgrade site. There will also be a 30-minute WebEx session today (March 23) at 10AM PDT to discuss finding and fixing upgrade problems. To join, go to http://collabnet.webex.com/, go to "join a meeting" and click "upgrade", enter password "fixitnow", and provide your e-mail and name. A conference call version of this WebEx session is also available: call 1-877-326-2337 (international dial-in 303-928-3232) and join conference ID 44 71 955.

March 22, 2007

Introducing Java Portlet Specifications: JSR 168 and JSR 286
Not clear on the point of portlets, or where the spec stands today? Get a reset from the SDN article Introducing Java Portlet Specifications: JSR 168 and JSR 286. "In February 2006, the JSR 286 Expert Group was formed to start work on Java Portlet Specification 2.0. When that is finalized, backward compatibility will be in place: JSR 168 portlets will be able to run seamlessly in JSR 286 portlet containers. No recompilation will be necessary. This article spotlights JSR 168 and the associated software, Portlet Container 1.0 and the NetBeans Portlet Plug-in. Also described are sample portlets and JSR 286 in its draft state."

JAXP 1.4.1
The JAXP project, the reference implementation of the Java API for XML Processing, has released Version 1.4.1. This is the first patch since JAXP 1.4 was released in October, and among 36 issues addressed, it fixes a regression in which DOM generated by code from a DocumentBuilder using DOM level 1 methods (createElement, etc) fails validation against an XML schema.

Google Web Toolkit module for NetBeans
The just-announced (and still-incubated) GWT4NB project is an effort to develop a NetBeans module to support Google Web Toolkit development. GWT is "is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications (...) easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language." GWT4NB's features include using GWT with new or existing web projects, deploying, running, and debugging GWT-enabled Web Apps using and arbitrary application server, and assistance to deal with some code editing nuances such as creating services efficiently.

March 21, 2007

jxta.org Debuts Code Search Tool
The jxta.org site now offers a wide-ranging code search tool, powered by Krugle. To use it, go to jxta.org and click the "openCollabNet" tab, then look for the "Find Code" box on the right. The feature allows you to search for keywords in various Collabnet-administered Open Source sites, including java.net and netbeans.org.

SDN: Steal Our Code
Want to learn about new Java features directly from code examples? The new SDN Steal Our Code site provides sample code to exercise new features and techniques, with Java Web Start launchers where appropriate. The code is BSD-licensed, so you're free to reuse it for any purpose, provided you indemnify the authors and Sun from any consequences of its use. The first three examples show off use of Java SE 6's JavaScript interpreter, access to the system tray, and use of a splash screen.

March 20, 2007

Incubator graduation for JeNet
Congratulations to project JeNet, for its promotion out of the Communications incubator. JeNet is an all Java implementation of the eNet network protocol. Among its features, it is 100% Java (no native libaries), UDP based, offers reliable/unreliable and sequenced/unsequenced packet sending, is content agnostic and fully interoperable with the original eNet library

Project springmodules Graduates from Incubator to Java Enterprise Project
The springmodules project has graduated fom the incubator to a Java Enterprise project. The project contains modules, add-ons and integration tools to extend the Spring Framework. The core goal of Spring Modules is to facilitate integration between Spring and other projects without cluttering or expanding the Spring core.

New JCP site
The Java Community Process site has undergone a major reorganization and redesign. The new site allows users to register and track JSR's of importance to them on a "My JSR's" page, and participate in discussions about JSR's. The site also allows users to join the JCP directly via online forms, rather than the previous system of mailing or faxing forms to the program office. More details on the new site's features are available in the news release The New JCP.org is Here.

March 19, 2007

JMacAddressBook project
Providing another Java wrapper to OS X-specific functionality, the JMacAddressBook project "aims to deliver Java APIs that can pass communication to Apple's C-based address book APIs. This would enable developers to have a Java API similar to apple's C ones, in order to access, control and modify the address book." While the initial code relies on OS X's Java-AppleScript bridge, future versions will use JNI.

PortalPack: Portlet Creation made easy
Did you ever think of creating your own portlet ? Did you find a portal to deploy the portlet created? Did you try playing around with the Tools available? Did you find the right tool? The tutorial PortalPack: Portlet Creation made easy says "the NetBeans Portlet Plugin will make portlet development as easy as writing a normal Java application, with all the features of portlets made available. It helps in faster development , deployment and testing of portlets."

March 16, 2007

SDN TV: Java Opens Up
The latest SDN TV episode from the Sun Developer Network Channel is Java Opens Up. In it, Sun's chief open source officer Simon Phipps interviews Mark Reinhold, chief engineer of Java SE, about openJDK efforts like the Kitchen Sink Language project. The episode also features Eduardo Pelegri-Liopart talking about the GlassFish community

Japex 1.1
The Japex micro-benchmarking project has reached version 1.1. As Santiago Pericas-Geertsen blogs, "Over the last year or so there have been many incremental improvements (resulting in 30 different releases) and with the recent addition of combined bar charts, I thought it was time to make this the official 1.1 release."

SIP Communicator in Google Summer of Code 2007
The SIP Communicator project has been accepted as a mentoring organization for the 2007 edition of Google Summer of Code. If you're a student and you want to write open source this summer (and get a stipend to do so) pick up one of the SIP Communicator summer of code projects. The deadline for joining is March 24.

March 15, 2007

Introducing the Java Pet Store 2.0 Application
A new SDN article, Introducing the Java Pet Store 2.0 Application, illustrates the Java BluePrints program's popular sample enterprise application. "The Java Pet Store 2.0 demo provides a meeting ground for buyers and sellers of pets, as well as for pet lovers just wanting to look. This application illustrates how you can use the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) to develop an Ajax-enabled Web 2.0 application. It comes with full source code available under a BSD-style license, so you can experiment with it and use it in your own applications."

The state of Java modularity: JSRs 277, 291, and 294
Glyn Normington's Mind the Gap blog clarifies the differences between JSRs 277, 291, and 294 in explaining The state of Java modularity. "People are pretty perceptive. They have picked up that there's a struggle to work out the right model for Java modularity. However, it's not a simple choice between JSR 277 and JSR 291 as many seem to think. Let's look at what's going on in a bit more depth."

March 14, 2007

Java revisionism and the failed J2EE project
Don't let the title of Norman Richards' Java revisionism and the failed J2EE project fool you: it's really about the tendency of Java developers to blame frameworks for their own failed projects. "So, why then do we read time and time again about failed J2EE systems? Sure, many projects don't succeed, but in my experience it is rarely the technology chosen. I'd postulate that if you took a team with a failed J2EE project and swapped in another technology, that the team would most likely still produce a failed project. Better technology cannot turn a failed project into a successful one." Richards' blog doesn't have comments, but a rolling discussion is underway at TheServerSide.

cqME Framework 1.2 Developer Release
The cqME project, home to compatibility and quality testing for the ME platform, has announced the first development release of ME Framework 1.2. "Development release is a snapshot of our current 1.2 development. Though it is work in progress, this binary went through a reduced testing cycle and is more stable than a random repository build." Features include a major Distributed Test Framework update, improved test export, updates to the Test Suite heirarchy, and a transition to JDK 5.

NetBeans Community Docs Program
Last week, the NetBeans Community Docs program was rolled out to make it easier for you to write about NetBeans, whether in the form of tutorials, white papers, FAQs, tips and tricks, blogs or Flash demos. Using the NetBeans Community Docs Wiki, you can easily contribute content and even request contributions. The Community Docs Wiki not only serves as a place where community members can help or get help, it also recognizes all users who have made an impact on the community by contributing docs.

March 13, 2007

Translating NetBeans 5.5 for Traditional Chinese Users
First came Brazilian Portuguese, now the Translation Project has helped deliver the NetBeans 5.5 IDE in Traditional Chinese. Why is this latest release unique? The translation was a solo effort by James Yu, a PhD candidate in molecular and medical pharmacology. "With little experience translating software products or participating in an open-source community effort, and still a novice with the NetBeans IDE, Yu began translating with the guidance of members of the Translation Project. In three short weeks, he had completely translated the IDE."

Ben Galbraith: Announcing Nimbus
Ben Galbraith has posted a blog about the development of Nimbus, an attractive new Swing look-and-feel. "At least a year ago, perhaps longer, some of my friends at Sun showed me the designs for a custom look Sun had designed for the Java Desktop System called Nimbus. At the time I was advocating that Sun create a "frickin' cool amazing cross-platform look-and-feel" and I was impressed at how well Nimbus could fit that bill - or at least how much better it was than Metal / Ocean. Back then, Sun had no plans to create a Swing look-and-feel around Nimbus. I'm pleased to say that work is now under way to do just that."

March 12, 2007

FOSDEM DevJam Slides
Tom Marble has rounded up slides from the FOSDEM DevJam in his blog. "I also talked about how we can envision distro specific packaging working in concert with the upcoming Java Module System. And rsands -- colleague and OpenJDK Community Marketing manager (and Computer Scientist I will point out) -- had a fantastic idea about extending NetBeans for Java application developers such that it help applications integrate nicely with distro specific packaging and the Java Module System!"

March 09, 2007

Free Java ME Talk at Sun Tech Days in London
Terrence Barr, evangelist for the open source mobile and embedded community, will present a talk, "Developing Java ME Applications Using Sun's Open Source Platforms", at Sun Tech Days in London on March 15. Check out the agenda for other ME-related talks, including presentations on enterprise Java ME and gaming.

March 08, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 113
The 113th issue of the JavaTools Community newsletter is available, with tool news from around the web, announcements of two new community projects and two graduations from the community's incubator, and a Tool Tip on reducing the size of your JavaScript files by running them through the Dojo Toolkit compressor.

VamPeer: New Eiffel Binding for JXTA
Beat Strasser has announced a new binding for JXTA. "VamPeer is a JXTA implementation for Eiffel and is the outcome of my master thesis at the ETH Zurich. VamPeer can be used for edge peers and currently provides an endpoint service with a TCP transport, a rendezvous service (only lease and propagation, no peerview protocol), a resolver and a discovery service (including SRDI pushes). VamPeer is compatible with the next JXTA JSE release 2.5."

March 07, 2007

Swing Application Framework + Swing Databinding Demo
Roumen Strobl has posted a nine-minute Flash presentation that shows off upcoming NetBeans support for JSR-295 (Beans Binding) and JSR-296 (Swing Application Framework). He says "these two JSRs, along with NetBeans 6, will greatly simplify development of desktop Java applications."

AB5k: A Cross-Platform Widget System for your Desktop
Announced Tuesday at the Java Posse Roundup, Joshua Marinacci and Robert Cooper's AB5k is an early version of a Java 6-based widget environment along the lines of Yahoo Widgets and the Mac OS X Dashboard. AB5k widgets allow developers to use the many standard Java libraries in developing compelling "desklets". The system is installed via Java Web Start, and widgets themselves are delivered as JAR files, managed in a Tomcat-like scheme, with a dependency system inspired by Maven.

March 06, 2007

Programming With the Java XML Digital Signature API
A new SDN article looks at Programming With the Java XML Digital Signature API. "One of the significant new features of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) is the Java XML Digital Signature API. This API allows you to generate and validate XML signatures. XML signatures are a standard for digital signatures in the XML data format, and they allow you to authenticate and protect the integrity of data in XML and web service transactions. This article will give you an overview of XML signatures and show you how to use the API in your applications."

NetBeans 6 Milestone Features Full Ruby Support
The latest NetBeans 6 milestone includes the Ruby Pack, featuring support for working with Ruby code inside the open-source IDE. In NetBeans 6 Milestone Features Full Ruby Support, Artima's Frank Somers speaks with Dan Roberts, Sun's director of developer marketing, about NetBeans' current Ruby support and future Ruby plans.

March 05, 2007

Balloon Tips for Java
Did you have a Mac back in the System 7 era? Do you remember "balloon help", a contextual help metaphor that used tooltip-like text boxes with tails pointing to the relevant widget, making them look like word balloons from comics? This same idea informs the new Balloon Tips for Java project, which offers a Swing implementation of the same idea, bringing balloon tips to all Java platforms.

JavaZone 2007 Call for Papers
The Norwegian Java User Group, javaBin, has announced the Call For Papers for the JavaZone 2007 conference, taking place in Oslo, Norway, on September 12-13, 2007. The conference will offer a combination of technical talks and panels in an intimate atmosphere with 2000-2400 attendees. Last year's conference treated more than 1400 software professionals to more than 90 sessions in six parallel tracks, with speakers such as Joshua Bloch, Gregor Hohpe, Mary Poppendieck, Kevlin Henney, Bruce Tate and Ken Schwaber.

March 02, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 112
Issue 112 of the Java Tools Community Newsletter is out, featuring tool-related news from around the web, new incubated projects, a graduation (maven-javanet-skin), a reminder about the Java Mobile Application Video Contest, and a "Tool Tip" on publicizing your project at JavaOne.

cqME Project
The cqME project is the home for Java ME platform compatibility and quality testing. The goal of the cqME project is to develop and improve the tools used to test Java ME technologies. It contains the ME Framework module and is a portal to the JT harness project site. Future open source testing technologies are also expected to find a home here. You can use these technologies to create test suites, including technology compatibility kit (TCK) test suites that test the quality of Java ME technologies and the compatibility of these technologies with their specifications.

March 01, 2007

NetBeans Podcast Episode #25
Roumen Strobl has posted episode 25 of his NetBeans Podcast. In this episode: 6.0 Milestone 7, new installer, JRuby support, UML support, a new Java ME competition, vi support, plug-in portal and a NetBeans puzzler.

Philadelphia Area Java Users Group relaunches website
The Philadelphia Area Java Users Group, a successful JUG with over 1,000 members, has a new website, and more online resources for members. JUGMaster Dave Fecak writes, "let me be the first to welcome you to the new virtual home of the Philadelphia Area Java Users Group, twice rated by Sun as one of the world's top Java User Groups! The Philly JUG's main objective is to provide great events for our membership, and if you look at our history we've done just that."

Pluto 1.1 Released
Apache Pluto, the reference implementation of the Portlet specification (JSR-168) and the basis for the Portlet 2.0 spec (JSR-286), has released version 1.1. "This is the first GA release of the 1.1 line of Pluto, which is a major refactoring of Pluto 1.0.1 to allow for easier integration of Pluto's portlet container into a portal and easier configuration of the Pluto portal driver, a bare-bones portal included with Pluto."

February 28, 2007

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 280
Issue 280 of the NetBeans Community Newsletter is out. Contents include: NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 7, UML Beta 3, Governance Board Elections, NetBeans Day Hyderabad, Using NetBeans to Help Track Drunk Drivers, Project Schliemann, Web Service Development Using WSIT Plug-in NetBeans & GlassFish, Creating a XML Multiview for a XML File, Struts Basic and much more...

Looking Glass on Mac OS X
A forum thread offers a place for interested participants to put their heads together on getting Project Looking Glass running on Mac OS X, or its underlying Darwin layer. "There's a couple people here working on it. it's not easy but doable. Once when we are able to compile a livecd for testing we'll let people know either in this thread or in the lg3d main news. Anyone participating would make a huge support in the project. It's a small market and small interest for mac users but there's still lots of love for new and different things"

Open JBI Components
The incubated Open JBI Components project recently increased by two components when Gestalt LLC was the first company outside of Sun to open-source new JBI components under this project. The goal of Open JBI Components is to foster community-based development of JBI components that conform to the Java Business Integration specification (JSR 208). The project is actively developing these components and is looking for both developers and users.

February 27, 2007

Motorola Game Developer Challenge
Motorola is sponsoring a contest for Java ME game developers, and the grand prize is a publishing contract. The MOTODEV Game Developer Challenge calls on developers to submit "a hot new unpublished title for the ultra-slim MOTOKRZR K1 running the Java software platform." The deadline is August 10, 2007, and games will be judged on "uniqueness, fun factor, design, operation and innovation in visual arts and audio."

Chet Haase Interview: The State of Swing
Among the most significant new JDK 6 features are improvements to Swing and related client-side Java APIs. In Artima's Chet Haase Interview: The State of Swing, Sun Java Client Group architect Chet Haase discusses how performance gains, new APIs, and closer integration with the native desktop help developers write more appealing and better performing Swing applications.

February 26, 2007

Meldware Communication Suite
The Meldware project, just graduated from the Communications incubator, is a Java-based, multi-platform, groupware suite which includes an Email server (IMAP/SMTP/POP), Calendar Server (iCal and soon WCAP), WebMail/WebCalendar (Flash), and Graphical Administration tool. "Together the package provides support for thousands of users concurrently to send and receive email and to schedule meetings. MCS uniquely allows you to store all messages and scheduling events in nearly any database and runs on nearly all popular software and hardware platforms."

Will dynamic languages save Swing?
InfoQ is tracking a number of blogs -- one dating back to a 2003 java.net blog by Joshua Marinacci -- which ponder the question Will dynamic languages save Swing? They ask, "will dynamic languages save Swing? Does Swing need saving? These questions have been discussed in detail over the last few days with opinions varying from JRuby to Groovy as saving Swing to Swing not needing saving."

Sample chapter from "Rich Client Programming: Plugging in to the NetBeans Platform"
A sample chapter (PDF, 120 KB) is now available from Rich Client Programming: Plugging in to the NetBeans Platform, the "latest and greatest book on the NetBeans Platform", due to be released in 2007. The sample, "Chapter Two: The Benefits of Modular Programming", discusses the concepts of modular (or plug-in-based) programming and how NetBeans both supports and exemplifies this approach.

February 23, 2007

SJSXP 1.0.1
Version 1.0.1 of SJSXP, the Sun Java Streaming XML Parser, has been released. This is the first release of GlassFish's underlying XML parser since April 2006. According to commentary by Santiago Pericas-Geertsen, a new buffering allocation strategy nearly doubles the throughput for small (2K or less) documents.

February 22, 2007

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 7 Available
Milestone 7 of NetBeans 6.0 (Dev) is now available for download. There is also an alternative way of installing M7 -- using NBI , the new NetBeans installation concept. M7 via NBI is available from the NBI page. Milestone 7 comes with many new features and improvements, including Java Web Start support for J2SE Projects, expression stepping in Debugger, JBoss 5 support, profiler Improvements, local history and Subversion properties editor, and more.

Daniel Spiewak: Does Swing Need Saving?
DZone blogger Daniel Spiewak asks Does Swing Need Saving? "There's been some discussion lately regarding various scripting languages and if they are (or aren't) the salvation for the "dying" Swing API (here, here and here). However, all of these blog entries assume one critical fact: Swing is dead or at least dying. I call that assumption into question.

February 21, 2007

Romain Guy: Fast Image Processing with JOGL
Romain Guy is blogging about achieving visual effects in Fast Image Processing with JOGL. "Chet and I are almost done with our upcoming book, Filthy Rich Clients. Last week, I decided to add a fun demo to the book to show how to implement a bloom effect. Blooms are widely spread in modern video games to spread out light sources." Romain's demo adds the bloom effect to the Aerith splash screen.

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 279
Issue 279 of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter is out, with news on NetBeans Day at JavaOne 2007, a call for participation in the Enterprise Pack's community acceptance testing program, information on a new book about rich client development with NetBeans, blogs, articles, and more.

Project Woodstock JSF Repository
The newly launched and incubated enterprise project Woodstock seeks to offer "an extensive set of JavaServer Faces (JSF) components for web application developers to build enterprise level applications. These components are fully featured, user accessible and fully localized for 10 languages." A preview page lets you try out the available components, including tree, table, progress bar, orderable list, add/remove idiom, and more. An Artima article has more information about Woodstock's announcement.

February 20, 2007

Poll: Need a tool like JavaCheck?
The mobile & embedded community is running a poll to assess interest in a certain style of tool. "A recent discussion in the phoneME Advanced forum touched on JavaCheck, a now-stagnant technology that lets you test an app's compatibility with a specific Java API and the devices that implement it. Take our poll and let us know if you would find value in such a tool."

Is Bruce Eckel Right? Maybe Not.
Responding to the much discussed Hybridizing Java, in which Thinking Java author Bruce Eckel advocates Flash/Flex based GUI's over Java clients, Simon Brocklehurst asks Is Bruce Eckel Right? Maybe Not.. His argument is that the difference is not in the GUI libraries at all, and that Flash applciations are popular "because they're so easy to deploy reliably. That's it. It's an application deployment issue. Plain and simple. Java Web Start doesn't cut it - it asks the user too many 'hard to understand' questions before running (that means it's fine for experts, but regular people just get confused), it looks ugly at start-up, and, even more importantly, people want applications that run inside the browser."

February 19, 2007

NetBeans Podcast Episode #24
In episode 24 of the NetBeans Podcast, Roumen Strobl interviews Geertjan Wielenga, a technical writer on the NetBeans team, based in Prague. Topics include the various NetBeans platform tutorials, Geertjan's update center, and his upcoming NetBeans book.

Java Updates for Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4
A pair of updates have just been released for Java on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.3 (Panther). The Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 5 "adds support for the latest Daylight Saving Time (DST) and time zone information as of January 8, 2007, and delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 and Java 1.4 on Mac OS X 10.4.8 and later. This release updates J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_07, Java 1.4 to version 1.4.2_12 and improves SWT compatibility for J2SE 5.0." The Java for Mac OS X 10.3 Update 5 updates Java 1.4 to 1.4.2_12 and "addresses a problem where some Java applications fail to launch."

New and Updated Desktop Features in Java SE 6, Part 1
Java SE 6 was the first release in a while to offer a significant number of new features explicitly for the desktop developer. In the SDN article New and Updated Desktop Features in Java SE 6, Part 1, Robert Eckstein starts to look at some of these in depth, including splash screens,, access to the system tray, a fix to the "gray rect" problem, sub-pixel anti-aliasing on LCD displays, look-and-feel improvements, and more.

February 16, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 111
The 111th issue of the JavaTools Community newsletter is out, compiling tool news from around the web, welcoming new projects to the community, congratulating a graduation (JLab), and featuring a Tool Tip on how to write java.net feature articles as a means of promoting your project.

NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5.1 Beta Program
A NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5.1 community acceptance testing (NetCAT) Beta program offers an advance look at upcoming NetBeans enterprise features. The 5-week program is scheduled to begin on February 26. "We are looking for community members who have previous experience with enterprise features and who have the availability to provide us with their feedback in a timely manner. All participants will be directly supported by the product team on the Enterprise Pack mailing list."

February 15, 2007

Closures proposal updated
Gilad Bracha, Neal Gafter, James Gosling, and Peter von der Ahé recently updated their Closures for the Java Programming Language proposal to version 0.5. The new revision changes terminology to clarify the difference between a closure literal and the result of evaluating it, corrected an example, further specified throws type parameters, added support for control abstractions that act as loops, and more. An introduction to closures, along with all the previous versions of the proposal, are available at the javac.info site.

Stopwatch
The Java Desktop Community recently featured Stopwatch as its "Project of the Day". "Stopwatch is a platform independent timesheet recording application that may be used to track the time you spend on clients, projects and tasks. You can also generate reports from your timesheets by using one of the predefined templates, or from one you create yourself. "

JSR-311: Java API for RESTful Web Services
The newly-unveiled JSR-311 proposes a Java API for "RESTful" web services. "This JSR will aim to provide a high level easy-to use API for developers to write RESTful web services independent of the underlying technology and will allow these services to run on top of the Java EE or the Java SE platforms. [...] The goal of this JSR is to provide an easy to use, declarative style of programming using annotations for developers to write REST ful Web Services and also enable low level access in cases where needed by the application." The proposal is already attracting discussion, scorn, and enthusiasm.

February 14, 2007

Mike Keith on EJB 3
In the InfoQ video interview Mike Keith on EJB 3, co spec lead discusses the state of EJB 3, talks about how the community has driven the development of the EJB 3 spec, and comments on the evolution of the specification to work better with POJO's and embrace newer ideas such as dependency injection.

NLink
The ever-prolific Kohsuke Kawaguchi has just released NLink, a project to simplify calling native code from Java. "The problem with calling native libraries with JNI is that, for every method, you need to write a java method declaration, and then a bit of native code to do the parameter conversion. This makes it difficult to casually call into native libraries, because you'd have to write another native library just for JNI handling. NLink overcomes this problem by providing a general-purpose method invocation converter driven by annotation." A brief tutorial on using NLink is available in the project's web space.

February 13, 2007

Uncovering Memory Leaks Using NetBeans Profiler
Jiri Sedlacek's article Uncovering Memory Leaks Using NetBeans Profiler discusses memory management in Java, how it can go wrong, and how NetBeans can help you fix it. "This article will cover [a] scenario when there are many small objects that are continuously accumulating without being released. This type of leak can be more difficult to detect because typically it's not related to any concrete action and doesn't use a noticeable amount of memory until the program has run for a long time. This scenario is dangerous especially with Java EE applications that are expected to run for long periods of time. After some time the leak starts to consume memory and may slow down performance of the application or cause an OutOfMemoryError crash without any visible cause."

Products or sites powered by ROME
The ROME project offers a popular set of parsers and generators for various RSS and Atom syndication formats, and the wiki page Products or sites powered by ROME reveals just how widespread its use is. Take a look and see how many major sites you recognize. The page also offers a set of "Powered By ROME" badges to put on your site.

February 12, 2007

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 110
Issue 110 of the Java Tools Community newsletter is out, pointing to activity in the Java Tools Forum and a video interview with Roumen Strobl about Java 6's effect on NetBeans. Also in the newsletter: a tool tip on adding a spell-checker to NetBeans, tool news from around the web, and a welcome to a new Tools Community project.

BluePrints Solution Catalog Early Access
The BluePrints Solutions Catalog project has released a new Early Access version of the catalog. According to the release notes, some of the new features include a new viewer application, a Digg mashup in the Viewer application so users can easily comment and bookmark associated online articles, and a dynamic bundling mechanism so the Solutions Catalog can be released using only the examples that apply to the targeted audience. The new version upgrades all components to be JSF 1.2 compliant and has been updated to use Dojo 0.4.1 libraries.

February 09, 2007

Managing Applications With Java SE 6: A Conversation With Vasanthan Dasan
An SDN interview gets an update on Java SE 6 monitoring in Managing Applications With Java SE 6: A Conversation With Vasanthan Dasan: "Java SE 6 now enables developers to attach command-line utility diagnostic tools such as jstat, jmap, jhat, and jstack to any application without requiring startup in a special mode. In addition, JConsole, with enhanced plug-in support and dynamic attach capability, is much improved."

High-level Introduction to NetBeans IDE and the Community
"Eight years ago, a team of developers set out to forge the free tool that today is the Swiss army knife of software development." The video High-level Introduction to NetBeans IDE and the Community "gives you an overview of the NetBeans IDE and the enthusiatic community that made this project come alive."

February 08, 2007

Tuning Derby
If you're using the popular all-Java Derby database, also known as Java DB, you may be interested in a recent ONJava article on Tuning Derby. In it, Dejan Bosanac looks at how to use better coding techniques and thoughtful use of indexes to achieve better query performance.

February 07, 2007

The Life of a Spec Lead
Do you have an idea for a standard that should be codified into a JSR? Ever wondered what it takes? The JCP's The Life of a Spec Lead, parts 1 and 2, discusses the JSR process with several star spec leads, collecting their insights on how to write a JSR, recruit and organize an expert group and observers, manage the group and deliver a draft.

Interview: Romain Guy
InfoQ has posted a video interview with JavaOne "rock star", Filthy Rich Clients co-author, and Aerith co-developer Romain Guy, in which he discusses Swing, "filthy rich" clients, applets versus Flash, and whether the world needs a "browser edition" of Java.

February 06, 2007

Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5 for CLDC
The Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5 for CLDC has just been released for Windows-based CLDC developers. As Tomas Brandalik notes in his blog, new features include support for the Mobile Service Architecture (MSA), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a payment API, JSR-238 mobile internationalization, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Lightweight Java Game Library 1.0 released
After several years of development, version 1.0 of the Lightweight Java Game Library has been released. "The Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) is a solution aimed directly at professional and amateur Java programmers alike to enable commercial quality games to be written in Java. LWJGL provides developers access to high performance crossplatform libraries such as OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) and OpenAL (Open Audio Library) allowing for state of the art 3D games and 3D sound. Additionally LWJGL provides access to controllers such as Gamepads, Steering wheel and Joysticks. All in a simple and straight forward API." This release supports Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and more information about the release is available in a LWJGL 1.0 Released forum thread.

Substance L&F; 3.2
The Substance look-and-feel project has just released version 3.2. As noted by Kirill Grouchnikov in his blog, the new version includes two new dark skins (Challenger Deep and Emerald Dusk), a new SubstanceDefaultLookAndFeel, scrollbars with overlay effects and grip handles, rollover effects on table editors, a new version of Xoetrope color wheel panel, and more.

February 05, 2007

JSR-277 Java Modules video from JavaPolis
BeJUG has posted the video presentation of Stanley Ho's JavaPolis presentation on JSR-277, the Java Module System. As described by a related InfoQ article, "the presentation covers the driving forces for JSR 277 such as classpath and jar hell. It also covers how the module system will be implemented with code examples of JSR 294 super packages and how they will work with JSR 277."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 109
The 109th issue of the Java Tools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool-related news from around the web, a welcome to a new community project, and a Tool Tip on checking out Roumen Strobl's NetBeans Podcast.

JAX-WS RI 2.1
The JAX-WS reference implementation project has released version 2.1. The many new features are discussed across a set of new blog entries: Vivek Pandey has an overview of the release in JAXWS 2.1 FCS - Fast and Furious, Kohsuke Kawaguchi discusses its extensibility in JAX-WS RI 2.1! and performance in JAX-WS RI 2.1 benchmark details, Jitendra Kotamraju talks about its new programming paradigm in Tubes in JAX-WS 2.1, and Rama Pulavarthi compiles a list of Useful Goodies for Web Service Developers in JAX-WS 2.1 RI.

February 02, 2007

Project sqlb Graduates from Incubator to Java Enterprise Project
The sqlb project has graduated from the incubator to a Java Enterprise Community Project. This project, based on six years of ongoing development, makes Portable SQL a first-class Java citizen. SqlB is a pragmatic solution to java persistence, providing the richest possible SQL functionality while still working across all supported databases (including Oracle 9 &10, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Sybase ASE 12.5 & 15, and more). It supports compiled SQL, allows full spectrum SQL, EJB 3 entities, and much more.

JSR 310: Date and Time API
Perhaps the third time will be the charm, as JSR 310 proposes a new "Date and Time API" to address the deficiencies of Date and Calendar. "The new API will be targeted at all applications needing a data model for dates and times. This model will go beyond classes to replace Date and Calendar, to include representations of date without time, time without date, durations and intervals. This will raise the quality of application code. For example, instead of using an int to store a duration, and javadoc to describe it as being a number of days, the date and time model will provide a class defining it unambiguously."

February 01, 2007

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 276
Issue 276 of the NetBeans Community Newsletter is out, featuring NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 ML, NetBeans Mobility Pack for CDC 5.5 with Demo, Intel Endorsement of NetBeans, New Hands-On Labs: Java SE 6, Web Services Security, a Cool Tip on Tabs, How to Create a Movie Player, Using the Ajax Map Viewer Component, High-level Introduction to NetBeans IDE & the Community and much more...

Swing Application Framework
The JSR-296 Swing Application Framework prototype implementation is a small set of Java classes that simplify building desktop applications. The prototype provides infrastructure that's common to most desktop applications: application lifecyle, support for managing and loading resources, support for defining, managing, and binding Actions, and persistent session state. "The intended audience for this snapshot is experienced Swing developers with a moderately high tolerance for pain."

A Definition of Closures
With all the debate over their proposed inclusion in JDK 7, Neal Gafter has provided A Definition of Closures, in the form of an extended blog entry. "There has been some confusion over our proposal to add closures to the Java Programming Language. After all, doesn't Java already have closures in the form of anonymous inner classes? What is the point of adding something to the language that it already has? To some there appears to be a lot in the proposal that has nothing to do with closures, including the control invocation syntax, null as a type, Unreachable, throws type parameters, function interface types, and "nonlocal" returns." You may also want to check out the current closures proposal.

January 31, 2007

Java Petstore 2.0 Early Access
A new early-access version of the Java Pet Store 2.0 Demo has been announced by the Blueprints project. New features include an Ajax UI, user-driven content, tagging, RSS news bar, search, and more.

Java Mobile Application Video Contest
Know of a great mobile application or service that runs on Java ME? The Java Mobile Application Video Contest is your chance to tell the world about it, and maybe just pick up a sweet prize. To enter, create a video of up to three minutes that references Java ME or the open-source phoneME technology used, and post it to YouTube. Prizes include a Ericsson K800 phone, Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD Player, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and PlayStation 3 consoles. Check the official rules and post your video by April 27.

January 30, 2007

Beginning JNI with NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5, Part II
Need to go native? The NetBeans page continues its tutorial with Beginning JNI with NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5, Part II. "The tutorial will take you through the creation of a sample application which uses JNI to execute some native code written in the C programming language. For the Java part of the application you will use NetBeans IDE 5.5; for the C part - NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5. You will start off by creating a simple Java project, adding a native method to it and then implementing this method in C using NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5"

PORTIONS - a framework for creating portlets
The PORTIONS project, short for PORTlet actIONS, is a framework that can be used to create JSR-168 portlets in a manner similar to the development of Web applications with Struts. PORTIONS tries to offer, combining the JSR-168 specification and the JSP Model 2 Architecture, a development framework that allows to create complex portlets.

January 29, 2007

Software Reusability: Myth Or Reality?
Artima blogger Arash Barirani reconsiders one of OO's most cherished beliefs in Software Reusability: Myth Or Reality? "Every Java project is designed for reusability. Yet when time comes to do a new project in the same domain we always opt for building from scratch. Is software reusability, especially in the J2EE realm, just a myth?"

Improve Application Performance With SwingWorker in Java SE 6
"One common mistake of desktop application programmers is misusing the Swing event dispatch thread (EDT). They either unknowingly access user interface (UI) components from non-UI threads or simply disregard the consequences. The result is that applications become unresponsive or sluggish because they perform long-running tasks on the EDT instead of on separate worker threads." A new SDN article shows you how to avoid this problem and Improve Application Performance With SwingWorker in Java SE 6.

January 26, 2007

Guidelines for Writing JSR-168 Portlets
dev2dev recently published an article by Drew Varner offering some Guidelines for Writing JSR-168 Portlets. "JSR-168 is a collection of Java APIs for portlet developers. There are a number of reasons to design JSR-168 portlets that adhere to the specification. Portability is an obvious benefit. Code written according to the specification will be easier to move to among portal servers. The majority of Java-based portal servers support JSR-168 portlets"

GlassFish v2 Beta Candidate
GlassFish, the open-source Java EE application server, has just released version2, beta 33 which serves as both the fourth milestone and the first beta candidate. Jean-Francois Arcand has a summary of features in his blog GlassFish v2 hit beta candidate: What's new in the WebContainer, including Grizzly support for Comet processing, improved virtual server support, JSP compilation with JSR 199, JRuby on Rails support via Grizzly, and more.

January 25, 2007

NetBeans Podcast Episode #22
The 22nd episode of Roumen Strobl's NetBeans Podcast focuses entirely on the Seam framework. Roumen is joined by Brian Leonard to discuss the advantages of using the Seam framework, how it fits with the rest of Java EE, what kinds of problems it solves, and if it's ready for commercial use.

January 24, 2007

Robotics production planning project
The Robotics Community's new productionplanning project is being built around the "Routing, Sequencing, and Scheduling of jobs for Production planning to incorporate new functionality's into the existing software. The purpose of this project to find the Optimal job sequence when some machines of same type work in parallel and job can follow any Arbitrary path along the machines and different types machines with Optimal or near optimal Sequence."

Sun's Content Delivery Server becomes OpenCDS
Sun Microsystems has announced that it is releasing its Sun Java System Content Delivery Server to the open source community. Content Delivery Server is a mobile content delivery and management platform that enables mobile operators to launch and sustain content services more cost-effectively. The source code is available today under the the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) at http://opencds.dev.java.net/.

January 23, 2007

GlassFish Application Server Error Message Reference Wiki
The Sun Java System Application Server 9.0 Error Message Reference guide is now available in an interactive, editable Wiki format. "The most significant shortcoming of the current Error Message Reference is that it does not contain enough information -- it pretty much contains just the error message IDs and message strings, with little or no explanatory text. The challenge is that it takes a lot of time to develop meaningful descriptions and solutions/workarounds for the problems indicated by the error messages, more time than either the developers or doc writers can currently afford. Moreover, meaningful solutions are really only available after the product has been in 'the wild' for some time." The hope is that you'll add your comments, descriptions, solutions and/or workarounds to the problems indicated by the error messages.

JAXB RI 2.1.1 and 2.0.5 released
Kohsuke Kawaguchi's blog announces the release of JAXB RI 2.1.1 and 2.0.5. "2.1.1 is a bug fix release to 2.1 (see changes). This is the main development thread of the JAXB RI, and implements the latest and greatest JAXB 2.1 specification." As for the other version, "2.0.5 is a bug fix release of the JAXB RI 2.0 line, which implements the JAXB 2.0 specification. The only folks who'd want to use this is those who that are already running JAXB RI 2.0.x in production, and experiencing issues that are fixed in 2.0.5."

January 22, 2007

Java to the iPhone: Can you hear me now?
Daniel Steinberg looks at the history of the Apple-Java relationship in Java to the iPhone: Can you hear me now?, in light of Steve Jobs' claims that Java is a "big heavyweight ball and chain" that nobody uses anymore. "Wow. Too heavyweight for the iPhone. The iPhone with four or eight gig of storage. The EveryMac.com site reminds us that the PowerPC introduced in November, 1997 had 4 gig of storage. [...] This iPhone will put more power in your pocket than the PowerPC put on your desktop -- and the iPhone includes a display."

FSG and OSDL to merge, form Linux Foundation
Linux.com reports that "the Free Standards Group (FSG) and Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), two of the major non-profit corporations dedicated to promoting open source software, are merging to form a new organization called The Linux Foundation." According to an Andy Updegrove blog, the new organization seeks to protect Linux by sponsoring key Linux developers and providing legal services, standardize Linux, and provide a neutral forum for collaboration and promotion.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 107
The 107th issue of the Java Tools Community Newsletter is is available, with a roundup of tool-related news from around the web, greetings to many new community projects, a graduation (maven2-repository), and a look at open-source tools released by commercial software vendors.

January 19, 2007

NetBeans Poll: Six Predictions for NetBeans in 2007
What does 2007 hold for NetBeans and Java? We have asked six NetBeans experts to look ahead and make predictions for 2007. Our subjects -- two Evangelists, an Architect, an Editor, a Writer and a Community Manager -- have different ideas on what they think is coming up on the horizon this year for NetBeans and the field of Java.

Semblance 1.0 Beta 2 Adds Struts 1.3 Compatibility
The Semblance project is pleased to announce the release of Semblance 1.0 beta 2. This release addresses a Struts 1.3 compatiblity issue in the StrutsLive framework, and provides fixes for several defects, including a potential memory leak. Version 1.0 provides Struts 1.x developers with a number of powerful capabilities that had previously been available only in advanced, component-based frameworks such as Tapestry. The new functionality piggy-backs on StrutsLive's existing feature set -- including automatic validation, formatting, bean population, error messaging, and field label highlighting -- to radically streamline Struts development.

January 18, 2007

Nigel Hughes: Carousel Menu (a la Apple TV)
Nigel Hughes was inspired by the latest Apple UI and has adopted its ideas to create a Carousel Menu (a la Apple TV) in Swing. "While everyone was wrapped up in Steve's reality distortion field during his recent keynote, I was ogling the Apple TV interface. What a fantastic product (I'm getting one of those, just what I need). Anyhow, one of the interface features that I noticed was that they had re-used a carousel to produce a funky menu. Well, I have a carousel component how hard can it be to re-use it to create.... a carousel menu?"

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 6 Available
NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 6 is now available for download. Some of the new features added and tested in Milestone 6 include: most Java EE features re-added to the build, a UI Gestures Collector that logs users' actvities in the IDE, and memory profiling Improvements. Review the Milestone 6 Report for a complete overview of what's new.

January 17, 2007

Jobs: No Java for you
ZDNet blogger Ed Burns argues against the iPhone's anti-Java stance in Jobs: No Java for you. "It will be a few months before the Apple iPhone is available to customers, and a lot can change between now and then. [...] But for now, it looks like application development on the iPhone will all be done in-house and it won't be done in Java. That would be a real shame."

Peter von der Ahé on the Kitchen Sink Language Project
If an open-source javac means your compiler can have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in... well, why omit the kitchen sink? The Kitchen Sink Language project is an experimental branch of javac for trying out new features, described and discussed in a recent Artima interview, Peter von der Ahé on the Kitchen Sink Language Project. In the article, he talks about the motivation behind the project: "What I don't like is debate divorced from experiment and data. Language arguments can get into all sorts of handwaving without building sample implementations."

January 16, 2007

Eclipse joining Java Community Process
Saying it's part of "maturing and playing a more active part in the broader community", the Eclipse Foundation is in the process of joining the Java Community Process (JCP), as well as the Object Management Group (OMG) and Open Services Gateway initiative Alliance (OSGi). In a blog, Eclipse's Mike Milinkovich says "Sun has always acknowledged that Eclipse is part of the larger Java ecosystem, and we've always used JCP specifications. It's simply time to recognize that."

Java 4K Programming Contest
Java Unlimited's annual Java 4K Programming Contest is underway again. The contest challenges developers to create an entire Java SE game using less than 4096 bytes in the final executable -- the games must be entirely self-contained, pure Java, and use only JRE-supplied classes. Sound challenging? Last year, there were 55 entries, and in 2005, 50 games were entered. The top five entries win a free copy of the Java-based Tribal Trouble.

January 15, 2007

Java Web Start Persistence and JList Striping
Joshua Marinacci recently contributed a pair of Java Tech Tips to the SDN site. In Java Web Start Persistence and JList Striping, he has tips for both Java Web Start and Swing programmers. First, he shines a light on the little-understood PersistenceService API provided by Java Web Start, showing how to use it to create a click-through license screen. Then he turns his attention to Swing rendering, showing how to create colored background stripes on alternating rows of JLists.

NetBeans Podcast Episode #21
The 21st episode of the NetBeans Podcast is up, focusing on the Java SE 6 release, the final release of NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 and NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5, project jMaki Beta2, year-end awards for NetBeans, a webinar on the NetBeans Visual Web Pack, a portlet container plugin tutorial, a NetBeans puzzler, and more.

January 12, 2007

The XQuery Chimera Takes Center Stage
XML.com notes a new growth area in The XQuery Chimera Takes Center Stage: "For the first time in many years, I left an XML conference thinking that XML might actually finally change the Web significantly -- and soon. XML still isn't likely to change the Web much on the client side, beyond the role it plays in Ajax and related technologies. (Even that role is likely to be reduced by JSON.) The dreams of XML hypertext are dead, or at least thoroughly dormant. The changes I saw at XML 2006 that are driving XML deeper into the Web seem likely, for now, to operate mostly on the server side, as XQuery both brings XML databases to a wider audience and combines access to relational data and XML."

Mobility Pack for CDC developer survey
The NetBeans Mobility Pack for CDC 5.5 will be released soon and preparations have already begun to make enhancements for the next release. Is there a platform you develop for or deploy to that you wish was more fully supported by CDC Pack? Is there a profile, feature, or JSR you would like to see better support for in the next release? Here is your chance to to let the Mobility Pack team know how to make future CDC Pack releases even more useful to you. The brief 10-question survey Mobility Pack for CDC Survey will take just a couple of minutes to complete, and they'd appreciate hearing from as many CDC developers as possible.

January 09, 2007

Re-writing history - implementing an old game in Java
Nigel Hughes blogs on re-implementing an Amiga game in Java in Re-writing history - implementing an old game in Java : "One game we were never able to find a publisher for was called Cascade. It used a really simple algorithm to simulate water a particle at a time, and by manipulating the environment a player would attempt to collect enough water before the time ran out. Well, with a really tightly engineered loop the Amiga version on a 1200 used to manage about 400 drops + the rest of the game engine every 50th of a second. I recently wondered how Java would handle the algorithm and whether a few of the limitations could be worked around. I have to admit, it's looking good! "

NetBeans in 2006: A Year in Review
Netbeans.org has posted a year-end summary in NetBeans in 2006: A Year in Review: "2006 was a productive year for NetBeans. It was a year of major releases and debuts. NetBeans traveled around the world and picked up a few new languages. Partnerships were formed; community involvement and outreach expanded. A book was published and a birthday celebrated. And amid all the activity, NetBeans acquired a new image. Join us for a look back at highlights from a year of achievements."

Java3D Enigma Cipher Machine
The Java3D Enigma Cipher Machine is a Java-implemented, working 3D model of the historic Enigma cipher machine used by Germany in World War II. The source code for this model serves as a demonstration of how to implement an animated 3D model using Java3D. Additionally, the model may be used in the study of the history of cryptography, giving students an opportunity to simulate the use of a (rare) Enigma machine.

January 08, 2007

Yet Another Swing Binding library
A new Java Desktop Community incubated project bills itself as Yet Another Swing Binding library, "an attempt to make data/swing binding more simple and intuitive. While, WYSIWIG GUI builders like Matisse speed user interface construction, desktop developers also need a rapid tool for binding swing components to data models. This framework's main focus is to make such binding simple and a one call operation, and at the same time allow customization through a well-defined interface."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 106
The 106th issue of the Java Tools Community Newsletter has been posted. This issue has tool news from around the web, announcements of new community projects and a graduation from the incubator, and a "Tool Tip" about publishing artifacts in the java.net Maven 2 repository.

January 05, 2007

The JVM Tool Interface (JVM TI): How VM Agents Work
A new SDN article The JVM Tool Interface (JVM TI): How VM Agents Work gets deep inside the JVM: "The JVM tool interface (JVM TI) is a standard native API that allows for native libraries to capture events and control a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for the Java platform. These native libraries are sometimes called agent libraries and are often used as a basis for the Java technology-level tool APIs, such as the Java Debugger Interface (JDI) that comes with the Java Development Kit (JDK).[...] This article explores some basics of writing a JVM TI agent library by walking through the heapTracker demo agent available in the JDK downloads."

FrontRow-like Carousel Component for Java
The Java Desktop community home page is linking to a tutorial on how to create a FrontRow-like Carousel Component for Java: "Desktop Java is more powerful than most people believe, it can make the seemingly difficult easy. With this is mind, armed with the impressive work being done by the likes of Romain Guy and the SwingX team I thought it would be good to look at how one might re-create the Carosel used in Apple's Front Row application."

January 04, 2007

Wow, is it 2007 already?
Java Mobile & Embedded Community Evangelist Terrence Barr recaps the first seven weeks of the community's existence and lays out goals for the new year in Wow, is it 2007 already? "While the big achievements are certainly important it is easy sometimes to forget some of the individual actions and events going on in front of and behind the scenes that contribute to the success and make the project into a living, breathing thing. So let's take a step back and look at some of the highlights of what happened in the last seven weeks."

Jini accepted into Apache Incubtaor as "Apache River"
Artima notes the acceptance of Jini into the Apache Incubator in the news item It's Official: Jini = Apache River, and discusses the move with River committer and recipient of the 2004 Jini Community Award, Dan Creswell. "This is a culmination of the move to Apache licensing, and provides a good potential for Jini's growth. It also solves some of the key issues we had in the past [with regard to] visibility and openness."

NetBeans 5.5 Awarded Technology of the Year by InfoWorld
The NetBeans 5.5 IDE was selected as a "Technology of the Year" by InfoWorld in the Application Development category. The magazine writes, "NetBeans already had the most complete collaboration features among IDE platforms. This year it added important new modules such as Matisse, the most advanced Java GUI designer available today, and complete support for Java EE 5. NetBeans is likely all that developers of enterprise Java applications will need."

January 03, 2007

Clustering with Rio
Artima recently noted Fabrizio Giudici's blog Clustering with Rio, which describes how the Mistral graphics-processing engine can be deployed on a cluster using Jini and the Jini clustering tool, Rio. "I think that we should first start with two basic questions. What is Rio? How does it work? I will try to explain it in a very quick fashion, taking a well known model such as J2EE as a term of paragon."

January 02, 2007

SIP Communicator 1.0-alpha1 Released
After more than a year of intensive development, the SIP Communicator project team is proud to announce a very first alpha1 release which is now available for download. The release offers support for instant messaging and presence for the Jabber, MSN and ICQ protocols, as well as support for 1 to 1 phone calls with SIP. The application is available in packages for Windows, Linux (Fedora, Debian and others), and Mac OS X.

The real lesson from Google's SOAP Search API saga
The Java Web Services and XML Community is linking to what blogger Pankaj Kumar calls The real lesson from Google's SOAP Search API saga: "By now everyone has read about Google deprecating the SOAP Search API in favor of its AJAX Search API. As has been pointed out, this is not about the technology war, ie; SOAP vs. REST and REST winning the day, but about a business decision by a vendor on eliminating multiple ways of doing the same thing from its product/service portfolio"

December 22, 2006

Sun Grid Developer Community migration
The sungrid project is the parent to Sun Grid Developer Community projects as they migrate from developer.network.com to java.net. The Sun Grid Compute Utility at Network.com provides easy and affordable access to an enormous computing resource over the Internet for the predictable and all-inclusive price of $1/CPU-hr.

Peter von der Ahé: Java SE 7 wish list
Peter von der Ahé has posted a Java SE 7 wish list: "With JDK 6 released, we are considering features for inclusion in JDK 7. Here is a list of things I would like to see..." His list includes "real" closures, type literals, some shorthand syntaxes, and more. He also pointedly wishes not to have three proposed features show up in JDK 7: Strings in switch statements, XML literals, and an overloaded dot operator.

December 21, 2006

Security Update 2006-008, Quartz Composer, and QuickTime for Java
MacSlash notes Apple's release of Security Update 2006-008 which fixes a vulnerability involving Quartz Composer and QuickTime for Java. "This is a particularly fun bug. Quicktime for java is available to unsigned applets with certain restrictions. Until today, those didn't include restrictions on quartz composer movies. That means that the trick that's been floating around the web which displays live iSight footage in a web page can actually be used to send the user's picture up to the server that hosts the movie" MacSlash links to a demonstration of the flaw, and an O'Reilly Network blog has source for an equivalent exploit.

Project Looking Glass 1.0
The 1.0 release of Project Looking Glass, the Java-based 3D desktop, has been announced and is available for download as "mega-bundles" (including the JDK and Java3D) for Windows, Solaris, and Linux, and as a standalone install for Ubuntu, general x86 Linux, and Solaris. If you're new to Looking Glass, you can get some guidance from the guides Getting started with the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release or Running the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release on Microsoft Windows.

December 18, 2006

Java EE 5 SDK Update 2
The Java EE 5 SDK Update 2 and Java Application Platform SDK Update 2 have just been released, to capitalize on last week's release of Java SE 6. The SDK includes the GlassFish-based Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0 Update 1 Patch 1, samples, blueprints, API documentation, a portlet container, and more. The "platform" download also includes NetBeans IDE 5.5 with NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5. For more information, Inderjeet Singh describes the contents and performance improvements of this release in a recent blog.

JDK6 Build Cheat Sheet
Kelly O'Hair has posted a JDK6 Build Cheat Sheet, which actually applies to builds of both JDK 6 and JDK 7, and in part to JDK 5. He shows how to use build flags to control the build and just include the features you want, as well as how to build just Java SE and not the VM, or just HotSpot and not the VM.

December 15, 2006

Beginning JNI with NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5, Part I
The tutorial Beginning JNI with NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5, Part I will guide you through the creation of a sample application which uses JNI to execute some native code written in the C programming language. For the Java part of the application you will use NetBeans IDE 5.5; for the C part - NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5. You will start off by creating a simple Java project, adding a native method to it and then implementing this method in C using NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5.

Is Java SE 1.6.0 Faster? Oh Yeah!
JFreeChart author Dave Gilbert tests out Java SE 6 performance in Is Java SE 1.6.0 Faster? Oh Yeah!. "I'm impressed! In all cases on 1.6.0, 500 charts are created (from scratch) in less than 10 seconds (that's 50 to 70 charts per second). And the performance boost going from 1.5.0_10 to 1.6.0 is staggering!"

December 14, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 104
The 104th issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is available, with a roundup of tool-related news from around the web, a call for testers of the Java Tools IDE, news from the GigaSpaces project, announcements from new projects that joined the community, and a Tool Tip on using StatCvs or StatSVN to get statistics from your project.

phoneMe Advanced MR2 Software Now Available
The first release of phoneME Advanced that will be developed with the participation of the Mobile & Embedded Community, phoneME Advanced MR2, is now available. "phoneME Advanced MR2 is a Java technology-based stack designed for advanced client devices that provides a complete application platform for mobile developers. MR2 will expand the scope of the software by adding advanced application management features to enable improved flexibility and portability. In addition, MR2 will enable backward compatibility with existing mobile handset application environments by providing an implementation of MIDP 2."

December 13, 2006

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 270
The latest issue of the NetBeans newsletter is out. Issue 270 features NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 & C/C++ Development Pack 5.5, a tutorial on Visual Web Pack, "Is NetBeans Visual Web Pack for You?", a note on January's NetBeans Day Atlanta, a call for Bloggers for the New Chinese Planet NetBeans Site, a session proposal for "NetBeans and Eclipse: A Tale of Two Rich Client Platforms", and more.

Project Dynamic Faces
The JSF Extensions project is featured in a recent SDN article New Technologies for Ajax and Web Application Development: Project Dynamic Faces. "Project Dynamic Faces is one of several projects that are extensions of JavaServer Faces technology. [...] Project Dynamic Faces is another innovative project that provides a way to add Ajax functionality to a JavaServer Faces technology-based application. This project allows you to Ajax-enable any of the JavaServer Faces components that your web applications already use. You don't need to modify your components to give them the power of Ajax. Neither do you need to rewrite any of your application to add Ajax magic to it."

December 12, 2006

Spring-Annotation v1.0.2 just released
It may still be in the Enterprise Community's incubator, but the Spring-Annotation project has already done several releases, most recently version 1.0.2. The project allows you to use annotations to configure your application using spring-framework as a backend. The 1.0.2 announcement lists many new features in the new release, including support for XML Schema Configuration, a new @Alias annotation, and early support for some JSR-250 annotations.

Automated Builds Made Easy with Hudson
The Java Tools community project Hudson is the subject of this month's "Java Technical Insight of the Month at Object Computing, Inc.. Their article Automated Builds Made Easy with Hudson describes Hudson as "an open-source project licensed under the MIT license. Broadly speaking, it's actually an application that monitors the status of a recurring task, such as a script to run under the operating systems task scheduler. However, it contains a continuous integration system that provides a Web-based interface for configuring, executing and viewing software builds, and that capability will be the focus of this article."

December 11, 2006

Java SE 6 released
Sun has released the final version of Java SE 6. Its major new features are described in JSR-270, and include integrated web services, scripting language support, more desktop API's (including the famous SwingWorker), a compiler API, pluggable annotations, Swing L&F; improvements, LCD subpixel rendering, XML digital signature API's, JDBC 4.0, and more. Download options for various supported platforms include the JDK with or without NetBeans, the JRE, and documentation.

Create Great-Looking GUIs With NetBeans IDE 5.5
A recent SDN article helps you Create Great-Looking GUIs With NetBeans IDE 5.5. "If you are a very skilled user interface (UI) developer who enjoys a challenge, you can write code manually to use a combination of layout managers to control precisely how components use their container space. Although the ability to lay out a GUI form by hand might win you the right to brag at the office, it is not always the best use of your time. In many situations, you can save time and effort by using a visual development environment to design and implement graphical forms."

Sun SPOTs at Connecticut JUG
Brian Leonard's blog Java On Bare Metal features photos and a brief recap of a Sun SPOT demo at the Connecticut JUG's Holiday Party: " We were lucky to get guest speaker Angela Caicedo all the way from Sydney Australia. Angela "stopped by" on her from the Austin JUG to JavaPolis to talk about Sun SPOTs. JUG leader Ryan Cuprak did a great job of getting the word out to the robotics community as we had attendees drive over 90 miles to attend her talk."

Spring-Annotation v1.0.2 just released
It may still be in the Enterprise Community's incubator, but the Spring-Annotation project has already done several releases, most recently version 1.0.2. The project allows you to use annotations to configure your application using spring-framework as a backend. The 1.0.2 announcement lists many new features in the new release, including support for XML Schema Configuration, a new @Alias annotation, and early support for some JSR-250 annotations.

December 08, 2006

Sorting and Paging with EJB3
NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 has wizards which can visually manage sorting and paging data bound to a database table. But there is no convinent way to bind EJB methods. The article Sorting and Paging with EJB3 helps you understand one way to achive this. The application has two parts: an Enterprise application using EJB3 and a web application which displays a data grid with sorting and paging.

DWR 2.0 Release Candidate 1
The Direct Web Remoting (DWR) project is closing in on version 2.0, with the announcement of Release Candidate 1. The "three big new features" are a JavaScript Proxy API that is created at runtime, Reverse Ajax (to send asynchronous message from the server to the browser), and security improvements to defend against cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery attacks.

December 07, 2006

NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 and NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack 5.5 Now Available
The NetBeans community is proud to announce the first full releases of the NetBeans Visual Web Pack and the NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack. The NetBeans Visual Web Pack, allows you to rapidly and visually build standards-based web applications, including support for AJAX and JSF components. Meanwhile, the NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack provides support for a variety of C/C++ project types, and includes a makefile wizard. It also has sophisticated language model features, such as dynamic syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding and a class browser.

jMaki Beta 1.0
The jMaki project has released its first 1.0 beta. jMaki is an Ajax framework that provides a lightweight model for creating JavaScript centric Ajax-enabled web applications using Java, PHP, and Phobos. As Greg Murray points out in his jMaki Beta 1.0 is Out! blog, "jMaki provides also provides a large set of sample JavaScript wrappers for common services and toolkits including Dojo, Flickr, Google, Mochikit, Spry, and Yahoo. Here is what jMaki provides:" He also has a handy list of jMaki's major features.

December 06, 2006

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 5 Now Available
Milestone 5 of NetBeans 6.0 (Dev) is now available for download. The biggest changes in M5 are Java editor improvements and a new Java language infrastructure that is based on Javac. Other improvements in NetBeans 6.0 M5 include a new "project group" feature, and a progress indicator in the status line for Ant proceses. For more information, see the New and Noteworthy wiki page and the overall report for M5.

December 05, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 103
The one hundred-third issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, with tool-related news from around the web, new tool projects that have joined the community, and a "Tool Tip" on integrating your Ant build scripts with subversion, particularly if you use a continuous integration approach.

JXTA and GlassFish Collaborate to Launch Project Shoal
Sun Microsystems recently contributed source to launch Project Shoal, a Java-based dynamic clustering framework. The framework can be employed to build enterprise-quality fault tolerance and reliability applications and is pluggable into any product requiring clustering and related distributed systems functionalities. Shoal is part of the GlassFish community and is a result of collaboration between GlassFish and JXTA communities.

NetBeans Podcast #19 - Interview with Bruno Souza
Episode 19 of Roumen Strobl's NetBeans podcast features an interview with Bruno Souza, who has joined Sun as a NetBeans community manager. Bruno is the chairman of SOUJava (probably the largest Java User Group on Earth with more than 18.000 members), and his new job will be to to work with NetBeans community and make it larger and even more successful. You can listen to the podcast by downloading the episode 19 MP3 or by subscribing in iTunes. Note that the interview was actually recorded in early November, before the Open Source Java announcements.

December 04, 2006

DBClient 0.2 released
The DBClient development team has announced the release of version 0.2. DBClient provides JDBC tools, tricks, and facilities to write SQL and DDL for data and structure manipulation for a large number of RDBMS. This version provides many new features like customisable SQL templates, Embedded Java, SQL Formattting, Database Content search, and improvements to several UI panels.

New Java Previews for Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4
The java-dev mailing-list message New Java Developer Previews now Available announces developer previews of Java for Mac OS X 10.3 Update 5 DP1, and Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 5 DP1, available at the Apple Developer Connection. "Note that these previews are similarly named but definitely not the same. Both contain updates to more recent JDK releases as well as bug fixes and performance improvements."

December 01, 2006

Java SE 6 on Mac OS X
java.net blogger John O'Conner switched to Mac OS X a few months ago and blogs about the current state of Java SE 6 on Mac OS X: "All that confidence is starting to wane just a little now though. I'm not giving up hope really, just getting nervous. The latest build # from Sun is 104...from Apple, it's 88. I keep checking to see if anything new gets posted. Nothing. Not even a note or explanation. I don't want to complain, and I'm not really... just describing my experience at this point."

New for Java ME: Windows Live Search for Mobile
From the irony department: a major new Java ME application has just appeared, and it's from Microsoft. As noted by Kevin C. Tofel's blog entry Windows Live Search for Mobile: the U.S. on your phone, "If you have a Windows Mobile or J2ME-supported phone, you can install Windows Live Search for Mobile. I just did and while it duplicates some other third party services I already had, I think it's a keeper." He raves that it's "as if Microsoft put their Virtual Earth on your phone."

November 30, 2006

SwingLabs.org adds search ability
Patrick Wright has announced that the SwingLabs website now has search: "We now have search enabled for SwingLabs-related topics on the SwingLabs website. This uses a new Google feature, Google Custom Search. The results come from Google, and are restricted (in this case) to a known set of websites, including the discussion forums, project sites, and blogs, among others. We can tune the CSE setttings over time to get more accurate results."

Semblance 1.0B1 Includes StrutsLive Framework
The Semblance project has announced the release of Semblance 1.0B1, which incorporates the StrutsLive framework (formerly maintained as a separate project) a new Foundation framework, and a comprehensive example application. This is a major feature release that adds support for XHTML templating, dynamic query generation, and list management, including pagination, navigation, sorting, filtering, and selection management. Please see the release notes for further details.

November 29, 2006

NetBeans 5.5 Testing Contest Information
The NetBeans 5.5 Testing Contest Information has an update for Brazilian Portuguese developers: "Thanks to great contribution by a number of developers in Brazil, NetBeans now has a Brazilian Portuguese version ready for inclusion in the official NetBeans IDE 5.5 Multilingual version. All that remains is to fully test the product to make sure it will be accepted by developers in Brazil."

Peter von der Ahé: JDK7 b03 compiler fixes
Peter von der Ahé's blog has posted a list of JDK7 b03 compiler fixes. "I'm not sure when b03 will be available for download from jdk7.dev.java.net or openjdk.dev.java.net. Since the main focus of our organization is releasing JDK 6 right now, JDK 7 is on the back burner. There is good news and bad news about the first JDK 6 update release (6u1). The good news is that 6u1 should be released very soon after JDK 6. The bad news is that the compiler is not considered critical for this release and there will be no compiler back ports to JDK 6u1."

November 28, 2006

ossj-tck-foundation Project Graduates from Enterprise Incubator
The ossj-tck-foundation project has graduated fom the incubator to a Java Enterprise project. The goal of the OSSJ TCK Foundation project is to ease creation of OSS/J TCKs by ensuring that the TCK builder can focus on building test cases and not having to worry about the 'plumbing' that is needed to bridge the 3 integration profiles (EJB, XML/JMS, Webservice) that are defined for all OSS/J APIs.

NetBeans Magazine - Issue Two - Nov 2006
To celebrate the NetBeans 5.5 launch, NetBeans has put together the second edition of NetBeans Magazine, focusing on enterprise development. This edition of NetBeans Magazine covers a wide range of new features in NetBeans 5.5 and its main extensions, while also delving into core Java technologies. You can view this issue as a whole or as individual articles.

November 27, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 102
The one hundred-second issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, with tool-related news from around the web, a welcome to six new community projects, a link to Juggy the Java Finch on YouTube, and a Tool Tip to suggest how you can help an open-source project with just a simple e-mail to say "thanks".

Introduction to Java ME Testing Tools
Testing Java SE code is facilitated by a number of popular tools, like JUnit and TestNG, but what does the Java ME developer do to automate testing of his or her code? Alexey Popov has posted an Introduction to Java ME Testing Tools that lists some available tools, and addresses how to deal with large test suites, CDC and SE testing tools, and CLDC and MIDP testing tools.

November 24, 2006

Clustering - EJBs vs JMS vs POJOs
The Pragmatic Problem Solving blog has posted an article on Clustering - EJBs vs JMS vs POJOs with a focus on the Java EE technologies: "Scaling out a java application traditionally has not been easy. There are a number of technologies that allow you to distribute data across multiple JVMs, but most of them are cumbersome, high maintenance and do not scale linearly. Let's discuss the pain points involved in using three different approaches namely EJBs, JMS and POJOs."

Introducing JAX-WS 2.0 With the Java SE 6 Platform, Part 2
The second part of the SDN's introduction to JAX-WS has been posted, continuing a tutorial on how to develop web services and their clients with Java SE 6. In Introducing JAX-WS 2.0 With the Java SE 6 Platform, Part 2, you'll see how to create a client to the eBay production server, using Java SE 6 and NetBeans.

November 23, 2006

Deploying Rails Apps to GlassFish with JRuby
InfoQ's JRuby brings Rails applications to Glassfish points to a blog by Naoto Takai that shows how to deploy a Rails application to GlassFish by way of JRuby. InfoQ points out that the use of GlassFish allows for "a more robust and scalable deployment platform." However ONJava blogger Robert Cooper argues that the approach sacrifices the simplicity of WAR-based deployment

NetBeans Community-Contributed Quiz
Think you know NetBeans? Try the NetBeans Community-Contributed Quiz. "Following true Open-Source style, the questions for this quiz were contributed by NetBeans Community members. All submissions with the correct answers will be entered in a drawing for four NetBeans Field Guides (2nd edition). Only one submission per participant is accepted."

November 22, 2006

Extreme GUI Makeover: 2006
After much public demand, and apparently a little wrangling with the legal department, Scott Violet has posted Extreme GUI Makeover: 2006 "Borrowing the idea from the popular TV show, the idea was to makeover an ugly ducking of a Swing app, turning it into a beautiful swan. Shannon, Romain and myself had a great time putting the app together and doing the session; as a bonus, the session was one of the most popular talks. WOW! Because we had so much fun, and because of the popularity, we decided to do a similar session for 2006." Scott's blog entry provides an overview of the mock e-mail client presented at JavaOne 2006 and finally provides its source code.

November 21, 2006

Meet the NetBeans Dream Team
Do you blog about NetBeans, write apps or plugins, answer questions on mailinglists, help with localization, or are you actively involved in the NetBeans community in any other way? Then the Dream Team may be for you. The NetBeans Dream Team is a community-driven group of highly skilled NetBeans users. They participate at NetBeans developer events, on mailing lists and developer forums, providing new, interesting and informative content as well as developing new and creative ways to promote NetBeans. If you think you have the right stuff or know of a strong NetBeans advocate, then read on and submit a nomination The closing date for nominations is Friday, December 1st.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 101
The one hundred-first issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, with tool news from around the web (particularly about last week's Open-Source Java announcements), a welcome to the new JT Harness test harness project, a "Tool Tip" on using Web Start on java.net, and announcements of new JavaTools Community projects and graduations from the community's incubator.

November 20, 2006

Setting up NetBeans-based projects with a Continuous Integration server
Fabrizio Giudici has some tips for Setting up NetBeans-based projects with a Continuous Integration server: "Continuous Integration (CI) servers are facilities able to monitor changes in a source repository (e.g. CVS or Subversion) and schedule a new build automatically, in order to verify if the new committed code broke the stability of the system. They are installed on remote servers and usually don't run on programmers' computers - so apparently a problem arises if we're thinking of projects developed with the NetBeans IDE. As most CI products can be easily configured by just pointing them to a build.xml ant script, the problem just translates to being able to setup a working 'headless' environment for a NetBeans-based project."

November 10, 2006

2006 JCP Election Balloting
Balloting for the 2006 JCP Executive Committee Elections ends on Monday, November 13. The election will fill the open seats on the SE/EE and ME executive committees and is open to registered JCP members. SE/EE Executive Committee nominees are Capgemini, Tom Crosman, Jean-Marie Dautelle, Doug Lea, Justen M. Stupka, Evan Summers, and Mauro Do Valle. The ME nominees are Jean-Marie Dautelle, Ericsson AB, and Sirf Technology Holdings, Inc.

Spotlights on the Sun Grid Cool Apps Contest Winners
The Sun Grid Cool Apps Developer Contest has come to a close and the winners have been announced. The article Spotlights on the Sun Grid Cool Apps Contest Winners introduces each developer and their winning projects, ranging from Neural Networks and fractal based images to search engines. The article says that "many of the winners are looking for developers to contribute to their project. It's a great way to get started on the Sun Grid!"

November 09, 2006

NetBeans 5.5: The Complete Overview with Pavel Buzek
In a multimedia tech talk from TheServerSide, NetBeans Architect Pavel Buzek explains how Java EE 5 simplifies development and how NetBeans adds more ease of use with code completion for database mapping, wizards for building complete applications from existing data, and editing annotations.

JSR 142 Inventory API 1.1 with Web Service Profile availaible for download
The JSR-142 Inventory API 1.1 Specifications are now available for download from the JSR-142 java.net project; the download contains the Java, JMS/XML and Web Service Profiles. The goal of JSR-142 is "to reduce the cost of integrating inventory products with other OSS components and allow traversal of information across the boundaries of inventory components." The API provides "J2EE/EJB based interfaces to create, remove, update and query inventory entities, entity templates and associations" and "metadata queries and allows clients to receive notifications of inventory events."

November 08, 2006

Ajax jMaki new Stylized JSP wizards
Ludovic Champenois points out a NetBeans plugin for working with the jMaki Ajax toolkit in Ajax jMaki new Stylized JSP wizards: "Ajax jMaki plugin for NetBeans is evolving rapidly. Now, a new set of JSP wizards is available to create JSP files following well defined CSS styles. After installing this add-on plugin, you'll have access to the jMaki palette for easy Drag and Drop of Ajax components from dojo library, yahoo toolkit, google, etc., as seen in this visual gallery."

GenericRCP - A GUI for your Hibernate Domain Objects
A Hibernate tool for the desktop, GenericRCP is a SpringRCP based GUI which enables you to view and change hibernate domain objects. The only thing you need is a jar file containing your domain model and the related hibernate configuration. You can edit simple attributes as well as relationships. With some extra effort you can replace standard controls or whole views with your own and make your GUI more comfortable.

November 07, 2006

Advertising your JUG's activities on the JUG Community page
The JUGs community is interested in using its page to promote individual JUGs and their events. "We intend to publish news, advertise projects and let everyone know about the exciting things your JUG is doing. To make your community's activities public to the world , just send an e-mail to We will evaluate your message and publish it as soon as possible."

JSR 270 (Java SE 6 Contents) Approved
The JCP SE/EE Executive Committee has approved the JSR specifying the contents of Java SE 6, JSR 270. "In addition to listing new features, this specification also defines a policy for the removal of existing features and proposes the removal of a specific existing feature in a future release of the platform. This release is still under development. At this point in time the JSR 270 Expert Group has approved all of the features listed in this document for inclusion in the release."

November 06, 2006

NetBeans Dream Team
A new program, the NetBeans Dream Team seeks to develop a "community-driven group of highly skilled NetBeans users," to "participate at NetBeans developer events, on mailing lists and developer forums, providing new, interesting and informative content." The program is currently selecting 10 founding members. Claudio Miranda noted the program in his blog, pointing out that nominations end on November 17.

November 03, 2006

Using JDK 5 language features in Creator
Tor Norbye reports on NetBeans 5.5 and its virtual Visual Web Pack, which bundles the visual web page design functionality from Creator into NetBeans. "There's another big reason why even Creator users should try the visual web pack (which is in technology preview state, not a final release like NetBeans 5.5.). It offers new support for Java 5 language features, as well as Java EE 5 support. I took it for a quick testspin and thought I would show it in action here."

JCP Process Change JSR Approved
The JCP SE/EE and ME executive committees have approved JSR 306: Towards a new version of the JCP. This JSR proposes changes to the JSPA and to the JCP process document to increase transparency, optimize JSR duration, increase individuals' participation the JCP, permit non-Java implementations of JSR's, allow liaison relationships with other standards organizations, ease migration of existing standards into JSR, and make TCK and licensing information available upon completion of a JSR.

November 02, 2006

Compute Server 0.7 Release Available for Download
The Compute Server project has released version 0.7. In this release, the team has implemented support for collecting and visualizing execution statistics as well as support for including Compute Server infrastructure code in debugging sessions. There have not been any changes made to the existing Compute Server APIs; Compute Server projects created with release 0.6 are compatible with the 0.7 release

2006 JCP Elections - Balloting
Balloting is underway for the 2006 JCP Elections. Through November 13, JCP members can vote to fill the open seats on the SE/EE and ME executive committees. SE/EE nominees are Capgemini, Tom Crosman, Jean-Marie Dautelle, Doug Lea, Justen M. Stupka, Evan Summers, and Mauro Do Valle. The ME nominees are Jean-Marie Dautelle, Ericsson AB, and Sirf Technology Holdings, Inc.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 100
The JavaTools community has just released the 100th issue of their community newsletter. To commemorate, the edition contains some special features: a "30 Days IDE Swap Experiment", in which four developers swap their IDEs for 30 days and tell us the story, "Two Years of JavaTools Statistics", in which Daniel Lopez shows some very interesting statistics from the community that give us some insight of what people look for in the Java universe, a new "From the Trenches" section, the Java developer Ibon Urrutia tells his pains and joys when making a real world JavaME application, and more.

November 01, 2006

Introduction to Project jMaki, Project Dynamic Faces, and Project Phobos
A recent SDN article has an introduction to New Technologies for Ajax and Web Application Development: Project jMaki, Project Dynamic Faces, and Project Phobos: "Project jMaki and Project Dynamic Faces make it easier to add Ajax functionality -- a technology that includes but is not limited to Asynchronous JavaScript and XML -- to your web applications. The Phobos project allows you to develop web applications using a scripting language, which can allow for more rapid development."

Last Call for JXTA Kitchen
The next JXTA Kitchen starts Thursday morning on Sun's Santa Clara campus. RSVP on that page if you want to get updates on JXTA for Java SE, C/C++, and Java ME, security, sockets, and rendezvous, and Friday one-on-one time with JXTA engineers and marketing / community management staff. The event will also feature social time on Thursday afternoon and breakfast and lunch both days.

October 31, 2006

ISV Takes Road Less Traveled with Grid, On-Demand Solutions
Derrick Harris, the editor at Grid Today, takes a look into ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and their use of "on-demand" computing in the article ISV Takes Road Less Traveled with Grid, On-Demand Solutions. In it, Callidus president and CEO Robert Youngjohns discusses his thoughts on Sun Grid and getting his company's software up and running on Sun Grid. Youngjohns is also a former Sun employee, and as such has a very realistic perspective on Sun Grid.

Distributing synchronization across threads
Jini developer Gregg Wonderly recently worked through a challenging synchronization problem while handling class-loading in the Jini Technology Starter Kit, and shares his discoveries in Distributing synchronization across threads. "The Java keyword synchronized is the simplest form of concurrency control in Java. With the advent of the work by Doug Lea and notible others on the new java.util.concurrent package, there are more tools. When dealing with highly contested resources, distributing the locking is key."

October 30, 2006

Prefuse Visualization Toolkit
The Java Desktop Community home page recently highlighted Prefuse, a Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications, supporting a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization, and interaction. It provides optimized data structures for tables, graphs, and trees, a host of layout and visual encoding techniques, and support for animation, dynamic queries, integrated search, and database connectivity. Written in Java, using the Java 2D graphics library, Prefuse is easily integrated into Java Swing applications or web applets.

NetBeans IDE 5.5 Released
Those who've been waiting for the next version of NetBeans and its various companion projects can jump over to the NetBeans.org products page: "NetBeans.org is pleased to announce the release of NetBeans IDE 5.5 FCS together with Mobility Pack FCS, Profiler Pack FCS, Enterprise Pack FCS, C/C++ Pack (Beta 3) and Visual Web Pack (Technology Preview). This NetBeans release supports the Java Enterprise Edition 5 platform, and most notably the Java Persistence, EJB 3 and JAX-WS 2.0 specifications."

October 27, 2006

The JSR 277 early draft catches the worm
LiveJournal blogger robilad (Dalibor Topic?) surveys the initial reception to the early draft review of JSR-277 in The JSR 277 early draft catches the worm, and has some strongly-worded suggestions for how the Expert Group should reach out to the community: "I think that JSR 277 is too important to let the institutionalized distaste for open communication with the actual Java community at the JCP kill it off. In particular given that the competing, existing, presumably equivalent-or-better technologies, like OSGi, Maven, Ivy etc. don't suffer from that social problem."

October 26, 2006

GASP: multiplayer middleware for ME gaming
GASP bills itself as "pure Java middleware under LGPL license for mobile multiplayer online games and implements the OMA GS (Open Mobile Alliance Games Services working group) specifications, enabling multiplayer games on J2ME mobile phones, profiles MIDP and Doja, over 2/2.5/3G phone networks. This middleware implements the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) v 1.0 specifications in Java and is able to handle basic services for building and handling interactions between players such as session management, [and] communications."

Portlet Repository Protocol project
The Portlet Repository Protocol (PRP) project seeks to define a common Web Service API used to communicate with portlet repositories like java.net's own Open Source Portlet Repository Project. It will also establish the format and meta-data to be included when defining a specific portlet within a repository. This is a free and open standards project, that any portlet repository may implement, and any portal vendor may leverage, as well. Input from those respective parties is welcomed and encouraged.

October 25, 2006

JIL
The incubated Java Desktop project JIL (Java Islamic Library) is a project to provide a plethora of useful Islamic tools and applications as well as a comprehensive feature-full Islam-centric library. The JIL project includes Hijri date, Muslim prayer times, and Qibla etc.

Emil Sit on Sun Grid
Emil sit, a graduate student in parallel computing at MIT recently began working with the Sun Grid. In his blog post First steps with the SunGrid, he describes the concepts and organization of the grid, shares his experience working with it, and offers some suggestions for possible improvements.

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 4 Available
NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 4 is now available, and the Milestone 4 report details some of its new features: Java EE 5 support from NetBeans 5.5 was merged into 6.0, Mobility Pack made its firsst milestone release, and Profiler added 'a bunch of features". This Milestone build is available from the Trunk Milestones Index.

October 24, 2006

"Ask The Experts: Swing" transcript
The transcript of last week's Ask the Experts session on Swing has been posted. "In this session, Swing Architect, Scott Violet, Swing Technical Lead, Shannon Hickey, Java 2D Engineer, Chris Campbell, and AWT Technical Lead, Oleg Sukhodolsky answered a variety of questions about building graphical interfaces using Swing."

NekoZori: Cat sledding applet game
The Java Desktop Community notes a fun game applet posted as part of a Japanese-language blog: NekoZori. The Desktop Community page comments: "the page probably makes more sense in the Japanese locale. Cat flying around in a boat. There's something strangely appealing here. The game was included in a roll-up of physics simulation games, more about this particular game here. Also, be sure not to miss the author's zombie game and variations."

Java 3D: 1.5 Beta 1
Java 3D 1.5 beta-1 has been released, and adds support for two new platforms -- Mac OS X (via the JOGL pipeline) and Windows/XP 64-bit -- as well as a few new features and most of the planned bug fixes, including JOGL Rendering Pipeline, non-power-of-two textures, NIO image buffer support for textures, by-reference support for geometry indices, rendering error listeners, and vecmath accessors/mutators

October 23, 2006

Meet The Engineer: Scott Violet, Architect for the Swing Toolkit Team
Meet Scott Violet, Architect for the Swing Toolkit Team at Sun Microsystems is the latest in the SDN series of interviews with key Java platform engineers. In the interview, Scott talks about developing visual effects with Swing, the beans binding effort that he's heading up as the JSR-295 expert group lead, new desktop features in Java SE 6, and more.

Java EE 5 App Server Roundup
Dr. Dobbs' Journal takes a look at support for Java EE 5 among various vendors in App Server Powers Race To Embed Java EE 5 Support, reporting that "top vendors are moving quickly on Java EE 5 support. By early next year most will have compatible updates shipping." The article also notes how GlassFish not only offered an implementation concurrent with the release of the EE 5 spec, but may also be helping other app servers to get their EE 5 implementations out sooner.

October 20, 2006

Survey: What Database connection technology do you use in Java Client Applications?
Sun has posted a survey to help with the design of JSR 295 and NetBeans 6.0. "To make these two projects a success, we need your input. Please take this short survey to help us understand what database connection technology Java desktop developers are using. The survey closes November 9th 2006. Please don't be put off by how the scary policy statement at the top of the survey looks. It's one of those corporate things we can't avoid, and since we're not requiring an email address, we can't track you in any way."

Egjug Tech Days
Egjug, the Egyptian Java Users Group has announced Egjug Technical Days, the first such event in Egypt. They write: "We will make a full day event with many presentations. Our main speaker is Raghu Kodali, a consulting product manager and SOA evengilist for Oracle Application Server. Kodali leads next-generation SOA initiatives and J2EE feature sets for Oracle Application Server."

October 19, 2006

JOGL Demos
The JOGL-Demos project contains Java demonstrations utilizing OpenGL through the JOGL API. They exhibit advanced functionality such as vertex and fragment programs, shadow maps and hardware-accelerated offscreen rendering via pbuffers. Most of the demos were ported from C or C++, in which case a link to the original sources is provided. Check out the project's home page for Java Web Start versions of each demo.

Glyph project
The new Glyph project aims to provide a set of utilities and annotations to speed up development for Jini-enabled applications. "J2SE5.0 annotations are used for automatic service creation and creation of smart proxies for remote objects, and generation of associated Jini configuration files. A number of utilities have been written to help manage exported objects, and ease service initialization. In development, there are other helpful classes such as service filters, and Pack200 URL handlers that can significantly reduce the size of a downloaded jar file when working with mobile code." The project already has downloads and a tutorial.

Early Draft Review of JSR 277 (Java Module System)
An Early Draft Review is now available for JSR 277 - Java Module System, "an architecture for the development and the deployment of module-based appli- cations and libraries. Applications and libraries written as Java modules are easy to develop and deploy, with first class modularity, packaging, and deployment support in the Java platform." JSR-277 aims to simplify distribution and versioning, overcoming the limits of JAR files as used for these purposes today.

October 18, 2006

Mifos sponsor wins Nobel Prize
Last week, the Grameen Bank and founder Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for microcredit finance programs to help the world's poor. Grameen is also a sponsor of the java.net Microfinance Open Source (Mifos) project, an incubated JavaTools community project to provide source software for running operations at a Microfinance institution, "to provide loan provisioning and savings products to the poorest people on the planet."

GELC Changes Name to "Curriki"
Robert Stephenson has announced the results of the GELC's search for a new name in his blog GELC => Curriki. "A few months ago we ran a contest to suggest a new name for the GELC's new Website. Today the GELC Advisory Board's decision is officially out: the new name is Curriki. The new Website, still under development, is curriki.org and will support the GELC's new mission of providing "open source curricula" to teachers and students around the world. The new name fuses the terms "curriculum" and "wiki," symbolizing this aim to use technology to provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials."

JCP Elections: Ratification Results and Open Nominations
The 2006 JCP Elections have moved into the next stage, with the publication of Ratification Results and the beginning of Open Nominations. All JCP members who have signed the JSPA 2 are eligible to nominate themselves. The nomination period is open until October 27, with balloting beginning October 31 and running through November 13. The top finishers in both the SE/EE and ME elections will serve a three-year term on the respective Executive Committee, with second place serving a two year term.

October 17, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 98
The ninety-eighth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online. There's only one new project and no graduations this time, but the newsletter continues to round up tool news from around the web, offers useful links to interested community members, and has a tool tip on where to find more tips, namely the Java Tips page.

NetBeans 5.5 RC2
The NetBeans team has announced that the second release candidate for the NetBeans IDE 5.5 is now available. NetBeans 5.5 supports the Java EE 5 platform, and the Java Persistence, EJB 3 and JAX-WS 2.0 specifications. Also available are updated versions of the Profiler and Mobility Pack. NetBeans 5.5 RC2 Downloads. The final NetBeans IDE 5.5 release is planned for October 30, 2006.

October 16, 2006

Rich Internet Applications with SwingX-WS
Romain Guy's blog Rich Internet Applications with SwingX-WS has a little more to say about SwingX-WS, following the recent publication of Richard Bair's java.net article Web Swinging: "Richard's article did not talk about a very interesting component that sits in the source repository, JXForm. This component can be compared to the form tag in XHTML pages as it sends an HTTP request which parameters are obtained from the form's children. This means that in Swing, you can simply put text fields in your GUI and JXForm will take care of creating an HTTP request for you and hand you back the result."

How to make a Successful Java User Group
"After talking with JUG-Leaders all over the world, and with the support and ideas of Aaron Houston, the Sun JUG program coordinator, we reached the keys of the success of every java user group." In How to make a Successful Java User Group, Ahmed Hashim shares 16 steps you can take to help your JUG succeed.

October 13, 2006

WSJ Article on RuneScape
The Java Desktop Community has a Swing Sightings Preview that should actually be of interest to the Java Games Community: a Wall Street Journal article on a wildly successful massively multiplayer online game written in Java, RuneScape. In The Nights of Networking, Nick Wingfield writes: "One of RuneScape's attractions is that it's written in Java, a programming language that allows games and other software to be run through ordinary Web browsers. Players can also start playing within seconds after registering and downloading the game over a high-speed Internet connection, even on older PCs."

Java Class File Specification Update - JSR-202
JSR-202, the Java Class File Specification Update, has issued its proposed final draft. This JSR describes the changed class file format of Java SE 6, including both a revised description of the format and a diff file showing the specific changes. "The main difference is the introduction of a new verification scheme based on type checking rather than type inference. This scheme has inherent advantages in performance (both space (on the order of 90% savings) and time (approximately 2x)) over the previous approach. It is also simpler and more robust, and helps pave the way for future evolution of the platform."

October 12, 2006

Java.net Commons
The Java.net Commons project is an effort to provide helper classes, interfaces and implementations to make working in Java simpler, combining various common utilities that have been used in other open source projects including Savant and Verge. Its tools include a type converter library (String to/from Object, String to/from Array, etc.), a type validation library, JavaBean conveniences, and more.

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 261
The 261st issue of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter is out, with features and contests to commemorate NetBeans' eighth birthday, an announcement of NetBeans IDE 5.5 RC 1 and a poll on RC 1, results from the NetBeans debugger survey, a Flash presentation from Roumen Strobl on NetBeans' best features, and much more.

October 11, 2006

Wiseman Project
The wiseman project "is an implementation of the WS-Management specification for the Java SE platform. The project scope includes the WS-Management specification and its dependent specifications." Its first binary release, 0.5, "provides good coverage of the DMTF 1.0 Version of the WS Management specification. This release features a tutorial on creating and exposing resources starting from your schema though generating a Java web application. It also contains sample client and server applications."

JXTA Kitchen, Nov 2-3
Save the date... the JXTA team is holding a JXTA Kitchen on November 2nd and 3rd in Santa Clara, CA. Events will include updates on the Sun JXTA team's latest activities, opportunities to meet and work with JXTA experts from around the world, and one-on-one time with JXTA team members. The first day will feature an all-day group event, track sessions, and a group dinner, while the second will be based around more sessions and one-on-one time with staff.

October 10, 2006

Parsing PCL (Printer Command Language)
Many printers use Printer Command Language (PCL) to communicate between the driver and the printer. The drawback of using PCL files is that they are packaged as preset files, meaning you are unable to simply open, edit and select individual pieces of a document to be printed. The PCL-Parser is an easy to use application that quickly parses large PCL files into separated pages allowing you to print specific pieces of a document.

October 09, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 97
The ninety-seventh issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, a welcome to new community projects, a news item on the release of version 1.0 of the Maven 2 XML Validation Plugin, and a Tool Tip on separating fact from fiction with the JavaPedia Java Misconceptions page.

Swing: Its Past, Present, and Future
Hans Muller has written a Java Developer's Journal article on Swing: Its Past, Present, and Future. "New software fashions tend to have a half-life of about 18 months. After that the books start to move to the discount bin, the conferences go quiet, and developers move on to the next big thing. Swing has not suffered that fate. As the software has stabilized and improved over the years, it has attracted a loyal and growing community of developers who've built tens of thousands of applications deployed to millions of users. No less of an authority that Evan's Data Corporation has reported that 'Java Swing with 47% use, has surpassed WinForms as the dominant GUI development toolkit.' Not bad for a (nearly) 10 year old."

October 06, 2006

Spring-annotation
The idea of the spring-annotation project is to enable the development of applications using the spring-framework with less XML, using annotations for the application code instead of XML. This approach allows spring-annotation to "keep all the behavior of a bean within itself, and free the developer from having to look in 3 or 4 diferent files to know what a class really does." Spring-annotation will run within any EE container, and the future versions will enable the use of the same EE 5 annotations without an EE 5 server.

2006 JCP Elections Begin
The 2006 JCP Elections have begun. From now until October 16, JCP members can vote on ratifying nominees for both the Standard/Enterprise and the Micro Edition Executive Committees. Once ratification is concluded, the process moves on to a two-week open nominations period, followed by the two-week balloting period for the two executive committees.

October 05, 2006

Transition Effects
The blog entry Transition Effects shows off what can be done with new features in the SwingX project. "A couple months ago I started playing around with the TimingFramework and Painters. Since there has been a little more discussion on the SwingLabs forum about Painters and animation, I checked in some code I had for TransitionEffects. TransitionEffects are just simple wrappers around Painters ImageEffects and the TimingFramework." This blog entry has the details, including code and a Web Start demo.

Search Inside the Music
The Sun Research article Search Inside the Music looks into how "a research project at Sun Labs is exploring new methods of searching music by its acoustic content and context." This project run by researcher Paul Lamere "is aimed at helping people find and organize their music based on the properties of the music itself: lyrics, musical theme, melody, tempo, rhythm, and instrumentation." The project is run on Sun Grid. Lamere succinctly explains his use of Sun Grid in that, "a desktop system would take over six years to analyze a 2,000,000-song collection, whereas the same task on a 1000-node compute grid could be completed over a weekend."

October 04, 2006

jlog
The incubated jlog project offers a "logging API for any logging implementation", meaning that "the aim is to create an API that is implementation agnostic". Jlog allows you to write to a single API, wrapping the actual logging implementations like java.util.logging, Log4j, or simpleLog. With jlog, changing logging implementations requires just a two-line configuration file change with and no changes to your application code.

The Road to 5.5: Release Candidate One
NetBeans.org is proud to announce that the first release candidate for NetBeans IDE 5.5 is now available. NetBeans 5.5 supports the Java EE 5 platform, and the Java Persistence, EJB 3 and JAX-WS 2.0 specifications. Also available are the NetBeans Mobility Pack 5.5 RC1 and NetBeans Profiler 5.5 RC1. The final NetBeans IDE 5.5 release is planned for October 30, 2006.

October 03, 2006

Introducing JAX-WS 2.0 With the Java SE 6 Platform, Part 1
A new SDK article takes an in-depth look at web services support in JDK 6. In Introducing JAX-WS 2.0 With the Java SE 6 Platform, Part 1, Robert Eckstein and Rajiv Mordani write "one of the most exciting new features of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) is support for the Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS), version 2.0. JAX-WS 2.0 is the center of a newly rearchitected API stack for web services, which also includes Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0 and SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) 1.3."

NET2Java project
The JavaTools incubated project NET2Java is "a new technology that helps you take an application written in Visual Basic or C# to the .NET platform, and translate it into a program written in Java source code." NET2Java translates .NET calls into corresponding Java calls, flagging calls it doesn't currently know how to translate. The process produces readable source code, preserving class names, method names and code comments.

Interview with Van Simmons about Jini and ComputeCycles
The JavaPosse podcast has posted the final installment of Dick Wall's lengthy interview with ComputeCycles project leader Van Simmons. In the interview, Van talks extensively about the goals and concepts and uses of Jini, the proposal to make it an Apache project, and low-level details like security, Jini's configuration language, JERI, and more. The interview has been split into three parts and released as JavaPosse podcasts #82, #84, and #86.

October 02, 2006

GELC - Are we ready for the buzz?
GELC Executive Director Barbara Kurshan asks GELC - Are we ready for the buzz?: "GELC has been getting a significant share of attention. It is really exciting to hear the conversations around the mission and vision for GELC. Check out the following events where GELC was discussed."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 96
The ninety-sixth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, congratulating the Sorcerer and Jets3t projects on their graduation from the incubator, and offering a Tool Tip on redirecting issue tracker e-mails to another mailing list.

The Joys and Perils of Mass-Market Java Games
After a few years in the industry, Gojko Adzic sums up The Joys and Perils of Mass-Market Java Games: "From summer of 2004 to summer of 2006 I worked on an on-line casino with a Swing-based GUI. The project was a great development adventure -- filled both with incredible joy of creation and terrible agony of support. Here is a list of my positive and negative experiences from using Java/Swing for on-line games"

September 29, 2006

Compute Server 0.6 Release Now Available
The 0.6 early access release of Compute Server technology introduces APIs for the creation of standalone applications, support for more efficient use of grid resources, and enhanced debugging aids. Using the new standalone application APIs, developers can create applications for end users, to be run outside of the NetBeans IDE, that produce and package compute server application input for uploading to the grid, and/or process compute server job output that has been downloaded from the grid. Developers can also now limit the cpu-hours, and therefore money spent, executing a Compute Server job on the grid by specifying a new "Max CPU hours" threshold for job termination.

Downrush
Wouldn't it be great if you could post updates to your client-side application as easily as you could commit a file to SVN? Or if you could get your customers to constantly update their running codebase to the latest and greatest, just like you do when you develop? Downrush is a Subversion-based client-side application installer/updater/launcher. It is backed by a binary-only repository and can be configured to update each individual file in an application to a particular revision, which means rolling back from a broken version is as easy as updating to a new one. The project is looking for developers, testers and people to give it a try in the real world

September 28, 2006

Hibernate Tools Suite
The Hibernate Tools Suite project is an easy to use toolset which may be used for developing Hibernate-based applications. Along with smooth NetBeans integration it features session factory management, a powerful HQL editor with syntax coloring, code completion, Java to HQL (and reverse) formatting features, a powerful query result browser, and more.

Hibernate Tools Suite
The Hibernate Tools Suite project is an easy to use toolset which may be used for developing Hibernate-based applications. Along with smooth NetBeans integration it features session factory management, a powerful HQL editor with syntax coloring, code completion, Java to HQL (and reverse) formatting features, a powerful query result browser, and more.

Meet Shannon Hickey, Tech Lead of the Swing Team
Offering another glimpse inside the Java Desktop team, the latest SDN interview lets you Meet Shannon Hickey, Tech Lead of the Swing Team. In this article, he discusses backwards-compatibillity and the possibility of a "compatibility API" to let callers declare their own needs for Swing fixes versus backwards compatibility. He also discusses drag-and-drop, Swing misconceptions, and more.

Meet Shannon Hickey, Tech Lead of the Swing Team
Offering another glimpse inside the Java Desktop team, the latest SDN interview lets you Meet Shannon Hickey, Tech Lead of the Swing Team. In this article, he discusses backwards-compatibillity and the possibility of a "compatibility API" to let callers declare their own needs for Swing fixes versus backwards compatibility. He also discusses drag-and-drop, Swing misconceptions, and more.

September 27, 2006

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 259
The 259th issue of the NetBeans Newsletter is out, highighted by an announcement of the Governance Board election results: David Strupl and Rich Unger have been re-elected for another year, while Charlie Hunt will stay on as the Sun-appointed member. The newsletter also covers what's new in NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 3, seeks input for editor features, links to new NetBeans tutorials, and more.

Intelligent Tester
The Intelligent Tester project is focusing on optimized test case generation intelligently by means of Intelligent Agents, pieces of software that are designed to make computing and other tasks easier by assisting and acting on behalf of the user. "The user can interact with the agent through the user interface while the agent can sense and act according to the condition of the external environment."

Source-code management for an open JDK
Mark Reinhold writes: "The aging source-code management (SCM) system we've been using for the JDK all these years is unsuitable for open development. To which newer system should we migrate as we open-source the code?" In Source-code management for an open JDK he looks at the history of SCM for JDK development, the requirements for such a system, and reveals that the team is currently leaning towards using Mercurial.

September 26, 2006

Wireless robotics: Object-oriented programming with (physical) objects
The Embedded Java Community page is featuring the article Wireless robotics: Object-oriented programming with (physical) objects: "Learn why there is room for the development of new, lightweight wireless networking protocols and how the profusion of wireless computers may represent one way to solve a traditional stumbling block of artificial intelligence."

jSh3ll - The Amazon S3 command shell for Java
jSh3ll, the Amazon S3 command shell for Java, is a Java based command shell for managing your Amazon S3 objects, built upon the Amazon S3 REST Java library. In addition to standard Amazon S3Shell functionality, jSh3ll provides ACL and HEAD retrieval for buckets and items, support for getting a .torrent file for an item, script mode support, streaming file upload support, file compression support with ZLIB, and more.

September 25, 2006

A Practical Guide to JAXB 2.0
A new article on RegDeveloper offers A Practical Guide to JAXB 2.0: "JSR-222 specifies the Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0. JAXB 2.0 specification is implemented in Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP) 2.0. JAXB 2.0 has some new features that facilitate the marshalling and unmarshalling of an XML document. I have used both JAXB 1.0 and JAXB 2.0 and have found that JAXB 2.0 generates less code and has some additional features."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 95
The ninety-fifth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, welcoming a number of projects to the community and noting one graduation, DBBackup, from the community's incubator. The newsletter also collects tool-related news from around the web and offers a Tool Tip for using the cvs-news service. Finally it seeks volunteers for the "JavaTools 30 Days IDE Swap Experiment".

September 22, 2006

GlazedLists 1.7
The Glazed Lists project released their version 1.7 last month, and the Swing Bling blog talks it up in a recent entry: "Anyone who has written a Swing application with a JTable will quickly get swallowed into the murky world of sorting, and possibly filtering. Basically, it's a real PITA and rather off-putting to Swing newbies. Well, GlazedLists is the package for you. If your program has a table or list, get hold of this package and life will be sweet."

James Gosling Videos for use by JUGs and Champions
The Java Champions project has begun posting a series of James Gosling videos recorded earlier this month. Aaron Houston, Program Coordinator for JUGs and Java Champions, says "the idea is to 'Keep it Simple' and let the Java Champions (JC) and Java User Group Communities use these videos freely at their meetings and other activities to promote interest in Java."

JavaPosse: Interview with Van Simmons on Jini and ComputeCycles
The Java Posse's 81st podcast is part one of a three-part interview of interest to the Jini and grid computing communities. Interview with Van Simmons on Jini and ComputeCycles discusses the famous eight fallacies of distributed computing and how Jini compels the developer to deal with them. He also introduces the Computecycles project, which uses Jini, GlassFish, and Groovy to distribute work across a grid.

September 21, 2006

10th Jini Community Meeting Wrapup
Last week's 10th Jini Community Meeting was a big success, and those who didn't attend can start catching up with some of the materials on the jini.org wiki. The 10th JCM Live page is being left as an informal collection of conference blogs, photos, and more. The 10th JCM Sessions page lists all the sessions and lightning talks from the meeting, and many of them already link to PDF slides and/or QuickTime video of the talks.

New JSR Aims To Change How Java Standards are Defined
Artima takes note of JSR 306 in the discussion New JSR Aims To Change How Java Standards are Defined. "The recently submitted JSR 306, 'Towards a New Version of the JCP,' aims to refine how the Java Community Process (JCP) creates and manages Java standards. Artima spoke with Onno Kluyt, chair of the JCP, about the proposed changes. [...] The expert group for JSR 306 consists of JCP executive committee member companies and individuals. Artima spoke with Sun's JCP Chair Onno Kluyt, and JCP program manager Heather VanCura, about the proposed changes."

September 20, 2006

JUGJF - Java User Group Juiz de Fora
The JUGJF discussion group was created on 8th August of 2006 as an academic student initiative in Juiz de Fora - Minas Gerais. The main goal is to do studies about the Java platform and technologies related with them. By the use of software engineering methodologies, the group aims to share knowledge and contribute with other java user groups.

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 3
NetBeans 6.0 (Dev) Milestone 3 is now available for download at the Milestones downloads page. Milestone 3 contains new and noteworthy improvements, including: * Ant output window now features Stop and Re-run buttons, * Windows Vista look and feel is fully supported if you run NetBeans 6.0 on latest available build of Java SE 6.0, *Run configurations is now avaialable also for Java SE projects.

September 19, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 94
The ninety-forth ssue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, and in an odd bit of timing, it has no graduations to announce or new projects to welcome to the community this week. What is does have is a round-up of tool-related news from around the web, and a Tool Tip collecting tools of particular interest to developers moving to Mac OS X.

Mobile Data Services and Platforms
Twin Java Specification Requests (JSRs) are under way that will define the new Mobile Services Architecture (MSA), the next generation of the Java platform for mobile devices. The SDN article The Mobile Service Architecture Specification says "ultimately, JSRs 248 and 249 will define a comprehensive structure of APIs aimed at facilitating development and deployment of the widest possible variety of applications, in a form that will be easily portable across the broadest possible spectrum of mobile devices."

Mustang API doc Japanese translation project
One of several JDK documentation localization projects, the jdk-api-ja aims to improve the translation quality of the Japanese JDK documentation currently available on java.sun.com. The project "would like to ask willing Japanese speaking community members to review those translations. There has been quite a lot of feedback on Tiger docs after they were released. Now is a good chance to send your input before Mustang is released!"

September 18, 2006

Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 6 for Mac OS X
The java-dev mailing list message Ann: Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 6 Now Available brings word of the latest build of Mustang for Mac OS X, for both Intel and PowerPC systems, based on JDK 1.6.0_b88. This latest developer preview is available from the Apple Developer Connection to all ADC members, including those at the free "online" level. Note that ADC pre-release terms and conditions still apply, meaning the build can only be discussed on Apple's feedback channels. Also note that this preview release is not removable.

Swing Team mini-tour of Southern California JUG's
Joshua Marinacci's blog LA-stravaganza describes a whirlwind tour he and fellow Swing team member Richard Bair took of Southern California customers and Java User Groups. "We had an engaging and exhausting week meeting with some great Java developers, dispelling myths and out of date information about desktop Java, and seeing how people use desktop Java in the real world."

Zambro Web Browser
The incubated Java Desktop project Zambro is a "simple and light web browser, written in Java 5 and using the Swing framework." Its features inlcude remote and local browsing, bookmarks support (where bookmarks can be exported in a HTML document), HTML code viewer/editor, integrated web search, minimalistic back/forward memory for visited sites' history, hideable panels, and per-user customizable settings.

September 15, 2006

Quick Color Chooser project
Ever find JColorChooser just a little too heavyweight? The Quick Color Chooser project offers a fast, single-mouse-gesture color chooser component for Swing apps. Some of the code has been around as long as six years, so it's fairly mature. There is also a Netbeans module created with BeanNetter which adds it to the Matisse component palette for drag and drop use.

U.S. Daylight Saving Time Changes in 2007
A brief SDN article discusses issues with older JRE's and U.S. Daylight Saving Time Changes in 2007: "The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) stores rules about DST observance all around the globe. Older JREs will have outdated rules that will be superseded by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As a result, applications running on an older JRE may report incorrect time from March 11, 2007 through April 2, 2007 and from October 29, 2007 through November 4, 2007." Links to updated JRE/JDK's for J2SE 1.4, 5.0, and Java SE 6.0 are provided.

Romain Guy: Filthy Rich Clients presentation slides (JavaZone 2006)
Romain Guy reports: "I gave a presentation entitled Filthy Rich Clients this morning at JavaZone 2006. This presentation explains how to create good looking Swing applications by using Java2D, animations and 3D. It also contains some performance tips."

September 14, 2006

10th Jini Meeting - Day +1
The Tidal Blog has a summary of the first day of the 10th Jini Community Meeting, currently wrapping up in Brussels, in the entry 10th Jini Meeting - Day +1. "One of the most interesting talks was the thought-provoking 'Beyond the choir' by Daniel Steinberg. The point was the usual paradox with Jini: it has proved to be reliable, good, substantially easy to work with, in a few words 'it works', BUT it's still a niche technology, ten years after its introduction. Is there any hidden problem lingering around?"

Project Looking Glass release plan
The Project Looking Glass team has posted a forum message detailing their plans for a 1.0 release. "'Panorama' is the code name that the LG core team members have been using to describe the desktop aspect of LG. (As opposed to 'AppKit' which denotes the application library aspect of LG). I just posted on the LG Twiki the plan for Panorama Release 1.0. The main focus of this release is stability and bug fixes. There are no new major features planned at this time." The wiki page can be found in the Java Desktop wiki, under InfoReleases.

September 13, 2006

NetBeans Podcast #14
In the 22-minute program NetBeans Podcast #14: Roman's report from Turkey, Gregg Sporar discusses the new NetBeans / JBoss Bundle, extensive list of NetBeans hacks, Sun hires two main JRuby developers, module of the week (Ant explorer from yWorks, new NetBeans Platform book, upcoming events and more...

10th Jini Community Meeting live
The 10th Jini Community Meeting is underway in Brussels, Belgium. The wiki page 10th JCM Live is providing live updates with pictures, schedules, and a live video stream of the sessions (your QuickTime mileage may vary). The conference runs today and tomorrow.

September 12, 2006

Gizmoball
The JavaDesktop Community is highlighting Gizmoball, a nifty pinball game editor app from students Greg Belote, Joshua Wang, and Tiffany Chang at MIT, as the community's latest featured Web Start application. "Gizmoball is a version of pinball, an arcade game in which the object is to keep a ball moving around in the game, without falling off the bottom of the playing area. The player controls a set of flippers that can bat at the ball as it falls." The player creates flippers, balls, pins, and other assorted thingamajigs, and and then wires up actions to keys. Press the "run" button and you'll be entertained for hours.

Designing to End Poverty
Microfinance Open Source (Mifos) describes itself as "an exciting open source information system to fight global poverty. Microfinance is a proven technique to help people lift themselves out of poverty. The challenge now is to scale microfinance operations around the world to reach more people and to attract more capital. Mifos will be a high impact solution because it removes several of the barriers to growth of microfinance programs. Volunteer contributors are needed!"

September 11, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 93
The ninety-third issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, collecting tool-related news from around the web, welcoming new projects to the community and congratulating maven-xmlvalidate-plugin on its graduation from the tools community incubator. Just for kicks (ha ha), the weekly tool tip suggests you watch the video Meet People - Practice Kicks, in which Bruno Souza and Ean Schuessler filmed various Java luminaries at JavaOne 2006 being kicked by a giant green shoe.

NetBeans Governance Board Elections - Voting Begins
Balloting for the NetBeans Governance Board elections has begun, and ends September 21, 2006 midnight last time zone. The nominees are Iwan Eising, Frank-Michael Moser, Edson Carlos Ericksson Richter, David Strupl, Rich Unger, and Gregg Wonderly, and you can read their profiles and positions on the candidate profiles page.

September 08, 2006

30 minutes Flex test-drive for Java developers
The 30 Minute Flex Test Drive gives Java developers a way to explore Flex and the various ways it integrates with Java EE, with a minimal time commitment: you just deploy a war file in Tomcat (or another app server), and then go through 10 concise and targeted samples. The samples focus on integrating Flex with Java back-ends (remote method and web services invocation, server push, real-time collaboration, pub/sub messaging, JMS integration, and persistence).

Applet(s) of the Day from JGame
The JavaDesktop Community's latest featured applet is actually 3 applet games that have been created with the new JGame framework for 2D games. According to the release 0.8 announcement: "JGame is a small high-level 2D game engine for producing games on a variety of platforms. It does a lot of the stuff you need for a game automatically, and classic type arcade games can be developed with a minimum of effort. It is based on sprites with automatic collision detection, and a tile-based background with easy sprite-tile interaction facilities. JGame games can easily be run as stand-alone applications or as applets, and can be scaled to any resolution."

September 07, 2006

Sun Teams with Red Hat to Integrate NetBeans and JBoss Application Server
According to a press release, the JBoss Application Server and NetBeans IDE have been bundled together to provide NetBeans IDE users with a well integrated out of the box experience to build Java EE 5 applications on the JBoss Application Server.

SwingLabs wins JDJ Editors' Choice Award
The Java Developer Journal's Editor's Choice Awards includes praise for Swing Labs: "The SwingLabs open source project is a laboratory for exploring new ways to make Swing applications easier to write, with improved performance and greater visual appeal. It is an umbrella project for various open source initiatives sponsored by Sun Microsystems and is part of the java.net community. Successful code and concepts may be migrated to future versions of the Java platform."

September 06, 2006

Feedback Wanted: HeapWalker Added to NetBeans Profiler
The NetBeans Profiler developers have added a new HeapWalker feature to Milestone 2 of NetBeans 6.0. This new feature is still being defined and the developers are very open to feedback. To make it even easier to try it out, they even created a small Java Web Start version of the HeapWalker. For full details, check out the NetBeans Profiler Milestone 2 project page.

JSR Approval Ballot: JSR-305
The JSR Community page notes that JSR review balloting is underway for JSR 305: Annotations for Software Defect Detection, and will end on Monday, Sept. 11. You can also nominate yourself for membership in the expert group, as noted on the JSR page. This JSR will "attempt to develop a standard set of annotations that can assist defect detection tools", such as annotations to prompt checks for null-ness, concurrency, internationalization, and return value usage.

September 05, 2006

Substance 3.0
The Substance project has released version 3.0 of its highly-customizable Swing look-and-feel. This version offers a number of new color themes, improved painting in various places, animated effects, and more. Project owner Kirill Grouchnikov summarizes the highlights of the new release in his blog Substance LAF 3.0 official release, which includes more screenshots of its top features and a Java WebStart demo.

Java SE 6 schedule update
Mark Reinhold announces that show-stopper bugs and a high rate of incoming bugs has forced a Java SE 6 schedule update. "With these changes the release candidate will now ship at the end of October and the final release will ship in the first week of December. (It won't be in the last week of November due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S.) We're also continuing to work with our PC OEM partners to ensure that the Java SE 6 JRE will be included on new PCs at the time of the Windows Vista launch."

September 04, 2006

JDK-JRL-Sources project
The jdk-jrl-sources project has been released to the general public. This is a Subversion full source release of the JDK6 and JDK7 source tree under the JRL license. JRL licensed sources are now available as either a tar ball or from a repository. The advantage of the repository is that each build of JDK 7 and the last 10 or so builds from JDK 6 are available to developers. Igor Kushnirskiy has more details in his blog Readonly subversion repository for JDK sources under the JRL license.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 92
The ninety-second issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, collecting tool-related news from around the web, celebrating the graduation of the UTF-X project, welcoming new projects to the community, and featuring a Tool Tip on finding code samples in open source projects.

September 01, 2006

Four Alternatives for Distributed SOA
A recent item on the Java Web Services and XML community page considers Four Alternatives for Distributed SOA: "Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) provides the vehicle to evolve from server-centric to network-distributed computing. But why would organizations want to do this? Business-wise, distributed SOA aligns technology with business goals which in turn fuels organization capability and productivity. From a technology perspective, it enables broad system integration, practical code reuse and speeds up application development. In other words, SOA offers a value proposition to achieve demonstrable, quantifiable competitive advantage for the organization."

Enterprise-class WSRP Open Source Project
The Enterprise-class WSRP Open Source Project, part of the overall Portal Open Source Project, aims to provide a WSRP v1 Producer, a WSRP v1 Consumer that can consume Remote Portlets exported by any WSRP v1 Producer, support Registries that allow publishing and discovery of remote portlets, and support user identity propagation and other security and policy capabilities between the Producer and the Consumer. The WSRP specification is defined by the OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) TC.

August 31, 2006

NASA's Accessibility Swing Components
Peter Korn discusses NASA's Accessibility Swing Components: "NASA's Johnson Space Center Learning Technologies have been working for a while on making science accessible to people with vision impairments. In particular, Dr. Robert Shelton has developed the Math Description Engine for programatically describing (in text) and conveying (in audio) 2 dimensional mathematical equations. MDE consists of a set of reusable Java classes, and several embeddable Swing GUI elements (like the CartesianGraph component) that can be embedded in Java applications that want to render accessible 2D graphs..."

Dynamic Faces Project
The still-incubated JSF Extensions project, also known as Dynamic Faces or DynaFaces, "hosts development of software that extends the capability of the JavaServer Faces specification, including revolutionary, world class, support for using AJAX and JSF." As Ed Burns notes in his blog Introducing Project Dynamic Faces, the project is being developed under the CDDL license, and has a number of live demos of DynaFaces in action.

August 30, 2006

Compute Server 0.5 release now available
A new version of the Sun Grid computeserver project has been released and is available for download. With this release, developers can use standard Java logging APIs in their code, configure Java logging levels for both on-grid and debug execution from within NetBeans, and examine log output using a new log viewer, also within NetBeans. The UI has been improved through numerous enhancements, including the re-organization of some property sheets. A new Tree Search design pattern has been added to the documentation, and descriptive use-case examples have been added for most design patterns.

Removing features from the Java SE platform
Mark Reinhold discusses a new process in the JDK 6 JSR for Removing features from the Java SE platform: "Perhaps the most signficant recent change to the JSR 270 specification is the definition -- and first application -- of a policy for removing existing features. Herewith a bit about the motivation and the details, and why you might not be able to play MIDI sound files out-of-the-box on a future version of the platform."

August 29, 2006

SOA in the Enterprise:A Survey of the Technical Landscape
The article SOA in the Enterprise:A Survey of the Technical Landscape introduces the notion of an SOA infrastructure and enriches it with the models and frameworks currently available to SOA implementers. By describing architectural components and frameworks common to SOA, it defines the baseline for the service-oriented enterprise.

NetBeans Governance Board Elections - Nominations Open
It's time again to elect a new NetBeans Governance Board. Submit your nominations for the community members you wish to be considered for the board before the deadline on Wednesday, March 7th. The polling period will begin on March 8 and continue for two weeks, with the new board announced to the community on March 22.

August 28, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 91
The ninety-first issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, collecting tool-related news from around the web, welcoming two new projects to the community (Enuke and Source Code Mania), and featuring a tip of the hat to the Java Posse podcast.

Ed Burnette: EoS - Eclipse on Swing
Ed Burnette points out a surprising combination of projects in EoS - Eclipse on Swing: "In what has to be one of the most cleverly named projects of all time, EoS (named after Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn) promises to bring Eclipse to Sun's Swing platform. EoS is the result of a collaboration between Dieter Krachtus and SWTSwing developer Chris Deckers. A download is available, but it's currently more a proof of concept than a usable system."

Closures Syntax in Java 7 Wiki
The wiki page Closures Syntax in Java 7 collects resources from around the web related to the new proposal to bring closures to the Java language in JDK 7. The page links to the original PDF proposal, blogs, and running discussions on the proposal, and also hosts its own "Discussion on Syntax" section for further debate over the specifics of the proposal.

August 25, 2006

Try this at home: Building the JDK (on Debian)
For those looking to get started with the JDK 6 sources, Ivan Tarasov has a step-by-step introduction in Try this at home: Building the JDK (on Debian). "One of my assignments here at Sun is to build the latest sources available at the Peabody site and provide some useful directions on how to do it. I use Debian Linux both at work and at home on my laptop, so I'll describe the building process on Debian. Probably some day I'll try to do it on another OS, say Windows or Mac OS X, when I get my hands on the computer with this OS installed. So, here we go..."

Sun Open Sources Java Mobile Edition Development Tool
According to a recent announcement, the NetBeans Mobility Pack has opened its code to the community. Mobility.netbeans.org has detailed info about the Mobility Pack, including downloads of the latest builds, design documents, APIs, roadmaps and partner information. Further information is available in the news release Sun Open Sources Java Mobile Edition Development Tool.

August 24, 2006

10th Jini Community Meeting
With the recent wiki-fication of the jini.org site, information for the 10th Jini Community Meeting is now collected as a wiki page. Those attending the Sept. 13-14 event in Brussels can use the page to learn more about the event, make plans, view schedules and session descriptions, and add themselves to the list of participants.

Closures in Java SE 7.0?
Will Java SE 7.0 have closures? In his blog entry Full Disclosure , Peter Ahé writes: " Some clever guys have written up a proposal on closures [PDF, 104KB] and been kind enough to put my name on it. I was just sitting in the room trying my best not to look too stupid." In a follow-up, Non-local return and lexical scope, he notes "i haven't seen any comments from people that understand closures saying they don't like them. So this makes you think if closures is just a matter of understanding them or not." ONJava blogger Dejan Bosanac also considers the proposal in Will we have closures in Java 1.7?

August 23, 2006

RESTful Web Services
"In the web services world, REpresentational State Transfer (REST) is a key design idiom that embraces a stateless client-server architecture in which the web services are viewed as resources and can be identified by their URLs. Web service clients that want to use these resources access a particular representation by transferring application content using a small globally defined set of remote methods that describe the action to be performed on the resource." Sameer Tyagi's SDN article RESTful Web Services discusses when to use REST and how it's supported by JAX-WS.

August 22, 2006

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 254
Issue 254 of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter is out, with items on the updated NetBeans C/C++ Pack and Enterprise Pack, the release of NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 2, NetBeans in your language, a new article on building and deploying web services, the return of the NetBeans Podcast, WebFrameworkProvider and HyperlinkProvider, 10 Tips for Coding with NetBeans, NetBeans Plug-in: Janino Plugin, Tapestry support for NetBeans and more...

Java Open Source Press Conference
The JDK Community notes "the good folks at Java Posse have provided the full audio of the Java Open Source press conference," in Java Posse #077 - Special Open Source Java Update. You can click the "POD" link on the episode page to get the 23-minute MP3 directly, or subscribe to the show's RSS feed with your podcasting client of choice.

August 21, 2006

Swing and Roundabouts 1P: Epoxy DTs
Evan Summers looks at the challenge of moving long-running calls in desktop applications off the AWT event-dispatch thread, in Swing and Roundabouts 1P: Epoxy DTs. "This is one approach to building some EDT-safe helper classes, which we can use from code running in SwingWorker background threads. We avoid the isEventDispatchThread() and invokeAndWait() boiler-plate code, using dynamic proxies."

August 18, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 90
The ninetieth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, announcements of two graduations from the incubator (UnitCover and Crawler), and a Tool Tip on how to find or fill a job with java.net, via the JobsWiki.

At Sixes and Sevens
Mark Reinhold's blog At Sixes and Sevens explains why the JDK 7 project (formerly "dolphin") is open before JDK 6 (formerly "mustang") is even out the door. "Now the world doesn't stop turning--and developers don't stop hacking--just because JDK 6 is in stabilization mode. Engineers both inside and outside of Sun are already working on fixes and features for JDK 7, so the question arises: Where should those changes go?"

GlassFish V2 Milestone 1 and more
Carla Mott updates the status of GlassFish in GlassFish V2 Milestone 1 available: " We are currently working on the V2 release which adds more enterprise level features. Today we promoted milestone 1 for the V2 release which contains JAXWS 2.0.1, clustering and many bug fixes. Check it out!" Also, in GlassFish V2, Transparency and Continuous Feedback, Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart notes the project's enhanced transparency: "you should have noticed the New Community Wiki that has all our plans and Milestone Roadmap. You may also have noticed a substantial increase in traffic in the DEV mailing list, including the recent messages from Dirhu, the GF V2 technical lead describing the public Review of New Features in GF V2 and Tracking New Features in GF V2."

August 17, 2006

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 2 Released
The NetBeans Community is pleased to announce a release of NetBeans 6.0 (Dev version) Milestone 2. The new and noteworthy features include window system improvements that allow for full screen mode and floating windows, debugging improvements with method exit breakpoints and return values display, and integration of JMeter into the profiler.

August 16, 2006

Enterprise-class Portlet Container Open Source Project
As announced on Deepak Gothe's blog entry Open Source Portlet Container on java.net, "the Enterprise-class Portlet Container (i.e., Sun's implementation of JSR 168 spec) that is part of the Sun Java System Portal Server 7 has been open sourced. The open-source code artifacts of the Portlet Container from the Sun Portal's internal repository has been svn checked-in to java.net." This new Enterprise-class Portlet Container Open Source Project features support for parallel render requests, a proprietary event scheme for inter-portlet communication, and integratability with identity management systems, behavior tracking and logging systems, and user profile systems.

Open-source JDK's not to be named Tiger and Dolphin
One of the side-effects of the move to open-source Java is the retiring of the previous code names "Mustang" and "Dolphin". Ray Gans explains the thinking behind this in Mustang and Dolphin... we'll miss you: "Yes, we must retire some old friends. Management says it's time to drop these code names and develop a new project naming system around our open source model. Better now than after Dolphin gets firmly entrenched -- and as for Mustang, well it's almost done anyway." The projects for these JDK versions are now at jdk6.dev.java.net and jdk7.dev.java.net, and the old "mustang" and "dolphin" projects redirect to these new project names.

August 15, 2006

Seven simple reasons to use AppFuse
A recent DeveloperWorks article gives Seven simple reasons to use AppFuse: "AppFuse removes the pain of integrating open source projects. It also makes testing a first-class citizen, allows you to generate your entire UI from database tables, and supports Web services with XFire. Furthermore, AppFuse's community is healthy and happy -- and one of the few places where users of different Web frameworks actually get along."

Updates on Open-Sourcing Java
Sun has provided some further details of its plans to open-source its JDK, including the unveiling of a new Open Sourcing the JDK java.net page for updates and discussion. A news.com article summarizes a Sun press event about the ongoing effort, including the announcements that some components, including javac and HotSpot, will be open-sourced this year. Mark Reinhold's blog Yes, we really are going to open-source the JDK adds other interesting points, such as the Java ME CDC and CLDC platforms going open-source as well. Finally, Danny Coward's Open Source: Cutting the Java SE apron strings provides a historical context, and wonders aloud which pieces of the JDK will be open sourced first.

August 14, 2006

Java SE 5.0 Update 8
Java SE 5.0 update 8 is available for download. Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein looks deep into its HotSpot-related changes in his blog Java SE 5.0 Update 8's cool performance fixes. A complete list of changes in this release is available in the release notes.

JSR-168 -- The Portlet Specification
Enrique Lara offers a thorough introduction to Portlets in his article JSR-168 -- The Portlet Specification. "This article will focus on the Portlet side of things, by showing how to create a simple Portlet and deploying that into a Portal. We will then refactor and extend the Portlet to see how some of the patterns of Servlet development might be used. Along the way we will exercise different aspects of the API available to a JSR-168 Portlet developer."

August 11, 2006

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Issue 89
The eighty-ninth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, announcements of Simple Log's version 2.0 release and the AdvanceNative2ASCIITool project's graduation from the Tools Community incubator, and a Tool Tip on adding new roles to your project.

HotSpot and other compilers
Peter Ahé's blog HotSpot and other compilers considers the relationship of HotSpot and javac-generated code: "In a comment on a previous blog entry, Damon Hart-Davis asked if HotSpot is better with classes generated by javac and if it is true that some static transformations (optimization or obfuscation) can impact the performance of your application? The short answer is that HotSpot is not targeted to javac code but some static transformation can adversely affect the performance of your application. I'll give some more details below."

August 10, 2006

Matt Stephens: Mustang/ATI Graphics Freeze-Fest
Matt Stephens updates the progress of the hardware-accelerated OpenGL Java2D pipeline in Mustang/ATI Graphics Freeze-Fest: "Mustang (the groovy codename for the upcoming Java 6) is looking more and more promising on the desktop. Sun has wisely opened up its development process - at least, to the extent that we can suffer the blog rollings of the increasingly excited programmers who are, as we speak, busily wrapping up Mustang ready for its fall 2006 release..."

Scott McNealy discusses the GELC
Robert Stephenson points out former Sun CEO Scott McNealy's interest in education and the Global Education and Learning Community in his blog Scott McNealy discusses the GELC: "McNealy, who recently stepped down after 22 years as Sun's CEO, developed an intense interest in improving education as he watched his own children go through school. He has been the driving force behind Sun's support and promotion of the GELC, and is expected to formally assume the role of GELC CEO sometime soon."

August 09, 2006

Mustang for Mac PPC... any point now?
The ONJava blog Mustang for Mac PPC... any point now? says "This blog is about Mustang for the Mac, which is being developed for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. That's kind of interesting when you consider one thing: As of yesterday, Apple doesn't make PowerPC Macs anymore."

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 252
Issue 252 of the NetBeans Weekly Newsletter is out, with items on how to migrate your JBuilder Project to NetBeans, Visual Mobile Designer tutorials, an interview with the xDesign team, a tutorial on creating a simple Spring MVC webapp in NetBeans 5.0, and more.

August 08, 2006

Flying Saucer Release 6
Release 6 of the Flying Saucer 100% Java XHTML+CSS renderer is now available. "Release 6 includes major improvements in performance and stability--plus we've taken big strides in our CSS 2.1 support." A feature list shows what's available in the new version, while online demos show off its rendering abilities.

First Public Draft of Portlet 2.0 Spec available
The early draft review of JCP 286, Portlet Specification 2.0 is now available. "The main goal of this version is to align the Java Portlet Specification with J2EE 1.4, other JSRs relevant for portlet programming, like JSR 188, the next version of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP)." New features include portlet filters, inter-portlet communication, enhanced portlet tag library, and more.

August 07, 2006

Media Grid Takes Step Forward
The Grid Institute announced that Sun Microsystems is collaborating with the MediaGrid.org open standards group to advance international standards for storing, delivering and processing digital media in Grid computing environments. A key component of the collaboration is the seamless connection of Sun Microsystems' on-demand Sun Grid compute utility to the public Media Grid network, enabling Media Grid service requests and jobs to be handled by Sun Grid. In addition to increasing the quality of service and overall performance of the Media Grid network, "gatewaying" to Sun Grid will also have a direct and positive influence on related MediaGrid.org standards.

Web Services Policy 1.5: Working Drafts
The Web Services Policy Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of the Web Services Policy 1.5. The Policy Framework defines a model for expressing the nature of Web services in order to convey conditions for their interaction. An attachment defines how to associate policies, for example within WSDL or UDDI, with subjects to which they apply.

August 04, 2006

NetBeans Weekly Newsletter - Issue 251
Issue 251 of the NetBeans Newsletter collects recent NetBeans-related announcements, including the release of NetBeans IDE 5.0 BlueJ edition, NetBeans 5.5 Beta 2 with Application Server 9.0, the last call for a free 10-week online Ajax programming course, a guide to creating GUI's on Mac OS X, and more.

JFugue Music NotePad
Offering a musical equivalent of the simple Note Pad application, the JFugue Music NotePad project combines the NetBeans API with the recently-updated JFugue, to create a simple drag-and-drop music editor. When you drag notes to the staff, it adds a corresponding note to an editor pane, and the entire composition can be played with a single menu item.

August 03, 2006

SimpleLog 2.0
SimpleLog, which describes itself as a "logging anti-framework", has announced version 2.0, "the most significant upgrade to Simple Log since its initial release." New features include log rolling (by time, day, or custom strategy), more flexibility, better organization of the properties files, new documentation, and various fixes. SimpleLog is also available in the ibiblio Maven 2 repository.

Ajax4JSF interview
Ajax4JSF is a new open-source JSF component framework hosted on java.net. The project recently reached its 1.0 milestone release. In the interview Ajax4JSF Reaches 1.0 Milestone, Frank Sommers speaks with Ajax4JSF committer Max Katz, who is also a senior engineer with Exadel, the project's main sponsor and contributor.

August 02, 2006

Meet Josh Marinacci of the Swing Toolkit Team at Sun Microsystems
Speaking of Josh, the latest SDN developer profile gives you a chance to Meet Josh Marinacci of the Swing Toolkit Team at Sun Microsystems. In it, Josh talks about Swing Hacks, the Flying Saucer and Aerith projects, the future of Java Desktop applications, scripting support in Mustang, and how he won a dollar from James Gosling.

Swing Labs in Los Angeles and OC
Matt Ingenthron has good news for JUG members in Southern California, in his blog entry Swing Labs in Los Angeles and OC: "It's official. We have Joshua Marinacci and Richard Bair coming in September to talk with not one, but two Java User Groups, the OC JUG. They'll come in and give us an idea of what's going on over in Swing Labs and Swing technologies in general. "

August 01, 2006

JAudiotagger 1.0.1
Version 1.0.1 of the JAudiotagger project fixes 15 issues with the audio-file tagging library. JAudiotagger's goal is to provide thorough support for metadata in multiple audio file formats, including but not limited to the ID3 standard used in most MP3's, though ID3 is the focus of current development. In the long run, the use of a "virtual intermediate format" will allow the mappging of any format to any other format.

July 31, 2006

Swilet
The Swilet project has graduated fom the incubator to a Java Enterprise project. Swilet is a Java EE web presentation layer framework. Swilet can help programmers easily create a web application that has Ajax features, without knowledge of Ajax and JavaScript. Swilet can transform a java swing application to a web application. This allows desktop programmers to write swing programs using tools that they are expert in, and with the swilet framework, use the swing application as a web application.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Eighty-Eighth Issue
The eighty-eighth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring tool news from around the web, links to all the projects that joined the tools community in the last week, and a "tool tip" on how to display PDF documents in Java.

July 28, 2006

NetBeans IDE 5.0 BlueJ Edition Now Available
The NetBeans IDE BlueJ Edition is targeted at teachers and students familiar with the popular BlueJ tool. You can import existing BlueJ projects and view them much as you would in BlueJ, while also taking advantage of NetBeans IDE editing features. This tool offers a seamless migration path for students that supports the switch from educational tools into a full-featured, professional IDE.

Java-AppleScript Connector
Want to tell application "Finder" to open the trash in a Java app? The Java-AppleScript Connector (jasconn) project is a JSR-223-compliant mechanism for using AppleScript code within Java. jasconn is not an implementation of AppleScript; it is a bridge between Java and the native Mac OS X AppleScript libraries. To use it, you need to be running the developer preview of Java SE 6 for Mac OS X, available from the Apple Developer Connection.

July 27, 2006

Ease the integration of Ajax and Java EE
With the rise of Ajax comes the need to dispel the myths of this hot property and pointedly deal with the issues that arise during its use. In Ease the integration of Ajax and Java EE, Patrick Gan examines the potential impacts throughout the full development life cycle of introducing Ajax technology into Java EE Web applications. In several cases, he notes the strengths of Direct Web Remoting (DWR) as a Ajax framework that does a particularly good job of dealing with Ajax problems.

Hudson 1.3.5
Version 1.3.5 of the Hudson build-monitoring system has been released. You could consult the changelog, or just check out Kohsuke Kawaguchi's blog Hudson 1.35 posted. "One of many improvements that came out of this is to speed up CVS changelog computation. When you are doing a continuous build, every build usually contains only a small number of changes. In Hudson 1.35, Hudson first runs "cvs update", then use its output to determine what files are changed. Hudson then uses this to significantly reduce the amount of traffic for the "cvs log" command, which is used to compute the changelog."

July 26, 2006

Seam (FCS) On GlassFish
java.net blogger Roger Kitain again delves into JBoss Seam in Seam (FCS) On GlassFish: "So far we've seen how we can get Seam running on GlassFish with Hibernate Persistence and Java Persistence. Modifications were needed to the Seam core classes as well as the application classes. Fortunately, JBoss has made the modifications to their core classes in time for their Seam FCS release. In this entry we'll outline the steps to get the Seam FCS release up and running on GlassFish with Java Persistence."

Sun Grid Visual Quickstart
Want to get started with Sun Grid but don't know how? The article Sun Grid Visual Quickstart offers a sort of "hello world" for the grid: "This is a guide to help you understand how to run your applications on the Sun Grid. We'll start with an absolutely simple one-class Java application. From there we'll write the necessary scripts to run it on the Sun Grid. Once the application is built and packaged, we'll go through a very visual walk through of uploading and executing the application on Sun Grid."

July 25, 2006

jini.org back online
The revised jini.org is back online, featuring a round-up of information related to Jini, including links to the specifications, downloads, and the starter kit API. The site no longer hosts projects, many of which have moved to a new home on java.net. A complete explanation of what's where can be found in the note What happened to Jini.org?

Accessing Resources From JavaServer Faces Custom Components
JavaServer Faces technology is great for encapsulating a component's artifacts, which hides complexity from the end user. In the quest to create reusable components, the developer has to make trade-offs between complexity and reusability. When designing components, developers find that most development projects require the repetition of common tasks. One function that is commonly required is accessing static and dynamic resources. In the article Accessing Resources From JavaServer Faces Custom Components, Mark Basler looks at how to handle requests for static and dynamic resources.

Revised jini.org back online
The revised jini.org is back online, featuring a round-up of information related to Jini, including links to the specifications, downloads, and the starter kit API. The site no longer hosts projects, many of which have moved to a new home on java.net. A complete explanation of what's where can be found in the note What happened to Jini.org?

July 24, 2006

Five More Easy Pieces
Chris Campbell's blog Five More Easy Pieces details five fixes recently made to the OpenGL-based Java2D rendering pipeline. "At the risk of sounding like the boy who cried wolf, as of Mustang b92, the OGL pipeline is now "better than better", one might even say it's superfantastic. In the spirit of my recent "Five Easy Pieces" entry, here are five more reasons why the OGL pipeline is better than ever..."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Eighty-Seventh Issue
The eighty-seventh issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring news from community projects, announcements of five graduations from the incubator, tool-related news from around the web, and a "tool tip" on creating a FAQ for your project using Maven 2.

July 21, 2006

The Mac as a Java Development and Execution Platform
Eugene Ciurana has benchmarked a variety of Mac models for TheServerSide and presents his findings in the article The Mac as a Java Development and Execution Platform: "Nobody can deny that Apple manufactures very handsome machines but there are endless debates about whether they perform better than equivalent machines running Linux or Windows. The introduction of Intel-based systems exacerbated the debates. This, coupled with a work-related project in which I get to test the performance of various servers running Java, moved me to try some of my benchmarks on several Mac models, and to compare them against other Intel- and AMD-based systems. Are you ready to find out if Macs are really the best machines running Java when it comes to performance? Read on!"

NetBeans IDE 5.5 Beta 2 Released
NetBeans.org is proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 5.5 Beta 2, Mobility Pack 5.5 Beta 2, and Profiler 5.5 Beta 2, all available from the NetBeans 5.5 Beta 2 Downloads page. Updated versions of Enterprise Pack 5.5 and C/C++ Pack 5.5 will be coming soon. The focus of NetBeans 5.5 is Java EE 5. This release supports the Java Enterprise Edition 5 platform, Java Persistence, EJB 3 and JAX-WS 2.0 specifications. The NetBeans 5.5 Beta 2 release provides improved quality with more than 500 bugs fixed.The final NetBeans IDE 5.5 release is planned for October, 2006. As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback and the sharing of your experience on our mailing lists.

July 20, 2006

Writing a Handler in JAX-WS
Handlers are interceptors that can be easily plugged into the Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0 runtime environment to do additional processing of inbound and outbound messages. The first part of the latest SDN Enterprise Java Technology Tech Tip, Writing a Handler in JAX-WS and Inheritance and the Java Persistence API, shows you how to write a SOAP protocol handler and a logical handler for use with JAX-WS.

SwingX-WS makes interacting with web services easy!
The newly-unveiled SwingX-WS project contains a set of JavaBeans for interacting with web services. Initial beans include support for several Yahoo and Google webservices such as searching news, video, images, and financial data, as well as a generic tile based mapping component (as seen in the Aerith demo at JavaOne 2006), The SwingX-WS beans have been designed with graphical configuration in mind and work very well inside of a JavaBeans aware editor such as NetBeans. The SwingX-WS project was also talked up in Tuesday's JavaPosse podcast.

July 19, 2006

Compute Server 0.4 release available for download
The 0.4 early access release of Compute Server technology is principally a maintenance release, and includes numerous small enhancements and bug fixes that aim to simplify and improve pre-existing functionality. Among these, enhancements to the Output Processor interface (and corresponding changes to the class template) make results more easily accessible to developers, support for the detection and resolution of missing native libraries has been added, and on-grid VM options can now be specified by the developer. Minor UI updates have been made to the project Run Properties dialog to improve clarity. The release also features a new example that illustrates how to implement the Map/Reduce design pattern.

Installing GlassFish and PostgreSQL on Ubuntu Server Edition
Cay Horstmann's Blog has step-by-step instructions, with pictures for Installing GlassFish and PostgreSQL on Ubuntu Server Edition. He writes "First off, apt-get is great. This was far and away the easiest JDK installation I have ever done. I didn't have to fuss with the PATH. I'll get alerted when new versions appear and can update them easily. There is some behind-the-scenes work that makes Sun's Java the preferred one (rather than GCJ). I'd love to be able to run apt-get install glassfish. I never installed much software on a headless server before and I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was. But if that isn't your cup of tea, you can use the admin web interface to do most steps."

Amateur 1.0d6 Posted
The sixth development release of the Amateur media player is now available. This release integrates much better with the Mac Finder. For instance, it is now possible to make Amateur the default player for QuickTime and other movies. The Movie Info dialog has also been much improved. Amateur is now an essentially complete media player. Much work remains to be done to fully support editing and recording features though

July 18, 2006

Ninjar
The Mac Java Community recently noted Ninjar, a free-as-in-beer Spotlight importer that allows OS X to index the content of .jar (Java Archive) files. Its author says: "As a Java developer myself I found it infuriating that there was no simple way to find which .jar a certain class or package could be found in. This importer aims to help by leveraging the power of Spotlight and enabling you to enter package or class names into the search bar."

NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 1 Build Released
NetBeans announces the release of the first milestone build for NetBeans IDE 6.0 and NetBeans Profiler 6.0. Milestone builds will replace the present Q-Build system and are designed to provide a fuller set of features, more stabilization time for new features introduced in the trunk, and more time for feedback from the community. You can get the Milestone 1 builds NetBeans 6.0 and NetBeans Profiler 6.0, see a full description of the Milestone build process, and view the New and Noteworthy Features of the Milestone 1 build.

July 17, 2006

Romain Guy: Is Java SE becoming too much like Java EE?
Aerith co-author and former (future?) Sun intern Romain Guy asks Is Java SE becoming too much like Java EE? Despite the title, he argues the recent addition of Java DB to the Mustang JDK is a good thing for desktop developers. "Don't think of the DB as the core element of your application, think of it as an asset. Your application does not have to be a CRUD oriented piece of software to make use of a DB. It just has to be, well, an application."

ANN: Now Available Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 4
The java-dev mailing list message ANN: Now Available Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 4 brings word of the latest build of Mustang for Mac OS X, for both Intel and PowerPC systems. This latest developer preview is available from the Apple Developer Connection to all ADC members, including those at the free "online" level. Note that ADC pre-release terms and conditions still apply, meaning the build can only be discussed on Apple's feedback channels. Also note that this preview release is not removable.

July 14, 2006

Kernow 1.4, A Graphical Front End for Saxon, Written in Java 1.5 Now Available
The Java Web Services and XML community home page points out the XML.com blog entry Kernow 1.4, A Graphical Front End for Saxon, Written in Java 1.5 Now Available, noting that "it's intended for anyone who currently uses Saxon to process directories of XML and would benefit from caching, or who uses Saxon from the command line and gets fed up typing in paths each day."

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Eighty-Sixth Issue
The eighty-sixth issue of the JavaTools Community Newsletter is online, featuring news from community projects, and announcements of six projects that have joined the community. It also has a tool tip on how to use Maven 2 to create a project web site.

July 13, 2006

Phobos: New Build and Source Code
The Phobos project, a lightweight, scripting-friendly, web application environment, has released a new version and has finally posted its source code. As Roberto Chinnici blogs in New Phobos Build, Plus All The Source Code!, "there is a new Phobos build in the documents and files section of our project site. The build is dated July 10, 2006 and is available in binary form for the Solarix/x86, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms." New features include support for JavaScript's E4X extension, the ability to drop new scripting languages into glassfish/lib, and the ability to package Phobos applications as WAR files.

July 12, 2006

Rich Bair: A (Barely) Better Looking Yahoo! News Demo
Rich Blair writes "I was greeted this afternoon by a retching Hans Muller who begged me to upload a better looking demo for the Yahoo! News web service I posted about last time. He likened last week's entry to a fat man in a speedo. Yikes. Here's a barely better demo (pun intended)."

Getting started with the Aerith Mapping Component
Aerith developer Joshua Marinacci blogs about Getting started with the Aerith Mapping Component: "A few days ago we released the code to Aerith, our JavaOne demo that combines photos, mapdata, and 3d effects. We worked very hard to get the code out to you and let you see how everything works. However, if you've downloaded the code you may have noticed that the code for the map parts is missing. Only the binaries are provided in the JXMapViewer.jar file. That's because the map component has a brighter future than just a JavaOne demo. It is now the first component in our new SwingLabs project: The Swing Web Services components, or SwingX-WS..."

Sun Grid Example from the University of Michigan
The College of Engineering at University of Michigan has put together three examples of Sun Grid applications. These examples include running matlab applications, obtaining AFS tokens, and running Fluent simulations.

July 11, 2006

JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2)
The blogs.sun.com entry JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2) discusses radio button behavior when applied to menu items. "The thing to use is a ButtonGroup, which is simple to implement in Matisse -- just drag and drop one onto your form. But what about when we're not designing graphically, but doing everything in the code? And, secondly, we'd need two or more menu items, all subclassing CallableSystemAction. How are the JRadioButtonMenuItems in these separate classes going to share the same ButtonGroup?" It turns out only a few lines of code are required to achieve this functionality.

JCAPS RFID Project
Sun Microsystems has made its new Java CAPS RFID Developer's Kit available on java.net in the JCAPS RFID project The JCAPS RFID Developer's Kit extends Sun's Java Composite Application Platform Suite to integrate the Sun RFID software. JCAPS greatly simplifies implementing RFID in sophisticated enterprise application integration environments. It delivers powerful data transformation and integration capabilities for RFID solutions. The JCAPS RFID project makes the toolkit available for JCAPS developers starting with V. 5.1.0. A retail vendor demo is included to provide a working B2B example.

JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2)
The blogs.sun.com entry JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2) discusses radio button behavior when applied to menu items. "The thing to use is a ButtonGroup, which is simple to implement in Matisse -- just drag and drop one onto your form. But what about when we're not designing graphically, but doing everything in the code? And, secondly, we'd need two or more menu items, all subclassing CallableSystemAction. How are the JRadioButtonMenuItems in these separate classes going to share the same ButtonGroup?" It turns out only a few lines of code are required to achieve this functionality.

JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2)
The blogs.sun.com entry JCheckBoxMenuItem & JRadioButtonMenuItem (Part 2) discusses radio button behavior when applied to menu items. "The thing to use is a ButtonGroup, which is simple to implement in Matisse -- just drag and drop one onto your form. But what about when we're not designing graphically, but doing everything in the code? And, secondly, we'd need two or more menu items, all subclassing CallableSystemAction. How are the JRadioButtonMenuItems in these separate classes going to share the same ButtonGroup?" It turns out only a few lines of code are required to achieve this functionality.

July 10, 2006

Creating Tools for Open Source Curricula
GELC executive director Bobbi Kurshan is evaluating the community's need, and thinks the next big task is Creating Tools for Open Source Curricula: "After exploring what is needed and what is available in the open souruce curricula arena, I have decided that we need many things, but probably we first need some tools to help developers, designers, and programmers." In a sense, this collaborative environment is like a wiki, though she wonders "What do you think the features of a textbook wiki would look like and how is it different from some of the book wikis that already exist?"

July 07, 2006

Jini Technology Starter Kit
Looking to get started with Jini development? The starterkit project hosts downloads of Sun's implementation of the Jini technology infrastructure services, including helper classes and services such as JavaSpaces. The starter kit will help get you started developing with Jini technology, as well as assist your advanced development and deployment of Jini technology-enabled solutions.

July 06, 2006

Semantic Annotations for WSDL: Working Draft
The Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Semantic Annotations for WSDL. The attributes defined in this draft are references from elements within Web Services Description Language (WSDL) or XML Schema documents to concepts in ontologies outside the documents.

July 05, 2006

NetBeans C/C++ Pack 5.5 EA Available
The NetBeans C/C++ Pack brings C/C++ support to the NetBeans Platform. C/C++ developers can now use the NetBeans IDE, in conjunction with their specified set of compilers and tools, to build native applications for supported platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris Operating Systems. A sophisticated language-aware editor, project templates, dynamic class browser, and makefile support are some of the features included to provide a complete edit-compile-debug integrated development environment.

JavaTools Community Newsletter - Eighty-Fifth Issue
The eighty-fifth issue of the Java Tools Community Newsletter features the new projects that joined the community, a tip on writing articles for java.net to draw attention to your project, and the latest graduation from the community incubator, NBPlayer, an MP3 player for NetBeans.

July 04, 2006

Grid Computing Standards Groups Merge
According to the Top Tech News story Grid Computing Standards Groups Merge, "peace has broken out in grid computing with two leading standards groups combining to form one new entity. The Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) and the Global Grid Forum (GGF) have completed their merger to form the Open Grid Forum (OGF). The OGF said the harmonization -- which brings together GGF supporters such as IBM with EGA backers including Oracle and Sun -- would accelerate adoption of grid technology."

Don't Lie to the Entity Manager
Cay Horstmann has some advice for using EJB 3's Java Persistence API: Don't Lie to the Entity Manager: "JPA is the new object-relational mapping standard that you can use in EJB3 or in standalone applications. For the most part, it is phenomenally easy to use. But there is a trap that has bitten more than one developer. If you ever lie because your fibbing won't affect the database, your lies can still come back to haunt you. This blog gives two examples."

July 03, 2006

Using Sun Java Studio Creator 2 on Mac OS X
The article Using Sun Java Studio Creator 2 on Mac OS Xexplains the benefits of developing professional Web applications using Mac OS X and Sun Java Studio Creator 2. In addition, a short tutorial is provided to demonstrate how to extend one of Java Studio Creator's sample applications.

June 30, 2006

Moving Source from jini.org to java.net
For those migrating projects from the soon-to-be closed jini.org to java.net, there's now a guide on Moving Source from jini.org to java.net. This guide assumes that you have set up a new java.net project and that you'll be using subversion for the new project, and walks through the cvs checkout from jini.org and the subversion import to java.net.

June 29, 2006

Aerith sources now availalble
Source code to Aerith, the 2D/3D/webservices demo from the first JavaOne 2006 keynote, is finally available from the Aerith project. Joshua Marinacci talks about the technical side of the release in Aerith Code is Go!, in which he says "Aerith is available under the BSD license to give you maximum freedom to learn from the code and pull parts of it into your own applications. The mapping component has been moved into SwingLabs and will become part of new as-yet-unnamed webservices components project." Meanwhile, Richard Bair details the crunch-time building of the demo in Aerith is Free!: "In three days of intense coding (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Usually about 18 hours+ each day) we wrote the entire map viewer and editor, and part of the applet."

June 28, 2006

Real World JSF
The JavaServer Faces project's wiki page RealWorldJSFLinks collects instances of known real-world deployments of JSF technologies. "It turns out that there are hundreds of public sites on the web obviously using JSF technology. We don't know how many non-obvious JSF sites are out there, nor how many intranet sites are using JSF."

Jugging in Place
Airlan San Juan talks up the value of Java User Groups in Jugging in Place. "Where can you snack on free pizza, get some freebie books, mingle with other Java knuckleheads, and bone up on the latest fashion trends in Javaland - all these being just a drive away from your home? If you answered JavaOne, then you weren't paying too much attention to the question. Give yourself a wedgie and say 'Jumanji'. The answer, of course, is your local JUG, which is the usual acronym for a Java User Group."

June 27, 2006

Visions of Ubiquitous Web Shared at W3C Workshop
2006-06-22: Attendees from countries including Austria, China, Finland, France, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the USA presented thirty two position papers on 9-10 March in Tokyo at the W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web. They proposed ways to standardize distributed applications that adapt to context: user preferences, device capabilities and environmental conditions. The workshop report has been published.

Java LiveCD
Claudio Miranda asks: "How much time do you need to assemble and configure a usable java development environment with the regular tools a java developer needs to start coding ? Well, you can cut some time here, by using a Linux LiveCD with Java Tools, just boot it up and your initial java environment is ready to the first javac."

June 26, 2006

What's New in the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit for CLDC 2.5 Beta
The article What's New in the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit for CLDC 2.5 Beta covers the new features in this toolkit for mobile developers. The new version includes support for five optional API's: the SIP API for Java ME (JSR 180), Scalable 2D Vector Graphics for Java ME (JSR 226), Payment API (JSR 229), Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234), and the Mobile Internationalization API (JSR 238).

June 23, 2006

JDNC House Cleaning
A recent message from Richard Bair announces some JDNC house cleaning. "For those who've been keeping score, not a lot has happened with the JDNC project since it was split out into SwingX and Databinding. That is about to change. The JDesktop Network Components project has been a dead area for a while since most work was going into the SwingX components and the databinding framework. Since last year, the landscape has changed and its time to bring JDNC back into action." Citing a FAQ, he says "The JDesktop Network Components project (JDNC) will eventually house components (both visual and non-visual) for working with webservices. For example, the JXMapViewer component that was shown during the JavaOne 2006 keynote as part of the Aerith project will be released as part of the JDNC project. Basically, if the component is all about webservices or working on the net, then it'll probably end up in JDNC."

New JXTA Releases
The JXTA Community has made announcements of new releases of the three major JXTA implementations. The JXTA Java SE team has announced release 2.4, "Umqhusho", which improves configuration features and moves from Log4J to java.util.logging. On the JXTA-C side, version 2.5, "Mahabaleshwar", features thread pool support and a change in a callback prototype. Lastly, the JXTA Java ME release, 2.1.3 "Giza", makes a number of bug and performance fixes.

June 22, 2006

Java Developer Journal: Swing Baby, Yeah!!!
The JDJ article Swing Baby, Yeah!!! sees the beginnings of a Swing renaissance: "More intelligent and demanding users are become increasing disillusioned with the poor page-based, latency bound user interface model that the browser-centric world delivers. To a large extent all of the AJAX hype being whipped up at the moment is a recognition of this fact, although what it's actually doing is elevating the discussion to be one of 'how do we deliver rich content' rather than bun fights over 'HTML rocks, Swing sucks, baa.'"

Why Java Developers Should Switch to Linux
Blogger Cay Horstmann uses personal experience to make the case for Why Java Developers Should Switch to Linux: "In the last five years, I regularly used Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux (Fedora and Ubuntu). In my experience, Windows XP is just fine when well-tuned, but not easy to keep that way, and totally wretched when it is not. Mac OS X is pretty if you are into blue and brushed metal and the mouse and Java 1.4.2--as you should be if you are a right-thinking citizen. I much prefer Linux, particularly for Java development. I'd like to convince you to switch to Linux as well. My motivation is simple and selfish. If lots of programmers work on Linux, then Java support will for Linux will get even better."

June 21, 2006

The Extensibility Manifesto
The Extensibility Manifesto is not the latest Robert Ludlum novel but a movement, spearheaded by respected industry figure Dale Waldt, well-known as a publisher of the <!TAG> newsletter for many years in the 90s: <!TAG> was what the SGML industry did for information before XML.COM came along. The Extensibility Manifesto shares a lot of the mindset of The Agile Manifesto, for example the need to protect against over-engineering and out-of-controlness.

The Great Switch
java.net blogger and Yahoo! Publishing Tools lead engineer Ethan Nicholas talks about how a dying Windows laptop led him to make The Great Switch: "I don't think I can take that kind of punishment, so I did whatever any true geek would do: I used this situation as an excuse to buy a new computer. I (a long-time Windows user) had been lusting after the new MacBooks for quite a while, and my wife was well aware of this. She was also well aware that Fathers' Day was just around the corner, and, well, to make a long story short I love my wife very much and I'm typing this on my new 13" MacBook."

June 20, 2006

NetBeans Edge, Issue 28
The latest issue of NetBeans Edge focuses on some of the modules that you can use with NetBeans IDE 5.0. They can all be installed from inside NetBeans IDE itself (as explained below) and offer a range of new features, such as enabling you to plan your work inside the IDE or fix problems in your code more quickly and easily.

June 19, 2006

Eliminating final
The Java Web Services and XML Community rethinks a language discussion by author Elliotte Rusty Harold: "Eliminating final is a nice article by Elliotte Rusty Harold. It is in interesting exercise to take his arguments about arguments to method calls and apply them to the slightly higher level of web interfaces and loosely-coupled applications (including applictions distributed over time). What technology fits in to this level like no other? Schematron."

JavaPosse interview with Swing Labs' Richard Bair, Romain Guy, and Joshua Marinacci
Java Posse podcast episode 62 is a group interview with Richard Bair, Romain Guy, and Joshua Marinacci of the Swing Labs team. In this hour-long discussion, they talk about how Aerith works and what's holding up the code, the JavaOne GUI "makeover" session, examples of great-looking Swing applications, competition from SWT, and the future of the Swing Labs project.

April 19, 2007

Java Tools

April 16, 2007

Moble & Embedded Community

April 12, 2007

JavaDesktop

April 11, 2007

Java Web Services and XML

March 30, 2007

Java User Groups

March 29, 2007

JavaDesktop

February 28, 2007

Java Enterprise

January 24, 2007

Robotics

January 23, 2007

Java Enterprise

January 19, 2007

Java Enterprise

January 08, 2007

JavaDesktop

December 11, 2006

Java User Groups

Java Enterprise

December 06, 2006

Portlet

December 05, 2006

JXTA

December 04, 2006

Java Tools

November 09, 2006

Java Specification Requests

November 08, 2006

JavaDesktop

October 26, 2006

Java Games

October 25, 2006

JavaDesktop

October 19, 2006

Jini

October 16, 2006

Java User Groups

October 12, 2006

Java Tools

October 10, 2006

JavaDesktop

October 06, 2006

Java Enterprise

October 04, 2006

Java Enterprise

October 03, 2006

JavaDesktop

Java Tools

September 29, 2006

Java Tools

September 28, 2006

Java Tools

September 27, 2006

Java Tools

September 26, 2006

Java Web Services and XML

September 22, 2006

Java User Groups

September 20, 2006

Java User Groups

September 19, 2006

JDK Community

September 18, 2006

JavaDesktop

September 14, 2006

java-net

September 08, 2006

java-net

June 16, 2006

Portlet

NetBeans

June 15, 2006

Java Communications

JavaDesktop

June 14, 2006

Global Education and Learning Community

Java Tools

June 13, 2006

NetBeans

Mac Java Community

June 12, 2006

Java Specification Requests

Robotics

June 09, 2006

Jini

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