FrontPage Feature

The Three Stages of Enterprise SaaS

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

When picturing the relationship between the enterprise and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, imagine an evolutionary process that can be divided into three main stages: "The Comfort Zone," "The Enlightenment," and "The Re-Assessment." Once we examine these, we can then decide on the right course of action when choosing how to adapt to the IT demands of the enterprise.

Building the Open SOA Platform

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:35:00 EST

The open source community includes many early advocates of the recent wave of emerging SOA-related technology projects. Historically, however, open source has sometimes been considered a "late follower," with commercial products first to hit the market, and then followed by "me-too" open source alternatives. One reason frequently cited by critics of open source is that open source projects are often not innovators, but imitators (of course, some might argue Microsoft has done very well by following the imitation model).

Using Mule as the Foundation for New SOA Infrastructure

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:35:00 EST

Over the course of the past few decades, the consumer media industry has evolved from a slow-moving oligopoly dominated by a handful of vertically integrated networks to a highly fragmented and competitive marketplace of content creation, publication, and distribution players. This disaggregation of the industry value chain, in combination with the proliferation of content sources, channels, and media formats has created a daunting logistical challenge for anyone attempting to deliver content to the consumer in the right format, at the right time.

XML Heaven or XML Hell?

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:00:00 EST

"With proper markup/logic separation, a POJO data model, and a refreshing lack of XML…" So begins the introduction to one of the current crop of open source Web application frameworks on its Web site. Sadly this seems to be a common sentiment within the Java framework development community; the phrase "XML Hell" is thrown around with the same vehemence once reserved for the "DLL Hell" so characteristic of early versions of Microsoft Windows.

Systems Integration with Openadaptor

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Openadaptor is a software toolkit that may be classified as a lightweight Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution. It provides a configurable component framework for connecting various systems and middleware implementations. In less technical parlance, the components are akin to Lego building blocks that users can snap together to build adaptors, which themselves are the metaphorical glue or plumbing between applications.

Principles of Programming: A Personal Round-Up

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:00:00 EDT

The following is a list of principles I've picked up, during my programming career, that I hope to carry in everything I do. They include nuggets from an eclectic group of sages including Dave Winer, Dale Carnegie, Nietzsche, and Pope John Paul II. I've seen people who can solve complex problems, and I admire them. Alas, I'm not one of them. So whenever I have to solve a complex problem, I make it simple first. If I can't make a problem simple, it's usually because someone else insists that it remain complex. In that case, I have to wait for someone smart to fix it (thank you, smart person), or for someone to change their mind and allow me to make the problem simple. Wayne Conrad

Developing Rich Client Applications Using Swing

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:45:00 EDT

Before describing solutions available for rich client application development, it would be a good idea to explain what exactly a rich client application is and which rich client topologies can feasibly be built using the Java platform. In the main, a rich client is a part of a software system that contains a user interface (UI) and whose front end is "rich," i.e., the user interface has rich graphical content and is highly interactive.

Logging for SOA

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:00:00 EDT

What could be a problem with logging in SOA in the presence of such wonderful tools like log4j, Java’s logging library and similar? Why might we need something special for SOA and why aren’t existing techniques enough? The answer is simple and complex simultaneously – in SOA we are dealing with distributed and composed entities that cause problems in log maintenance, not in log creation.

Application Factories – An Application-Driven Development Methodology

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:40:00 EDT

What's the key to team and individual developer productivity in maintaining and extending a large application? Let’s start by making the following assertions: A developer's knowledge of an application code base is likely the single biggest factor of individual productivity. Correspondingly, the team's collective knowledge of an application code base is the single biggest factor of team productivity.

The Role of Event-Driven Architecture in Business Applications

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Three-letter acronyms (TLAs) are hardly new in Information Technology: EAI, ESB, SOA, BPM, BAM, ETL, MDM; the list goes on and on. This article is about yet another three-letter acronym, EDA, which stands for Event-Driven Architecture. EDA is not a brand new technology, but rather a proven paradigm in system-level programs, war and military simulator applications, gaming, and other areas. EDA has started to shape how general-purpose business applications are architected.

Java Annotations + Compiler API + Annotation Processing = Remarkable Results

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:15:00 EDT

This article 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.

Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:15:00 EDT

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

Crunching Big Data with Java

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:00:00 EDT

I target customers who have large data processing needs. These come in various forms, but generically look like this: the customer gets huge data drops in some form or another and must process the data and output results in a very specific time frame. The customer has written some scripts, maybe some code and SQL. They have attempted some optimizations that helped a little, but they're not meeting their timeline.

Bringing Real-Time AJAX Development to Java Developers

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:00:00 EST

Each day as an AJAX developer seems to bring another helpful revelation: a new tool, a new gadget, a new way to reinvent the browser. But even when I'm confronted with a breakthrough as big as Firebug - the brilliant debugging tool for Firefox - in the back of my mind I'm reminded that the AJAX state-of-the-art is trailing behind the debugging tools that we've had in Java for years. With age comes maturity, and with Java's maturity has come a wealth of development environments, field-tested frameworks, and a rich set of strongly typed APIs.

The Evo-Cycle: Doing Software the Right Way - In 16 Stages

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:30:00 EST

Software professionals usually take a great deal of pride in some combination of: Chasing and groking the latest software methodology/technology (e.g., AJAX, JPA, PMP, Spring JMS, Ruby, etc.) making them more marketable (and better positioned to pay their bills!). Creating software products and libraries (open source included) that can be reused (the DRY principle) by other technologists, Building and deploying software projects that are successfully used by their business customers.

Software Archeology: What Is It and Why Should Java Developers Care?

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:00:00 EST

The term Software Archeology has been used in various forms since early 2001. The concept of Software Archeology is an approach or methodology that helps individual team members or entire teams to understand exactly what they have in the code they're going to be working on. The approach is also very useful when deconstructing an existing piece of software to find patterns of design and development that could be 'harvested' in future developments.

New Device Development Features in Visual Studio 2008

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:30:00 EST

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issues of this magazine, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be released as Visual Studio 2008. We spent a lot of time talking to our major customers and reviewing the feedback we got on blogs and questions on forums on newsgroups to identify what enhancements/features would be most useful to our device developers. One thing that surfaced was that device developers needed more help when it came to testing their applications efficiently. Whether that meant testing on multiple devices or under varying conditions or simply being able to write unit tests, they clearly needed help getting applications to market faster by reducing the testing time.

Why Ruby on Rails Has Become a Popular "Next Platform"

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:45:00 EST

In a very short time Ruby on Rails has gained popularity in the enterprise development community among both programmers and system managers. As an open source platform, Ruby is proving to offer a number of advantages for powering enterprise applications, not the least of which is a shorter development time for robust applications and the creation of denser code that's easy to work with and maintain. This article is offered as an introduction to Ruby on Rails for Java developers, offering some basic insight into the evolution of Ruby and Rails and its expanding role in enterprise application development.

Building SOA with Tuscany SCA

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:30:00 EST

Many articles have already been written about service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Service Component Architecture (SCA), for example, see references [1] and [2]. In this article we'll focus on a freely available, open source implementation of the Service Component Architecture that provides a simple way to implement SOA solutions. This SCA implementation is being developed in the Apache Tuscany Incubator project. The project started in 2006 and is being used by many who are looking for a simple SOA infrastructure. The recent Tuscany SCA version 1.0, which was released in September 2007, supports the Service Component Architecture specifications 1.0.

An Introduction to Maven - Part I

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:45:00 EDT

Maven is a promising application development lifecycle management framework coming from Apache's armory of open source tools. Maven was originally developed as a framework to manage and mitigate the complexities of building the Jakarta Turbine project and soon became a core entity of the Apache Software Foundation project.

Java Feature — The Holy Grail of Database Independence

Wed, 23 May 2007 22:15:00 EDT

The hope of using any persistence framework is absolute database independence. Database independence means that you can focus on your job as an application developer and not a DBA. However, no framework can fully make this claim. There's much more to running an application on a database than simply issuing compatible SQL queries and getting back the query results as expected. In my last article, I detailed the process by which we converted existing Enterprise Java Beans 2 (EJB2) Entity beans to Hibernate Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs). This article is less about our conversion process and more about the tools and methods we chose to work with for the Hibernate implementation and the backend databases (Oracle and PostgreSQL) supported by Hyperic HQ.

Constructing Services with SOA & Open Source Java

Wed, 09 May 2007 20:30:00 EDT

The Jedi mind trick is a Force power that can influence the actions of weak-minded sentient beings. Vendors will often try to apply the Jedi mind trick in selling silver-bullet software solutions that solve global warming and stop celebrity feuding while enabling service-based architecture development. Let's quickly put on our aluminum foil caps and repel the Jedi mind trick by turning to open source solutions. Service-based architectures are being touted as the next step in reaching programming nirvana. With these marching orders it's often difficult to build a framework that allows for simple service creation. This framework should also be flexible, scalable, and lightweight as well as easy in exposing services externally.

JDJ Cover Story — Wait-Time Analysis Method

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:00:00 EDT

Until recently, tuning IT application performance has been largely a guessing game. This is both surprising and unacceptable considering the relentless focus IT organizations put on cost-efficiency and productivity. The traditional approaches to database and application tuning that involve collecting large volumes of statistics and making trial-and-error changes are still in widespread use. Today, most server management and monitoring tools deliver 'server-oriented' statistics that don't translate to concrete end-user benefits.

How Open Is "Open"? – Industry Luminaries Join the Debate

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 EST

In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

Blogging – Corporate America's "Big Wet Kiss To Web 2.0"

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:30:00 EST

The significance of blogging is not the word 'blog' whether used as a verb or a noun, but its role as a harbinger of the game-changing Web-as-platform revolution. In particular, the migration of blogging from the individual toward the enterprise...

Coding with Java Swing

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:30:00 EST

Even for many seasoned developers, Swing code can be notoriously difficult to organize. Where is the right place to put parsing and validation logic? How do you prevent those threading issues that cause lockups or repainting glitches? Is it possible to unit test GUI logic? Can the code somehow be shared with other user-interfaces, like a web front-end? If these questions sound familiar, the solutions presented here may revolutionize the way you code with Swing.

Creating AJAX and Rich Internet Components with JSF

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 15:30:00 EDT

In our previous article - 'Rich Internet Components with JavaServer Faces' (JDJ, Vol. 10, issue 11) - we discussed how JavaServer Faces can fulfill new presentation requirements without sacrificing application developer productivity building Rich Internet Applications (RIA). We discussed how JSF component writers can utilize technologies, such as AJAX and Mozilla XUL, to provide application developers with rich, interactive, and reusable components.

Java Feature — Building Real-Time Applications with Continuous Query Technology

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:30:00 EDT

The client/server development model prevalent in the mid-1990's resulted in extremely easy-to-build rich GUI applications that interacted directly with a relational database. 4GL tools such as Visual Basic and PowerBuilder let even junior developers visually compose both the presentation and most of the backend data binding. While this made for impressive Rapid Application Development (RAD) productivity, the client/server architecture was severely challenged when dealing with real-time environments where the data changes rapidly and applications require visibility to the correct data at all times. As a result, client applications were forced to poll the database continuously to check for changes.

JDJ Cover Story — Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate, & Eclipse

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:00:00 EDT

After getting a head of gray hairs and a quickly receding hairline, I have learned that the simplest solutions are often the best. Having worked with Java since 1995 and various software development lifecycle methodologies over the years, I have seen things grow complex in these areas. Thanks to some new lighter-weight Java tools and agile methods, I can provide a fresh perspective on developing Java applications in an agile manner.

AJAX, Java, Flash, and .NET

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:00:00 EDT

Enterprise Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are the next evolution of business application development. There are four different approaches to RIA development - AJAX, Java, Flash, and .NET - and many different RIA solutions available today. This article answers the following questions: What are enterprise RIAs? Which approach should you use? Which solutions are appropriate for you? And how are RIAs being adopted today?

Scott McNealy: The Future Is Web Services, "Through Thin Clients, Through Network Computing"

Tue, 23 May 2006 10:30:00 EDT

'All the big announcements have been made. I'm the warm-up act for James Gosling,' quipped former Sun CEO Scott McNealy on the final day of JavaOne 2006 in San Francisco. 'This is what post-CEO life is like!' he added, wryly, as he announced the winner of 'Bike to Work Week.' But he was still able, wholly justifiably, to bask in the reflected glory that is Java. And so he did, with complete humility and with his customary zeal and zest for helping the technology future arrive more quickly apparently undiminished.

Flashback to '04: Now Come the Counter-Arguments Against Open-Sourcing Java

Thu, 04 May 2006 03:00:00 EDT

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, according to the third of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of physics: if you push on anything, it pushes back on you. That's why if you lean against the wall, you don't just fall through it, and that's also why ESR's Open Letter to Scott McNealy - published here on Monday - is producing a welter of counter-opinions.

Java Cover Story — Debugging JDBC with a Logging Driver

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 12:30:00 EDT

A couple of years ago I began developing in Java, and my first Java project required that I also learn SQL. Our project team was using mostly EJBs for database access, although for some performance-critical sections of the application we wrote the JDBC logic directly. A problem that we faced regularly was tracking the bind parameters to our PreparedStatements. Over the course of the project, all of the team members tried different techniques to determine what our JDBC statements were actually doing.

Super-Charge JSF AJAX Data Fetch

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:15:00 EDT

In our last article - 'JSF and AJAX' (JDJ, Vol. 11, issue 1) - we discussed how JavaServer Faces component writers can take advantage of the new Weblets Open Source project (http://weblets.dev.java.net) to serve resources such as JavaScript libraries, icons, and CSS files directly from a Java Archive (JAR) without impacting the application developer.

Cover Story: What Is POJO Programming?

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:15:00 EST

The novel A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge is set in the distant future. The character Pham Nuwen is responsible for maintaining software whose components are thousands of years old. Today, however, it's difficult to imagine maintaining an Enterprise Java application for more than a few years. More often than not, the application is tightly coupled to infrastructure frameworks that evolve rapidly in ways that don't preserve backwards compatibility. Consequently, upgrading to a new and improved framework can be challenging and risky.

Java or .NET? XML Rich-Client AJAX Technology Brings Zero-Install Rich Client To Java

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:45:00 EST

Which platform to use Java or .NET? Developers ask this question all the time. Java has been widely adopted because of its overwhelming benefits on the server side, but Java has less to offer on the client side. .NET has made inroads into the enterprise by leveraging its stronger rich-client capabilities. An alternative solution for enterprise-scale Internet application development is the emerging XML-based rich-client technology.

As IBM Jumps On Board, There's Just No Stopping AJAX Now

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 06:15:00 EST

'We've seen the Web moving from a publishing paradigm to an e-business paradigm to an AJAX paradigm.' That is the considered verdict of IBM Software Group's CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies, David Boloker. And he's right: AJAX is here, it's growing, and it's (potentially) the biggest thing to hit the i-Technology world since Java.

Reading Data from the Internet

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST

Yakov shows that working with the streams over the Internet may be as simple as dealing with files on your local disk, in the sixth installment of Java Basics.

Teaching Kids Programming: Even Younger Kids Can Learn Java

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 13:45:00 EST

One day my son Dave (10) showed up in my office with my rated 'R' Java tutorial in his hands. He asked me to teach him programming so he could create computer games. By that time I've already written a couple of Java books and have taught multiple classes on programming, but all of this was for grownups! A search on Amazon could not offer anything but books for dummies! After spending hours on the Internet, I could only find either some poor attempts to create Java courses for kids, or some reader-rabbit-style books on our friends computers.

Java Basics: Introduction to Java Threads, Part 1

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST

Yakov Fain's popular online tutorial series continues. This lesson he discusses the basics of threads, including how to create them, how to get them to step aside, and how to stop them.