Anyone know if there is a downloadable developer’s version somewhere?

Update: Yes, you can download a 1 month evaluation copy from http://connect.apple.com/.

How does JXTA figure in relation to JINI?

Dan Creswell’s post about JINI not being RMI brought JINI back to the forefront of my technology todo list. This stuff is cool.

Since I am sure to be missing something and am very interested in build tools, please comment if anyone can do a good job of explaining where JAM fits.

I’m in the process of reading the Trails tutorial by this guy (Trails’ creator) and I am very enthused about the idea: I’ve always felt that code-generation is being overly used in J2EE development. I believe, as do others, that if you can generate it, you should be able to handle it at runtime. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course.) Java has an exceptional reflection API, we should use it. Also, Spring allows much of the work to be done via AOP. But I’m rambling a little here.

The major exception to my dislike of code generation has always been page templates. These are just dumb pieces of text, so you either need to build them by hand or generate them. I’ve never really understood what Tapestry was about until I started reading about Trails and realized that it was allowing us to push object oriented design all the way into the template layer of our applications.

They features of Trails, like allowing us to override the presentation of a specific field without building a template for the entire form and lack of code generation, are really exciting and will provide some great ideas for my current side project.

Those familiar with Plone development will see some similarities here.

A.

And a drum roll, please ..

1 – At the 2005 TSS Symposium, Rod Johnson will not be able to resist saying the word “Spring.” Yup, it’s like trying not to think of pink elephants — impossible once you get that in your head. Spring, spring, spring, spring. La tee dah, spring spring spring. Take that, Linda. Spring-diddy-spring spring. Spring.

grin

This week, I came across this post on Otaku talking about keeping your Ant builds maintainable using <import> and <macrodef>. Greater maintainability seems to be one of the reasons Maven was created: allowing you to avoid creating build target spaghetti by describing the project and applying standard goals. These new Ant features can provide this maintainability, while keeping all the flexibility we’ve grown accustomed to.

Cedric’s post then led me to this comment thread on techno.blog(“Dion”) where a good discussion is taking place.

Finally, I can no longer remember how I got there, but dependancy management tools for Ant came up. TSS has an article on Savant, part of Inversoft‘s Verge project and a post on Mallim Ink pointed me to Jayasoft’s Ivy project. Both projects look very interesting; I think I will try out Ivy shortly.

Update: Colin writes about Ivy and seems very positive.

If you are receiving this, you have expressed an interest at some point
in a notification when NailGun is available.

Well, it's available.

If it's been so long that you don't remember what it is, NailGun is a
client, server, and protocol for running Java programs within a
persistent JVM, eliminating the JVM startup time.  I appreciate your
patience with the project as I have been swamped with other priorities
for some time now.

Although there are no known issues, there is still some work to be
done.  Most importantly, I need to compile Windows and OSX binaries for
the client.  If you can provide any assistance with this I'd be most
grateful.

More information, a quick start manual, javadocs, and downloads are
available from http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun.  There's also
information for joining the NailGun mailing list.  The fact that you are
receiving this message does NOT mean you have been added to the list.

This is a one-time mailing.  If it's unwelcome, you have my sincere
apologies.

- Marty

--
Marty Lamb
Martian Software, Inc.
mlamb at martiansoftware dot com

I’m quite excited about NailGun for use in writing trivial command-line Unix scripts in Java. Going to download it and build a Mac OS X binary while I’m at it too.

Update: Runs nicely on my system, now to explore a bit.

I am very interested in the next version of JDO as I’ve used Hibernate with great success and am looking for something similar, but standards based.

Some implementations of JDO 1.0 and 2.0 are listed at JDO Central. Kodo JDO 3.2 Beta has many of the JDO 2.0 features.

Some of my notes from the presentation:

1. The big problem in the OR/M world is not the M, but rather the remoteness of data being manipulated
2. JDO is an Abstract API for Object Persistence
3. OR/M is an old, well understood problem. It has been solved many times and there is probably little room for real innovation. This is the counter for those that believe that a specification stifles innovation. Isn’t there room for innovation at the API level?
4. Provides portability between relational and non-relational datastores
5. Can support J2ME if you provide a Java Collections implementation since J2ME does not provide one
6. You shouldn’t see the JDO API very often. Most of your data access happens through your object model. You will only see the API for queries & deletions. (Supposing your container is handling transactions.)
7. Very much tries to do things the Java Way
8. There is no such thing as POJO persistence
9. Regarding some Java OR/M implementations that use object proxies: proxies are not the real objects. This will bite you in unusual places. The example is that EmployeeProxy does not extend PersonProxy.
10. The current problem with bytecode manipulation is that there is no standard to prevent multiple tools from stepping on each other
11. Gavin King is no longer on the JDO 2.0 committee
12. No more “autocommit” support!
13. Uses named queries. You can override a named query with a custom piece of SQL for each targeted database, if necessary
14. Kodo has a cool workbench
15. We all should watch TSS
16. Primary key support: transparent (implementation specific), application identity or simple identity and non-durable
17. SolarMetric has a disconnected operation and synchronization product
18. No criteria API, but third party tools can provide this by generating JDOQL. Neither is there find-by-example, but this can also be implemented externally

We all went over to the Mayflower II for beer and conversation after the meeting. A good time was had by all.

Cheers,

A.

• Portfolio of code; or

• Demonstratable involvement in an Open Source Java project; and

• Experience with tools such as Ant Subversion and XDoclet; and

• Experience with UNIX integration and development;

Update: This is for a consulting firm that is waiting to hear whether they have been selected for a medium sized project. They want to have potential team members selected in advance.

Update: This project has not been given funding.

Thanks.

A.

I’ve finally figured out what Maven is all about. (No one seems to say it outright.) This enlightenment comes after writing a previous post

The basic difference is fundamental: where Ant allows you to build your own targets to do anything you wish, Maven takes your description of your project (directory structure, etc) and uses standard, pre-written, tasks (goals in Maven-speak) to achieve the usual build needs.

Maven has a bunch of built-in plugins and goals. You can write your own using Jelly.

I’ll be updating this post with some more info shortly. (Ok, so I guess it took a while. My conclusion seems to be staying with Ant, particularly with the addition of new extensions.)

Some relatively clean information is available here