Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

FREE Ajax Codecamp - 2nd session

Sang Shin is starting the second session of "AJAX Programming (with Passion!)" from Feb 12th, 2007.

This FREE online course is for anyone who wants to learn Ajax for the first time or increase their knowledge on Ajax. In this course, students learn basic concept and technologies of Ajax such as JavaScript, CSS, and DOM as well as how to use various Ajax frameworks and toolkits such as Dojo toolkit, jMaki, Direct Web Remoting (DWR), Google Web Toolkit (GWT), and Ajax-enabled JavaServer Faces (JSF) components, DynaFaces, ZK framework, etc.

Each topic is accompanied by a hands-on lab in which NetBeans ready projects are provided so that attendees can readily build and run various Ajax applications with minimum effort.

For registration and other course related information, please go to the websites below.

http://www.javapassion.com/ajaxcodecamp (Course home site)
http://www.javapassion.com/ajaxcodecamp/#Topics (Topics)
http://www.javapassion.com/ajaxcodecamp/#registration (Registration)
http://www.javapassion.com/ajaxcodecamp/coursefaq.html (FAQ)
http://www.javapassion.com/ajaxcodecamp/graduates.html (Graduates)

_{Technorati: Ajax codecamp Dojo Google Web Toolkit Java Server Faces Programming Web2.0 Web 2.0 Web20 NetBeans presos}

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[0]

Goodbye 2006, Welcome 2007

Last day of 2006 and a lot got accomplished, either directly or indirectly, during the year:

• Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT) is making interoperability between Java- and .NET 3.0-based Web services a reality. A stable version of WSIT is available via GlassFish and a nightly version can be downloaded here. Two milestones were released with an astounding success at different plug-fests.
• Java API for XML Web Services 2.1 (JSR 224) was approved by the JCP. The WS-Addressing, initially supported through JSR 261, was then subsumed within JSR 224.
• jMaki beta 2, an Ajax framework that provides a light weight framework for creating JavaScript centric Ajax-enabled web applications using Java, PHP and Phobos, was released recently.
• NetBeans went through a year of multiple releases and awards (NetBeans 5.0, 5.5 Beta, 6.0 Milestone 5, JDJ Editors Choice Award and many other achievements).
• Java SE 6 was released earlier this month. Easy to use Web services APIs and Scripting support in Java applications are my two most favorite features. Check Danny's blog for top 10 new features in JavaSE 6 to upgrade.
• GlassFish v2 Milestone 3 was released earlier this month and well on it's way to become the most feature rich, easy to use and highly performant open source App server, ever.

On a personal front ...

• I made my first JavaOne keynote appearance showing WSIT and Windows Communication Foundation interoperability. 
• I ran almost 850 miles in the year, completed my first marathon and looking forward to next one.
• I bought a new Nikon D80 and plan to improve my photographic skills.
• And last but not the least, "I" won the Time person of the year award - 2006. Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube and many others belongs to a breed of "social experiment" technologies that is changing the way people are interacting with each other. Here is a small table that shows the number of blog entries I posted during the past two years on my two blogs:
  

  	2005	2006
  blogs.sun.com/arungupta	24	95 (including this)
  weblogs.java.net/blog/arungupta	46	61 (including this)
  Total	70	156

  The number of entries I posted doubled over the past year, the strength of GlassFish, WSIT, JAX-WS and NetBeans community increased tremendously, helped one another for nothing, and building open source software is that's what this "social experiment" is all about. This is what is "founding and framing the digital democracy".

This is by no means an exhaustive list of accomplishments either by Sun Microsystems or any other group within Sun. This is only an attempt to capture how and where I spent my time last year. There are still miles to go and a lot to be done. Today is the last day of 2006 and I'm ready for 2007.

Welcome 2007 and a very happy new year!!!

_{Technorati: HappyNewYear 2006 2007 WSIT GlassFish Marathon Ajax JAX-WS NetBeans}

Posted by Arun Gupta in General  |  Comments[1]

jMaki: AJAX Framework

In a previous blog, I talked about AJAX. You can read about different AJAX design strategies, their pros/cons and when to use. This blog introduces you to jMaki.

Originally the project, jMaki, started as a wrapper for existing AJAX frameworks giving access to the JavaScript widgets from JSP pages or JSF components. And so the name, jMaki, where "j" is for JavaScript and "maki" is a Japanese word to "wrap" was sufficient. Even the logo for jMaki, a "j" as the cursive foot of the Chinese character meaning wrapper, was self describing. In that role, jMaki provides access to widgets from existing AJAX frameworks such as Dojo, Scriptaculous, Google Web Toolkit and Yahoo UI Library. A jMaki wrapper over several components from a variety of frameworks can be seen in this widget gallery. A more complete collection of widgets, organized by their framework, is available here. In the past few weeks, the project has transformed into a complete AJAX framework that provides a lightweight model for creating JavaScript centric AJAX-enabled web applications using Java (Java Server Pages and Java Server Faces), PHP 5.x, and Phobos (another of Sun's Web 2.0 offering, more on this later).

jMaki framework, as explained earlier, decouples the presentation logic and underlying data using Widget Model, Client Services, Layouts and Client Runtime on the presentation layer (a.k.a. Client Side Components) and Server Side Runtime and XmlHttpProxy on the data layer (a.k.a. Server Side Components). The original intent of the project, wrapper for existing AJAX frameworks, is now served by the Widget Model.

After reading all the details, it's time to try some code. Before you begin, I recommend watching this screen cast that introduces you to jMaki and walks you through the steps of developing a web application using jMaki plug-in in NetBeans. Using the screen cast, here are the steps that I followed:

1. Download NetBeans 5.5.
2. Download the NetBeans Ajax Update Center Module. I preferred the update center module over the jMaki plug-in NBM file (NetBeans module) as that allows me to download any related goodies (such as Phobos plugin) as well.
3. Install the downloaded plug-in following the instructions. The updated AJAX Update Center module screen shot is available here.
4. Create the web application following the steps in screen cast. 
5. NetBeans 5.5 comes pre-bundled with Apache Tomcat  5.5.17. Go to the "Runtime" tab of NetBeans IDE (default short cut is Ctrl + 5), select the "Bundled Tomcat (5.5.17)", right click and select "Start" to start the Tomcat.
6. Just for fun, I added the SuDoKu widget.
7. Once the application is deployed (in step 4) then it can be viewed at http://localhost:8084/WebApplication1 (8084 is the default port, WebApplication1 is context root of your application).

And, with these steps, I could develop a simple rich internet application in few minutes. Once all the configuration is setup, it would take less than a minute to add a pre-built jMaki widget into your web application.  The beauty of using JavaScript is that once the web application is deployed, adding new widgets to the page is drag-drop-save-refresh cycle, there is no separate deployment cycle.

Sang Shin (of JavaPassion.com fame) has created a great hands on lab that walks you through the basics of using jMaki widgets. In a later blog, I plan to talk about how to create a jMaki widget from scratch and wrap a widget from one of the existing toolkits.

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[2]

What is AJAX ?

This is a follow up blog from here. It provides a brief description of the most prominent technology, AJAX, that enable the principles of Web 2.0.

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This term was first introduced by Jesse James Garrett in February 2005. It is a set of technologies used to develop interactive web applications without requiring a complete page refresh. This is achieved by decoupling user's interaction with the web application and the web application's interaction with the server. The presentation control logic is embedded as JavaScript code snippets in the web page and the bulk of data is kept on the server. Any request from user to the web application that does not require a round trip to the server, for example data validation and displaying a different view of the pre-loaded data, is handled by this code. If data needs to be fetched from the server then this intermediate code makes an asynchronous request to the server without any interruption of user's interaction with the application. This allows a clear separation between presentation logic and the underlying data.

AJAX achieves this using the combination of following set of technologies:

• XHTML and CSS for presentation
• DOM for accessing parts of the page that needs to be refreshed
• XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous exchange with the server
• XML, Text or HTML as the format for data exchange
• JavaScript to bind all of these pieces together.

There are several Ajax frameworks available that combines all these technologies together and ease the rapid development of Ajax-based applications. These frameworks offer JavaScript functions on the client-side to send request to the server and processes the requests, searches for the data and transmits them to the browser on the server-side. All of this done by hiding the differences between different browser and JavaScript runtime environments. Ajaxian.com has a survey of the most popular AJAX frameworks. These frameworks are getting richer and providing a comprehensive set of libraries ranging from DOM manipulation to animation framework to complicated layout widgets. However if there is a need to write your own custom widget then you can consider following the JavaScript recommendations for AJAX component writers. AJAX with the Java Platform explains the anatomy of an AJAX interaction in detail and has other useful resources on AJAX.

AJAX enables rich internet applications and is one of the most prominent technology to enable principles of Web 2.0. Read how Gmail, Google Suggest and Google Maps use AJAX to provide a richer, faster and more usable interaction. In my next blog entry, I'll talk about jMaki and my experience of developing a Web application using the recently released jMaki 1.0 beta.

_{Technorati: AJAX Sun Web 2.0}

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[3]

Free AJAX Codecamp

Sang Shin is starting a FREE 10-week "AJAX Programming" online course from August 4th, 2006. This course is for anyone who wants to learn AJAX for the first time or increase their knowledge on AJAX.  In this 10-week course, students learn basic concept of AJAX as well as how to use various AJAX frameworks and toolkits such as Dojo toolkit, jMaki, Google Web Toolkit, and AJAX-fied JavaServer Faces (JSF) components.

More details are available here.

The only thing you have to do in order to register for the course is sending an blank email to ajaxworkshop-subscribe-AT-yahoogroups-DOT-com.

Technorati: ajax codecamp Dojo Google Web Toolkit Java Server Faces Programming

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |