Ed Ort

Enterprise Tech Tip: A Common Ant Build File for Metro-Based Services and Clients

If you're like most developers, you're always looking for shortcuts that simplify developing and testing code. In this Tech Tip, Metro architect Harold Carr describes just such a helpful shortcut -- a common ant build file that simplifies the task of building and testing Metro-based services. The build file can builds a service from a WSDL description or from a Java class annotated with @WebService. It then either creates a WAR file and deploys the WAR file to a container or it invokes the Endpoint.publish() method to publish the web service endpoint using the HTTP server built into the Java platform.

Read about it in the tip A Common Ant Build File for Metro-Based Services and Clients.

Posted at 10:11AM Jun 12, 2009 by edort in article  |  Comments[0]

Deep Dive: MySQL Tips For Java Developers

MySQL is the world's most popular open-source database, and there are a lot of Java developers who use MySQL databases in their applications. In this Deep Dive, Mark Matthews, architect for Enterprise Tools Team at Sun Microsystems, demonstrated some of the techniques that can help Java developers get more out of their applications that use MySQL.

Mark has a lot of experience regarding the use of MySQL and Java technologies. Aside from being an architect for MySQL tools at Sun, Mark is the original developer and maintainer of Connector/J, the MySQL JDBC driver.

Mark covered a number of MySQL tips for Java developers including some lesser known configuration options, connection pool settings, and some special MySQL language elements such as ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE.

Posted at 09:55AM Jun 12, 2009 by edort in article  |  Comments[0]

Notes From the 2009 JavaOne Conference

The numbers were a bit down from previous years and perhaps there was a little less buzz, but I found this year's JavaOne Conference to be as interesting and fun as ever. As always, I was part of the Sun Developer Network team that covered the general and technical sessions for the conference web site. I was also host for a number of "Man/Woman on the Street" interviews with conference attendees.

I found the sessions to be uniformly excellent. It seemed that the quality of the presenters and their demonstrations at these sessions was exceptionally high. I hope those of you who went to the conference were equally impressed with the sessions. If you didn't get a chance to attend the conference, you can view video replays of the general sessions.

You can find all of the articles covering the sessions here. I covered the following sessions:

• Intelligent Design -- The Pervasive Java Platform. What drives the evolutionary and revolutionary changes in Java and JavaFX technologies? Ultimately, it's the consumer, says Sun Distinguished Engineer and CTO Bob Brewin.
• Building Cool RIA Enterprise Applications With JavaFX. In this session, JavaFX experts Jim Weaver and Stephen Chin showed how easy it is to build a visually compelling application using JavaFX.
• RESTful Web Services Made Easy. JAX-RS makes it easy to develop RESTful web services using Java technology. This session showed why.

I also had the opportunity to cover the general session for CommunityOne West, a conference focused on communities and open source. CommunityOne West started the day before JavaOne. Cloud computing and a new release of OpenSolaris were the stars of that session. BTW, if you're into cloud computing, there are a lot of good cloud-related sessions that my SDN teammates covered during the JavaOne conference. These include:

• Continuous Integration in the Cloud With Hudson. Sun's Kohsuke Kawaguchi discussed Hudson, the open-source continuous integration system that enables developers to automate various aspects of the development process.
• A New Database for the Cloud. Learn more about the goals of the Drizzle open-source project in building an optimized database.
• Zembly: An Extensible Development Environment in the Cloud, for the Cloud. Sun's Todd Fast and Jiri Kopsa discussed zembly.com, a browser-based development environment that enables programming for web applications and social platforms, as well as web widgets.
• Cloud Computing: Show Me the Money. Panelists from six leading cloud companies talked with Rags Srinivas about the current state of cloud computing.

Also see the new Sun Cloud Developer Tools site.

You can find a great wrap-up of the conference here. As the wrap-up notes, this may be the final JavaOne Conference. I've had the pleasure to attend the last 10 of them. Covering these conferences always required a lot of preparation work and a goodly amount of toil and sweat. But I always found them educational, even exhilarating. They gave me a chance to learn, a chance to share ideas, and a chance to meet some of the most interesting folks on the planet -- the Java community.

Posted at 09:47AM Jun 12, 2009 by edort in article  |  Comments[0]