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A compilation of today's news of interest:
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The NetBeans folks have a new Introductory Tutorial to Ajax, now updated to the forthcoming NetBeans 6.5. Srenga points that the DataMashup Service Engine from Mural is Part of GlassFish ESB and also points to Manish's Tutorial on building a Server-Side Data Mashup. From Carol a Screencast on RESTful Comet, based on her previous posts. From Peter Mularien a look at Who is Contributing to SpringSource? using FishEye on SpringFrameworks Core. BTW, if you do the same with GlassFish (core) you will find mostly Sun folks; the bulk of the non-Sun contribution is in the smaller, reusable components, like grizzly, which makes sense as that's where people want their specific features in. From apaspai a description of how to configure GlassFish with Hibernate and MySQL (in Spanish, sorry, I couldn't resist). From Montana Grizzlies are Rebounding from Extinction (there were already very healthy On the Web, in Canada, and, more recently, also in Prague!). And, from the WebKit folks, reports of substantial improvements on JavaScript interpretation using SquirrelFish Extreme. And Apple does it Again, this time with Mail, and it Gets Slashdotted. |
A compilation of today's news of interest:
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Jacob explains the (simple) configuration options for JRuby Pool. Srenga does a Shallow Dive into Mural, the Open Source MDM engine in the GlassFish community. The JSR314 EG has released the Expert Draft 2 for JSF 2.0 (Download). This version includes Section 13.3 on JavaScript API (thanks for the tip, Roger), as well as Section 3.6 on Composite UI Components (see the Enterprise Tips on this feature: Part I and Part II). Our household owns several aging Apple laptops so I am keeping an eye on the MacBook Shipments rumor, although OpenSolaris continues to make progress and that may soon be a realistic option for us. Intel has announced the new high-end Dunnington processors ( InternetNews), and Sun already has machines to accompany them (Marketwatch). And in all the noise about the LHC I had missed that the CERN is Thumpers and StorageTek products to store the data - through the Customer Ready program. |
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NetBeans 6.1 was just released and it is both a feature and a performance release. The feature part has to do with JavaScript support - the language everybody loves to hate (See Roberto's talk at JavaOne), MySQL improved support, Spring Framework support, Hibernate support, Axis 2, Sailfin support, and Jersey (RESTful Web Services) support. |
It's also bringing back features lost in the translation from 5.5. to 6.0 such as JavaBeans support and the JSF CRUD Generator. NetBeans also now provides a more natural way to share libraries. All in all a lot of web and server-side features including support for the latest GlassFish v2ur2 release. The full list of features is here.
Performance is related to startup-time, completion speed, and memory consumption. Coming attractions include PHP support, JavaScript debugger, Groovy/Grails support, and more.
As always, the nice download matrix is available here. Congratulations to the team for yet another solid release!
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NetBeans 6.1 is looking really good! Unfortunately, I've been too busy recently to report on all the recent improvements but here is one from Tor: Improved JavaScript Support. The NetBeans support for languages other than Java is improving very quickly, besides Ruby and JavaScript there is also Groovy... plus whatever else has not yet been announced (JavaOne is around the corner, you know...). |
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I think this is a very interesting direction: Greg is working on creating synergies between the jMaki and GWT. The intention is to expand and complement existing efforts like the GWT NB Plugin and leverage the JavaScript integration from jMaki and the Java skill set of GWT. To make things concrete, Greg has published a first effort built around jMaki Charting. We will you posted on the evolution of the project; in the meantime, start with Greg's Introduction to the Effort. |
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There are lots of options for tracing web applications. But suppose you need a holistic view, such as a combined trace of the server-side Java and client-side JavaScript in an Ajax app. You might expect your options to drop to zero. Well, they don't. DTrace can handle it. The Mozilla DTrace Project provides DTrace probes for Firefox's JavaScript engine, and recent versions of the JVM have built-in probes. Amit's latest article shows how to put these together to trace an Ajax application. It produces a true end-to-end picture, with traces flowing across the client/server boundary. |
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Phobos was included in the latest Sun Web Developer Pack. The SWDP was released a week ago but it was announced this week at AJAX World, which is a bit unusual but the timing and venue of the announcement (and the content, one hopes!) has generated a lot of interest in the Press, including SysCon, CBR, eWeek. Hopefully all this will lead to more users and contributors, and, indeed, the USERs list has jumped from 2 to 86 in two weeks. The dev team is going to be very busy! I also noticed that Tony Zakula has started a blog about Phobos; it will be interesting the situation by Java One. |
More information on Phobos is at the web site, including an Intro page and more In-Depth Documentation. Also see Roberto's blog and his recent Presentation at JMaki Day.
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Roberto announces the .5.1 release of the Phobos NetBeans Plugin which allows you to easily build and debug your JavaScript application. You can build applications using jMaki for the front end and JavaScript (through Phobos) on the server side. The JavaScript debugger in the NetBeans Plugin "has all the expected bells-and-whistles (breakpoints, call stack, variable inspection)" that you would find with debuggers of other languages. For more information on developing applications using Phobos see Jennifer's lastest post, New Technologies for Ajax and Web Application Development: Project Phobos. This article is currently highlighted on The Server Side. |
Phobos is a lightweight, scripting-friendly, web application environment running on the Java platform. The goal of Project Phobos is to show that Java is an excellent platform for server-side scripting, allowing dynamic-language developers to leverage the power of Java SE and EE. The initial focus for Project Phobos is JavaScript, but the design supports the use of other dynamic languages as well.
Via TheGalaxy, the JavaScript edition of SDN channel is live at SDNChannel. Find out what's happening with JavaScript including all the tools and resources that can be leveraged to build dynamic web solutions. News from this month includes an interview with Roberto Chinnici as he discusses the benefits of Phobos; Ed Burns talks about JSF and why server-side frameworks are so important.
Keep an eye out for the SDN channel, cuz more exciting news are coming your way!
Via TheGalaxy, Brendan Eich, the creator of JavasScript, gave the final keynote at the Ajax Experience Conference. He showcased some of the new features in JavaScript 1.7 that are shipped with Firefox 2.0, and talked about the future of JavaScript and the Web. He also addressed some concerns and controversies over JavaScript. "His honesty is a breath of fresh air." See Brendan Eich's presentation now available online.
Jennifer Ball has written a new tutorial on how to create an Ajax-enabled Phobos application. "Adding Ajax capability to a Phobos application is quite easy and the JavaScript to implement it is nearly the same as it is in any other web application" says Jennifer. Developing Ajax applications in JavaScript with Phobos, one has the benefit of the same scripting language on the client and the server. Check out the tutorial here.
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Greg has released jMaki (Maki as in the japanese word for "wrapper"), a technology for wrapping AJAX widgets so they can be used in JSP or JSF applications. The process of creating a new encapsulation is very easy, and Ludo is also working on a NetBeans module for it. Geertjan has a good interview of Greg and Ludo where they go in detail about the technology (although I'm surprised Geertjan didn't ask about using Wicket with jMaki :-]). |
There is good buzz about this technology; see Jaime's blog and more blogs. Also see articles from both InfoWorld and Yahoo. The jMaki project site includes good documentation, and also stay tuned for the NB module that Ludo has promised us.
