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Sunday May 10, 2009

Shameless Plug

I had to go to the Seattle area yesterday.

I was flying on short notice, but was able to score a really cheap fare on Virgin America... About $100, round trip.

I got the usual e-mail reminder to confirm my reservation and seat assignment. I went to the site and noticed that I could upgrade to first for $50 for each segment.

I upgrade both flights...

It was worth it.

I also recommend that folks look at the Virgin America web site. I think it is very usable....

The ad for GoGo in-flight internet service was mighty cute, too. It has an animated Richard Branson. I was traveling computer-free, so I skipped it...

(2009-05-10 23:01:48.0) Permalink

Monday May 04, 2009

WebBeans, GlassFish v3 and NetBeans 6.7

A new jar appeared in the GlassFish v3 distro recently for WebBeans. Enterprise Java projects that target GlassFish v3 can start to use the APIs that are part of the jar.

You will need to use the new marker module or the command-line switch to enable the support for v3 in NetBeans 6.7.

(2009-05-04 00:00:01.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Sunday May 03, 2009

Using GlassFish v3 in NetBeans 6.7... now even easier

I have described a magic flag that allows folks to register GlassFish v3 builds in NetBeans 6.7.

Some folks have been using this flag and demonstrating the power of Java EE 6.

Others have asked for an easier way to activate the functionality. So, I got off my good intentions and implemented a marker module that lets the user activate the functionality.

The module is available in the 'Dev' update center, today.

After you install the plugin, 'GlassFish v3 Enabler', the IDE will restart and you will be able to work with v3 as I described earlier.

(2009-05-03 00:01:00.0) Permalink

Friday May 01, 2009

Debug usability improvement for v3 servers

Sometimes, it is easy to be blind to an obvious use-case.

In this case, I had gotten so 'trained' to Debug a project, that I completely forgotten about how hard it is to attach the debugger to the server when the user does a 'Start in Debug Mode'.

Luckily, someone made it clear and I was able to make the situation a bit better, by exposing a new Server property for servers based on the GlassFish v3 code.

The property, Address to use, starts off undefined. The first time you debug a project or start the server in debug mode, the port is selected, if you haven't defined it already. After the value is set, it remains constant unless you...

uncheck the 'Address to use' check box
change the value by hand.

While I was working on this, I discovered something that surprised me. If you start the JPDA debugger with a bogus address (when you are using the socket transport), the JVM and debugger will start. A random port is selected and you can proceed. I like interfaces that are forgiving and try to succeed where I have failed.

I was pretty excited about this at first, but soon realized that I could not leverage this 'forgiveness' in the IDE.

Oh, well.

(2009-05-01 12:39:53.0) Permalink