Social bookmarking

I came know of this quite recently. I find it quite useful. Apart from being able share your bookmarks across browsers, you can now share them with others too. del.icio.us offers quite cool features for sharing your favorite bookmarks. You can share your bookmarks, tag them (i.e. use keywords to categorize them), find other users with similar interests and browse through their bookmarks. I find it a very good source for finding resources - a selective search for the topics you are interested in.
And to add to that, you can even have browser buttons to quickly add any bookmarks you find to your online bookmarks.

Here is my delicious:

My delicious

IBM DB2 Free

IBM has released a free version of DB2 named DB2 express-C. It is free for development, deployment, and redistribution. It is supported on the x86 and x86-64 architectetures and is runs on Linux and Windows (2000, 2003, XP). Added to that, this version is seamlessly upgradable to DB2 UDB, if the requirements change. The catch here is: DB2 Express-C is designed to only run on systems with a maximum of two processor cores, or dual-core processors and upto 4GB memory.
It is available for download on IBM downloads.
There is also a DB2 express forum, where you can get community support for this product.

Strecks 1.0 released

Strecks a set of Java 5-specific extensions Struts framework, was released from beta on friday. Strecks, is annotation based and adds a number of modern features to Struts-based applications, including POJO actions, dependency injection, declarative validation and data binding, interceptors, pluggable views, as well as seamless Spring integration. It is also highly extensible and amenable to test driven development. The following is a brief list of features available in Strecks 1.0:

• Pure POJO action beans with zero framework dependencies
• Annotation-based dependency injection (typed request parameters, session attributes, Spring beans, and many others)
• Converters and validators type-parameterized using Java 5 generics
• Mechanisms for facilitating use of redirect after post pattern
• Support for rendering using Spring MVC Views and View Resolvers
• Pre- and post- action interceptors, with access to dependency resolved action beans as well as full runtime context
• Works on the unchanged Struts 1.2.x and 1.3.x code bases.
  
• Actions, form validation and data conversion easily testable with plain unit tests, with no additional test libraries required.

Google co-op search

I put up a new google co-op search box on top of the blog. I am trying to build a Java search service using Google co-op. I left the custom search engine open to modification. Please feel free to add to it at the Java search homepage.

Migrating to Java 5

This JavaOne 2006 presentation looks at the benefits and issues of migrating to Java 1.5.
The presentation also looks at how to take advantage of the superior VM performance, security enhancements, XML support, JMX and JDBC enhancements and deployment improvements.

Custom Search Update

Back from the vacation. Updated the Java custom search - Now includes over 100 Java related sites.

Firefox 2.0 released

Last week, Microsoft released the new Internet Explorer 7.0. Today it is the release of Mozilla Firefox 2.0. Which one to choose? Well, for me it's Firefox for sure. For one thing, I still run windows 2000 at work.(IE 7 does not support windows 2000). More importantly, IE 7 introduces many security enhancements in the new product, which I will be among the last to try, given Microsoft's record on security. Coming to Firefox 2, there are no big changes that you were not available as addons in the earlier version. I still hate the fact that it uses up so much memory. Agreed that I have a few addons (greasemonkey, NoScript, Firebug, and web developer toolbar), but still the startup memory consumption in firefox is 25MB without addons and about 35MB with addons. As you can see in the picture below, my regular usage goes up to 246MB regularly. I never saw anything like that with IE 6, even with over over 10 windows open at a time (about the same number of tabs were open in firefox when I took the snapshot.
In any case, I am sticking to Firefox for now (so used to it!).

EHCache 1.2 released

EHCache 1.2 has been released. The 1.2 release of ehcache has many new features like support for distributed caching, new cache update policies (FIFO and LFU), having multiple cahce managers in a single machine etc. The full list of features available in ehcache 1.2 are :

• Flexible, extensible, high performance distributed caching. The default implementation supports cache discovery via multicast or manual configuration. Updates are delivered either asynchronously or synchronously via custom RMI connections. Additional discovery or delivery schemes can be plugged in by third parties.
• New FIFO and LFU caching policies in addition to the standard LRU.
• Introduced CacheManagerEventListener and CacheEventListener interfaces and default implementations.
• Multiple CacheManagers per virtual machine.
• Programmatic flushing of application state to persistent caches
• Significant (up to 7 fold) DiskStore performance increases.
• API for Objects in addition to Serializable. Non-serializable Objects can use all parts of ehcache except for DiskStore and replication. Two new methods on Element: getObjectValue and getKeyValue are the only API differences between the Serializable and Object APIs.
• Backward Compatibility with ehcache-1.1. All users of ehcache-1.1 should be able to upgrade to ehcache-1.2.
• Tested with Hibernate2.1.8 and Hibernate3.1.3, which can utilise all of the new features except for Object API and multiple session factories each using a different ehcache CacheManager. A new net.sf.ehcache.hibernate.EhCacheProvider makes those additional features available to Hibernate-3.1.3. A version of the new provider should make it into the Hibernate3.2 release.
• Tested with ehcache-constructs.
• Apache 2.0 license.

Star Office now free

Google is going to offer Sun's Star Office for free as a part of Google Pack. Also, Sun will now be traded under the Symbol JAVA replacing the old symbol SUNW.

• Google Goes After Microsoft Again
• The Rise of JAVA - The Retirement of SUNW
• Sun boots workstation roots in favor of JAVA ticker
• On Slashdot - Google Pack Adds StarOffice

Java Petstore 2.0

The Java Pet Store 2.0 is the reference application for building AJAX web applications on Java EE 5. It contains blueprints for building AJAX-enabled JSF component libraries, using Java Persistence APIs, applying MVC and other design patterns in an AJAX web application, using Mashups such as Google Maps service for location specific searches using an RSS feed as a data source. You can download the Java Petstore Demo and try out the features from the petstore site.
Here are the features:

1. Using AJAX for single-page interactive Web applications: The application is designed to be a single-page application where the user never leaves the page. Different sections of the page are dynamically loaded based on the user actions. These sections are loaded asynchronously to avoid any browser refreshes, and to give a richer interactive user-experience.
2. Mash-ups with Google maps: The petstore uses a mashup with Google's Map service, alongwith Yahoo's Geo-coder service to allow users to see the available pets in a neighborhood.
3. Community-created content: The application allows a user to add a pet for sale or adoption on the Website. The seller uploads
1. Using Captchas to discourage spam in the community created content: Whenever a website allows its users to add content, it needs to build mechanisms to discourage placement of spurious content on its Website through automated mechanisms. We demonstrate how captchas can be used for this purpose.
2. Community rated content: Each item in the petstore website can be rated by the users
3. Payments through PayPal: The application provides a meeting ground for buyers and sellers of pets. The application uses the PayPal service to allow sellers to accept payments.
4. Integration of an RSS feed: The website integrates an RSS feed of news items coming out the Java BluePrints website. The
5. Integration of a search engine: The application integrates Apache Lucene search engine to handle all website searches.
6. JavaServer Faces: Many of the AJAX features are implemented as reusable JavaServer Faces components.
7. Java Persistence API: The application uses Java Persistence APIs to create an object/relational mapping layer.
8. Dependency Injection: The application uses dependency injection instead of deployment descriptors.

Glassfish

The Glassfish community is building a free, open source application server which implements the newest features in the Java EE 5 platform (the next version of the J2EE platform) as well as tools to administer the server. While the Java EE 5 specification is not yet finalized, the Glassfish community provides milestone builds which implement current version of the specification. The latest milestone build (5) is availabe for download at the Glassfish site. This build implements the public final draft of version of all the Java EE 5 specifications except EJB 3.0. Here is a link to the JEE 5 API docs. The public review draft of the Java EE 5 specification is available on the JCP site as JSR244. Here are a few features new to Java EE 5 over J2EE 1.4:

• Most boilerplate requirements have been eliminated, and XML descriptors are now optional. For example, the ejb-jar.xml descriptor is no longer necessary in most cases.
• More defaults are available, with a special emphasis on making them meaningful. Developers now have fewer details to remember.
• Web service support is simpler, and the number of supported standards has increased.
• The EJB software programming model is significantly simpler.
• The new Java Persistence API is available to all Java platform applications, including those based on EJB technology.
• JavaServer Faces technology has been added to make web application design more convenient.

Developerworks wikis

developerWorks wikis in a new addition to the IBM Developerworks site.

On java.net, there is a new(?) section, java-enterprise. java-enterprise is the top-level project of the java.net community for Enterprise Java. Subprojects include

• blueprints: Java BluePrints Project
• OpenJEE: Open source Java EE.
• appserverunit: Unit Testing for J2EE Components

Mastering EJB 3.0 Free eBook

Mastering EJB fourth edition is now available as a free download on the serverside. The new edition has been updated for EJB 3.0. This edition features chapters on session beans and message-driven beans, EJB-Java EE integration and advanced persistence concepts. In-depth coverage of the Java Persistence API and using POJO entities with EJB is also included.

• More than 50% new and revised material
• Four new chapters and one new appendix covering the latest features of the new release
• Basic and advanced concepts (such as inheritance, relationships, and so on) of Java Persistence API defined entities
• Information on integrating EJB applications with the outside world via the Java EE Connector technology
• Tips and techniques for designing and deploying EJB for better performance
• Best practices for EJB 3.0 application design, development and testing
• Complete usage of EJB annotations along with equivalent XML configuration
• Tricks and traps of EJB deployment
• JBoss Workbook that discusses the exercises for each chapter (although the chapters are themselves vendor-agnostic)

developerWorks : Architecture

IBM Developerworks has come up with a new architecture zone. Hope it will be as good as the other developerworks areas. It is available here.

WSAD 5.1, WAS 5.0 Support Ends in September

As Bobby Woolf notes, WSAD 5.1 support ends in September. Support for WAS 5.0 is also scheduled to end on the same day. For more information on software support dates, visit the IBM Software support lifecycle page.

Hibernate 3.2

The Hibernate developer team released Hibernate 3.2.0 GA, this release is certified compliant with the Java Persistence API. In addition to JPA compliance, hibernate adds new query capabilities, declarative data filters, Hibernate Annotations, Hibernate EntityManager and optimistic locking in a cluster with JBoss Cache. The Hibernate Java Persistence provider has been certified with the Sun TCKThe Hibernate 3.2 release includes:

• Natural programming model - Hibernate supports natural OO idiom; inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the Java collections framework
• Support for fine-grained object models - a rich variety of mappings for collections and dependent objects
• No build-time bytecode enhancement - there's no extra code generation or bytecode processing steps in your build procedure
• Extreme scalability - Hibernate is extremely performant, has a dual-layer cache architecture, and may be used in a cluster
• The query options - Hibernate addresses both sides of the problem; not only how to get objects into the database, but also how to get them out again
• Support for "conversations" - Hibernate supports both long-lived persistence contexts, detach/reattach of objects, and takes care of optimistic locking automatically
• Free/open source - Hibernate is licensed under the LGPL (Lesser GNU Public License)
• EJB 3.0 - Hibernate implements the Java Persistence management API and object/relational mapping options, two members of the Hibernate team are active in the expert group
• Hibernate Annotations offers several packages of JDK 5.0 code annotations that developers can use to map classes, as a replacement or in addition to XML metadata.

Java Updates

Sun released updates for Java EE SDK and Java Application Platform SDK. They can be downloaded from here. These new versions bundle JDK 6 and are fully tested with JDK 6 as well
as JDK 5. The Java Application Platform SDK includes Sun Java System Access Manager (7.1 Beta), JBI Runtime with BPEL from project Open ESB and a beta version of Portlet Container to enable development and testing of JSR 168 portlets. Developer content such as Java EE 5 samples, blueprints, tutorial and API javadocs are also included. Sun Java System Application Server (9.0 Update 1 Patch 1) based on Project Glassfish is included in the SDK. This is the only SPECjAppServer result published so far on an open-source application server. It is also the first and only SPECjAppServer result published on an application server that is certified to the Java EE 5 specification. The Java EE Tools bundle has also been refreshed to use the Java Application Platform SDK Update 2.

Opensourcing Java

Sun has provided some further details of its plans to open-source its JDK, including the unveiling of a new Open Sourcing the JDK java.net page for updates and discussion.

• Sun expands open-source Java plan
• Mark Reinhold: Yes, we really are going to open-source the JDK
• Danny Coward: Open Source: Cutting the Java SE apron strings

Open Architecture Framework (TOGAF)

The Open Group Architecture Format (TOGAF) is an industry standard architecture framework build an information systems architecture. It is divided into three parts:

1. Architecture Development Method (ADM): It is the core of TOGAF. Describes a step-by-step approach to developing an enterprise architecture.
2. Enterprise Continuum: A virtual repository of architecture assets, i.e. the TOGAF foundation architecture, and the Integrated Information Infrastructure.
3. Resources: Comprises of the TOGAF Resource Base - a set of tools and techniques available for use in applying TOGAF and the TOGAF ADM.

The TOGAF specification is available at TOGAF Version 8.1 site. Additional resources for Architecture frameworks are listed below:

1. Introducing The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)
2. TOGAF Certificatin page
3. The open group architecture forum

Oracle SQL Developer: Free Database Development Tool

Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle(r) SQL developer, a new, free, database developement tool. Oracle SQL developer simplifies development cycles and reduces the need to buy third-party tools for developing and debugging SQL and PL/SQL code. The Oracle SQL developer product is developed in Java and hence runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. SQL developer can be installed on the Database Server and developers can connect remotely from their workstations. Oracle SQL developer offfers features to assist developers perform tasks such as

• Object browsing and creation
• Running SQL statements and SQL scripts
• Editing and debugging PL/SQL code
• Viewing and updating data
• Allows deveopers to build custom reports.
• Includes a code formatter and code snippets.

This tool is available for Oracle 10g and Oracle 9i database release 2. You can download Oracle SQL developer here. An Online help document [PDF] is also provided. A 5 step tutorial to connect to Oracle XE is provided on the site.