Knowledge Repository : VirtualJavaMeetup

25th July 2006 - What Technologies should I be learning in the next months?

Hello!

hey Paul, I'm going to be a bit delayed, will be back in about 10 min

evening

Hi, here is Felipe Gaucho from Nancy / France

Felipe, Comment Cava?

is there a moderator or at least a manager of this meeting ?

hey this is Philip from Charlotte, NC , USA

I speak english only WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

I suppose it is me :-> - This is Paul Browne , one of the guys who came up with the meetup idea at the last (real) Dublin Java meetup!

So, what are you guys going to be learning over the next couple of months?

hi Paul.. please introduce the goals of the meeting

a yes, the subjects for studies..

Aim is to talk over what technologies people should be learning in the next 12 months ....

I suggest the power trio: WebServices + EJB3 + JPA

JPA?

Java Persistence API (JPA)

WebServices = JAX-WS?

WebServices (JAX-WS) + EJB 3 + Java Persistence API

the idea: first of all to create a XML Schema - a XSD

after that, create the Java classes using JAXB

then create a Web Service to consume such XML data...

at the backoffice, use EJB3 (POJO) to persist it through JPA

that is my idea... open for suggestions

Jakub (organiser of the Real Dublin Java meetup) described EJB 3 as 'a pig with lipstick'. What do you think?

I think EJB suffer a lot of prejudice due to the bad feeling about EJB 2

hey Guys

the EJB 3 is much more clean and easy for using...

i would say EJB3 is much better than a pig with lipstick

(sorry , last comment sounded very negative :-)

its clean, POJO based, and much more useable

but EJB 3 is POJO anyway

I am a big fan of Spring, why should I move (back) to EJB?

what has been introduced with EJB 3

because EJB becomes a mature technology

well, that is my notion about what we need to study for the next months...

Don't get me wrong , I like the Direction that EJB 3 is going in !

Sorry, got logged out ...

What sort of new features in EJB3 should I be learning?

the best feature seems to be the hability to map the POJO to the database using annotations...

greetings

I'm guessing that the annotations are quite interesting (as opposed to xml configuration). Anything else I should know for the job interviews?

annotations is great because dispose all that maping files.. goodbye Hibernate WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

ironically, I'm just beginning to use Hibernate (again :-) Problem is that the client uses an older application server. What do other people think of EJB3?

sorry guys, I don't want to flame against Hibernate or Spring.. I am just positive about the new technologies..

yeah, the obsolete servers installed everywhere is the great problem of EJB3.. I guess it will take a while until we have conditions to put it all in production...

I am dealing with Glassfish and NetBeans 5.5 here... very good environment..

What I'm learning for the next months is slightly different ....

it's more in the middleware / front end section - so I agree on the web services part (or at least XML over HTTP consumed by Ajax clients)

Middleware = workflow (looks like Visio Diagrams, but have Java code that you can execute e.g. jBPM from JBoss) and ...

a question: I am having a lot of problems trying to map the XML schema to annotated POJOs.. do you know how to do that ?

... Rule Engines (e.g. Drools from JBoss - write in Excel deploy anywhere)

BPM... very interesting.. on of my last jobs in Brazil was going to this direction...

;workflows like that seem like the way forward and a viso style diagram can be an easy way to explain to a non-technical client

Front end , some sort of Ajax enabled framework will (finally) replace struts (end of what paul thinks!)

Stephen, found the workflow very good because clients like pretty pictures :-)

ajax-enabled JSF ...

the problem os BPM is that it is usefull only on big comapnies, large systems...

<FONT COLOR="#117fec">fancy pics always help WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

ok, for me 'only big companies' is a help , as they have the money to pay a consultant like me :-)

financial software or heavy comercial applications justify BPM.. small business are can be overworked with such technology

it is dificult to understand and even learn BPM away from large projects

<FONT COLOR="#117fec">I agree, smaller companies adopt the "JFDI" methadology

JFDI ??

There is some mileage in jBPM at the medium (not small) part - I'm using it on a small(ish) project to sequence tasks

JFDI-&gt;Just F*$£ing do It

You find JFDI in the bigger companies as well!

WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 ALT=":)"> WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

Good point about workflow though - it's chicken and egg, you know it will be useful, but it's hard to find a (small) project to learn it with.

I am not a english speaker ... and I don't know the slangs... funny

Is anybody using JSF with Ajax (coming back to an earlier comment)

just demos to impress my contractors WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

Question&gt; So if we were able to pick our perfect System architecture, what would it be?

Stephen , do you want to go first?

I am planning to try the Architect Certification

perfect: clients (web/swing) -&gt; services (jax-ws) -&gt; EJB3 -&gt; JPA -&gt; database

I have been very impressed with what Jake has been saying about Ruby o rails and it's ability to get a prototype complete very quickly

have you looked at Seam?

no what is Seam?

well, learn Tiger 5.0 is very important too...

<a href="http://www.jboss.com/products/seam" target="_blank">http://www.jboss.com/products/seam</a>

it bring toegther jBPM/JSF/EJB3

I've been looking at seam, as it plays nicely with jBPM and Drools (JBoss rules)

tiger is so yesterday - learning Mustang is the important one - JAX-WS 2 (rocks!) - JAXB2 (amazing)

My problem was that if you don't want to use JSF (e.g. use Axis), the documentation is not very clear

I would like to see a large scale ruby system though to see how it handles against the common, hibernate, Spring, struts model

I'm sure RoR hand down beats struts/spring/hibernate

the question will become whether it holds up against next generation archetypes

tiger - yesterday? I wish, lots of companies need to have backward compatibility and can't use tiger because of that

luano - true though I believe its the stuff in Mustang that will push upgrades - people will jump 5.0 to 6.0

A lot of companies I've seen are happy with 1.4 - it's a sign that the Java market is more mature (big diff 1.1 to 1.2 , not so big 1.5 to 1.6)

I hope so, cos all that legacy stuff is a pain in the butt, 5+ coding is alot nicer

hi guys, sorry about the lateness - dramas getting connected

hey Jake

That's ok Jake , we just figured out the next big thing , but promised not to tell anybody :-)

what's the chance that your net connection will be down

You also just missed the Ruby on Rails bit

so what is this next big thing yopu speak of?

oh, ror is sooo last month

I'm sure he can bring up the RoR topic again WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

Felipe reckons WS + EJB 3 + JPI ...

I reckon middleware (boring , but nice for job security)

I forget who mentioned RoR

lol - so am I supposed to be the local ror evangelist?

i am just going through a book on ws - there's quite a lot there!

paul - what middleware?

I think the web services was not well explored.. and it promises good things now with EJB3

middleware is the connection between the clients and the business layer

who's actually using it?

Middleware as in workflow (jPBM) and JBoss rules. You capture the business knowledge , gives you time to learn all the snazzy new technologies as they come up!

ws, i mean?

so as a thought do people believe SOAP will cut it? or will it be RESTful?

paul so what about BPEL?

a lot of companies. last year I produced a Swing application posting XML data to a web service produced with .Net...

PDL is a bit non-standard after al

it worked fine for two thousand users posting data in a period of 2 months.. very nice experiece

I vote for REST as simple tends to beat complicated! BPEL I would like to see succeed , but it has a lot of hype. JBPM has plugin for JBEL

that's just a web service though, I'm talking about the WS platform as a whole

so jake are you thinking ESB? SCA? WSDL?

I think Web 2.0 will drive usage of a lot of WS stuff (warning , buzzword used)

beyond the two parties talking directly to each other - transactionality, guaranteed message delivery etc.

My vote is for rest also, better value all round

have people done much document driven JAX-WS?

in that project we used JAXB to create the java classes from the schema and also to bind the data to java classes

Jake you mean WS-Splat

document driven? sounds like something from Waterfall 2006

Current project is using Apache XML Beans for something similar

the problem still beign the mapping the classes created with JAXB to EJB annotated POJOs

the problem of using framework "external" to the sun technology is the lost of some parts... in case of Apache XML beans, you lost the JPA

have you looked at HyperJaxb?

sorry HyperJaXB2

yes, that is a great project. but it is only on the begining.. no releases for the moment...

I am dreaming with such release WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

so Jake do you really think all the WS-* stuff is going to get anywhere - I mean there is a ton of stuff?

surely ESB is going to drive transactionality, co-ordination in the place of WS-*

that's what gets me about that whole platform - it is huge

to do

ay on that one

the plataform is designed for large projects.. small application can ignore some parts..

don't you think something like SCA is going to replace WS? maybe even JSR-181 JAX-WS annotations in the end?

sorry, browser playing tricks on me

fgaucho: i disagree

With Apache Axis , you can take normal .java file , rename it to .jws and you have your webservice

large sounds about right, there's so much there that it's mind-boggling

small projects must co-exist with larger projects , therefore they must expose endpoint suitable for integration

for example.. if I have a classical small business application, a comercial pet store... I can ue Ruby or just servlets/jsp.. and I also can include Ajax and JPA...

I don't need to design the full J2EE plataform for small application...

How do you combine ruby and jpa. via web service?

fgaucho : so what happens when the price feed comes from another application

well, I am supposing the small applications has heavy requirements on GUI ..

jpa? what does it stand for (there's like 3 apis with those initials)

a fancy web or desktop gui is more important for small business....

the requirements of scalability and load balance is more for huge ammounts of data

I guess WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

i would think small business needs to leverage SOA so they can build on top of existing services provided by other companies

yes, thats the scenario....

applications are not silos - in the future they should be citizens of the enterprise - big or small

depends on the business space that they're operating in

SOA, now you got the point

therefore exposing integration capabilities is critical

intefaces are the key idea....

To be Devils advocate: If I was a small business , why not forget about Java and use some sort of Service provided by a web site, let somebody else worry about the programming?

just to touch upon the Axis *.jws point - that works if you don't have complex structures but once your data needs a value object then you need to define your transfer objects for XML serialization

so, assuming that the soa thing is the immediate future, which horse do you put money on

paul - good point - SaaS

Jake - I think SCA/BPEL with JBI/JMS under the hood - JAX-WS and JAXB2 for building complex data structures and exposing POJO endpoints

if the application is just a CRUD stuff, it could be a nice choice...

don't forgett to give NetBeans a second chance.. the newer versions are very good...

JAX-WS and EJB3 made easy with NetBeans 5.5

i'm going to have to have a read about some of this stuff - you're losing me

it is a bit of a TLA mess WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

Sorry I'm late. Traffic &amp; baby stuff :-(

So Netbeans - you reckon that is one worth learning?

hey john

we're all popping in and out...

yes, because the new technologies will require a lot of support from the IDEs.. and NetBeans is a good starting point...

i would recomend learning Maven2 over learning another IDE

since as it get more complex so that need for CI (Continuous Integration) will become more important

well guys, I need to go... last message: I still looking for a job in Dublin... if you get a suggestion, my mail is ...)

Maven is show.. but to deal with EJB3 and Persistence API with ANT and Maven without a good IDE is painful

Call me an old stick in the mud, but if a technology *needs* IDE support, it's wrong.

No worries Felipe, drop us a line on the blog (firstpartners.net.blog)

jlatham: you aren't still in VI are you?

WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

John - yes and no. I have no issue with IDE support to make life easier, as long as I can get to the underlying and it makes sense.

LOL. No, I use Eclipse, but I know I can always drop back to ant at the command line when things get tough.

Talking of IDE's , JBoss IDE based on Eclipse is worth looking at

Eclipse based , but a good set of plugins already installed if you're lazy like me :-)

paul : does that have EJB3 support now?

Case in point: JSF. Smells bad to me. Tag soup only benefitting the tool and app server vendors

JSF is a much cleaner way to develop with larger teams than struts

I had a look at JBoss IDE and it's the tool of choice if you want what JBoss is giving (the whole SEAM thing)

struts is one simple idea - hacked to death for production

I see Craig broke Shale from under Struts so now there are two Top Level Projects

Is it JSF or component based technologies in general?

<a href="http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2006/01/22/not-fud-just-experience/" target="_blank">http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2006/01/22/not-fud-just-experience/</a>

Because I don't see that Webwork/StrutsTI/whatever is going to be any better in that respect.

so you had a bad time with JSF

i used it in portlet development last year and found it quick and easy, before that I used Oracle UIX (the beginings of JSF) and found it much nicer than Struts/JSP

I am hesitant to jump into any api with a 600 page spec

Maybe it's FUD, but I want to make sure that I get return on my investment

remember ? <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/craigmcc/20040927" target="_blank">http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/craigmcc/20040927</a>

Philip, I've avoided JSF so far (Spring/Struts/JSPX does the job). Yours is the first good experience of JSF I've come across. Just repeating what I've read from others (spreading FUD myself?)

but think about Struts - its a simple clean idea

Having said that, the guys I know who have used it are saying that it's quite nice to work with

but you have to create custom workarounds for all sorts of problems

Custom workarounds for Struts or JSF?

Anyone used JBoss Seam? Looks quite interesting (despite the JSF).

struts

Because in my experience, nothing gives you everything you'll need to develop a web app. It's still the biggest mess in town.

all those dispatches , trying to keep track of things by hand between the forms and the actions

hacking javascript in the JSP to try and construct URL's to get you where you want?

messing around with the session .. the list goes on

Well, if you want to get around that nonsense, you should have a look at Wicket <a href="http://wicket.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">http://wicket.sourceforge.net/</a>

Much simpler model than JSF, doing much the same and with none of the stuff that the foundation frameworks like Struts,Webwork et al. suffer from (like the javascript hacking etc)

And no tag soup in the html either

It feels a lot more like coding a GUI

what about UI components?

Still haven't got around to looking at Wicket.Taking a mercenary view on it, what framework will be in the job ads?

What do you mean?

with JEE 5 - jSF will win - it is part of EE5 spec

so ever application server will come with JSF instaled

Paul, I agree. If you want the mercenary point of view, there's no denying that JSF is the horse to back.

The web framework space is full, and when you're starting a new project you don't get the time to look at the 30+ frameworks to see what suits you best.

So you pick either Struts (or whatever is in it's place now) or you pick JSF

Because you know as a team lead/manager that you'll be able to get someone off the street who knows how to use it

thats me.. I am here in the street just waiting the call WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 (joking... I couldn't resist)

The best technology is irrelevant when you have to consider things like a learning curve

I love the profilferation of Java web frameworks. They solve different problems. More choice is better. No such thing as "full". It only takes a few minutes to google down the options to a couple of good candidates.

i think people need to get ADF/JSF under their belt - have a play with JDeveloper and then forget HTML hacking and more to form layout stuff

True, but the whole thing is that unfortunately the average programmer won't take the time out to even read up on the framework that they're going to be working on before they start and you get the same mistakes being made every time

Felipe - I'm hiring <a href="http://www.recruitireland.com/job.asp?JobID=2370439" target="_blank">http://www.recruitireland.com/job.asp?JobID=2370439</a>

I know that's a grim view but I've dealt with too many 9-5ers...

At least if you pick a well known framework with momentum (documentation, forums etc) you can just advertise for a set of skills and if the guys get into trouble, help is close at hand

I will visit Dublin on the next few weeks... I will try to pay some pints of lager for you... at least to extend this conversation in a more beverage way WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

Well, next drinks night is 2/3 weeks away...

frameworks? Spring and SF... the couple of winners for me...

JSF...

so who has been playing with ESB's or SCA?

I haven't paid all that much attention to JSF (size scared me to be honest). What's it like from a unit testing point of view?

JSF is a very big elephant. JBoss Seam and ADF (Oracle) are probably what would drive me to use it , for non technical reasons. It's a bit like Struts, you just need 1 project to start you, everything else is copy and paste.

Jake: since your actions are all POJO's testing you businss layer is much easier

unit test on the web is always a boring thing... but if you divide the layers correctly, the business layer and middleware layer are the most important part to apply tests...

but testing the component stuff is a bit more tricky

if you saw some of the front ends i have... :P i'm a big fan of the unit test (not always possible though)

but yeah, if you get the lower tiers right you're most of the way there

Junit and CI are the way to go - I recomend get Better Builds with Maven (Free) and try it out

disclaimer : I work for a sister company of Mergere

Philip, have you been biled yet? ;-)

i downloaded that one, it's on my list of to reads (about 10 books + pdfs :P)

he probably has

jlatham: always <IMG SRC="images/smilies/smile5.gif" WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 ALT=";)">

billed who?

lol

is there anything that guy is happy with? I read that blog once in a while just for a laugh at the angry man...

the bile blog

- i think i missed was that "bile" or "bill"?

yep, I'm losign the plot as well!

bile

<a href="http://www.jroller.com/page/fate" target="_blank">http://www.jroller.com/page/fate</a>

Being "biled" on the BileBlog is a badge of honour. I aspire to such fame.

lol - oh right

There was a mergere entry a while back

That guy is angry at everything

there was?

John, how do you plan to be biled then? or is that a commercial secret :-)

lol - i'll have a look - i'm lucky no-one biled me

well, a sure fire way is to develop any open source framework/product

I'm too insignificant to be biled. I need to get to be lead on some dubious Apache project.

That guy hates everything, there was a crzy entry on AppFuse a while back.

Red-Piranha might make is one day

lol - well I work on one of those

<a href="http://red-piranha.sourceforge.net" target="_blank">http://red-piranha.sourceforge.net</a> (shamless project plug)

jlatham : what do you work on in the OSS world

Nothing. Currently I'm just a freeloader.

Not everyone can get paid to do OSS

red piranha looks interesting WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

while in shameless plugin mode - I work on <a href="http://www.servicemix.org" target="_blank">http://www.servicemix.org</a>

New version is in the works - this time I will get world domination (evil laugh)

and also with Jake from time to time WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

lol

Service Mix, now that does look interesting ...

oh it is <IMG SRC="images/smilies/smile5.gif" WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 ALT=";)">

So he actually knows what a crap coder I am <IMG SRC="images/smilies/smile5.gif" WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 ALT=";)">

oh Jake you are wonderful coder WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15 - i'm the crap one

That's because you're trying to code an ESB in Ruby ...

phil - is jbi transport mechanism independent?

lol

Paul, I recently did a Lucene/Compass integration in my webapp. It was too hard (clustering issues particularly). Anything that helps is good.

JBI is about integrating protocols and business logic

Lucene is just the starting point. Next version is all about getting people's brains and stuffing them into PC's

just answered my own question - binding SPI

basically you have Service Engines (which are components that handle business logic - ie. Transformation/Routing/BPEL) and Binding Components (which handle protocols - HTTP/JMS/File Systems etc)

(bit like JBI). It's all about knowledge management

so what's the relationship to an esb?

Folks, I'm going to have to go soon. Any comments on how the Virtual Dublin Pub thing went? Any thoughts on next month's topic?

paul : lol I thought that was Google game

Very good, but would prefer a less "Web 1.0" chat client :-)

pretty good, i think we have to get a better chat platform though - this one's a bit annoying

JBI is the backbone of an ESB - a container of containers

I am writing a blog about this meeting.. this comunity is really motivated and I expect to join you very soon...

Maybe we need to try IRC

Grand: any suggestions as to chat client to use?

yeah the chat client is a bit clunky - what about a frappr group?

IRC works well - how does the hosting work?

I think I need to have a read through those servicemix docs (at least those intros)

ok, i gotta go - the internet cafe is closing down (!)

paul you could probably ride of the back of a server like irc.codehaus.org?

John - IRC makes sense. What servers?

OK, going to post this chat up online. Will have a look around and see what way we can improve the hosting. IRC is good as it has both Client and Web Client for the people who don't want to install anything.

I have to say, this was pretty good - I like being able to google TLAs on the fly....

I'm out of here, I'll catch you guys later

OK, talk to you later

I'm off too. l8r d00dz (joke)

me too - catch you later WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=15

转自：http://www.firstpartners.net/red-piranha/knowledgebase/VirtualJavaMeetup