These days everyone is talking about AJAX. It’s supposed to be a cool way of creating Web applications. The idea is noble: instead of rendering an entire HTML page on each little change on the page, it’s much better to send an asynchronous request that will  get the data for you and refresh only the relevant portion of the screen. Every author writing on AJAX is giving the same (the only? ) example where this technology is being used: Google maps and email. (BTW, I’m a little sick of these examples). Since I’m not going to be helping Google in improving their maps, I’d like to see some real-world examples implementing  this technology.  Ajax proponents will immediately come with this exciting example of how great it is to refresh some  screen info as the user enters character in a text field. And here's  a sample conversation that might have happened between an imag... (more)

The i-Technology Right Stuff

Related Links: Wanted: 19 More of the Top Software People in the World Sung and Unsung i-Technology Heroes Who's Missing from SYS-CON's i-Technology Top Twenty?" Our search for the Twenty Top Software People in the World is nearing completion. In the SYS-CON tradition of empowering readers, we are leaving the final "cut" to you, so here are the top 40 nominations in alphabetical order. Our aim this time round is to whittle this 40 down to our final twenty, not (yet) to arrange those twenty in any order of preference. All you need to do to vote is to go to the Further Details page of any nominee you'd like to see end up in the top half of the poll when we close voting on Christmas Eve, December 24, and cast your vote or votes. To access the Further Details of each nominee just click on their name. Happy voting!   In alphabetical order the nominees are:   Tim Berner... (more)

Java Developer's Journal Exclusive: 2006 "JDJ Editors' Choice" Awards

The editors of SYS-CON Media's Java Developer's Journal are in a unique position when it comes to Java development. All are active coders in their "day jobs," and they have the good fortune in getting a heads-up on many of the latest and greatest software releases. They were asked to nominate three products from the last 12 months that they felt had not only made a major impact on their own development, but also on the Java community as a whole. The following is a list of each editor's selections and the reason why they chose that product. Joe Winchester Desktop Java Editor SwingLabs SwingLabs is an open source laboratory for exploring new ways to make Swing applications easier to write, with improved performance and greater visual appeal. It is an umbrella project for various open source initiatives sponsored by Sun Microsystems and is part of the java.net community... (more)

JavaServer Faces (JSF) vs Struts

My JSF article series and Meet the Experts appearance on IBM developerWorks received a lot of feedback. I would have to say, the most common question or feedback came along the lines of comparing Struts to JSF. I thought it would be a good idea to compare JSF to Struts by evaluating various features that an application architect would look for in a Web application framework. This article will compare specific features. Those on which I will focus include: Maturity Controller Flexibility/Event Handling Navigation Page development Integration Extensibility Certainly, there are other places in which you might want to do a comparison, such as performance, but I'll focus on the set I just mentioned. I'll also spend more time on the Controller and Navigation sections because they are the heart of the frameworks. Performance of JSF is specific to the vendor implementation,... (more)

Java vs C++ "Shootout" Revisited

Keith Lea writes of the benchmark, on his results page, "I was sick of hearing people say Java was slow, when I know it's pretty fast, so I took the benchmark code for C++ and Java from the now outdated Great Computer Language Shootout and ran the tests myself." Lea used G++ (GCC) 3.3.1 20030930 (with glibc 2.3.2-98) for the C++, with the -O2 flag (for both i386 and i686). He compiled the Java code normally with the Sun Java 1.4.2_01 compiler, and ran it with the Sun 1.4.2_01 JVM. He ran the tests on Red Hat Linux 9 / Fedora Test1 with the 2.4.20-20.9 kernel on a T30 laptop. The laptop "has a Pentium 4 mobile chip, 512MB of memory, a sort of slow disk," he notes. The results he got were that Java is significantly faster than optimized C++ in many cases. "They also show that no one should ever run the client JVM when given the choice," Lea adds. ("Everyone has the c... (more)

Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex 2 and Java

A typical Java developer knows that when you need to develop a GUI for a Java application, Swing is the tool. Eclipse SWT also has a number of followers, but the majority of people use Java Swing. For the past 10 years, it was a given that Swing development wouldn't be easy; you have to master working with the event-dispatch thread, GridBaglayout, and the like. Recently, the NetBeans team created a nice GUI designer called Matisse, which was also ported to MyEclipse. Prior to Matisse, JBuilder had the best Swing designer, but it was too expensive. Now a good designer comes with NetBeans for free. Why even consider Flex for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA)? First, we'll give the short answer. Just look at the code in Listing 1. This code compiles and runs in the Flash player and produces the output shown in Figure 1. Yes, it's a tree control with several no... (more)

Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?

Coach Wei's Blog Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me. The other reason that I ponder this question is that  the power of Java is a perfect fit for the areas where websites may need more than markups or scripting, such as middleware logic. PHP and Ruby etc ... (more)

Bean-Managed Persistence Using a Proxy List

Say you're writing an Enterprise JavaBean that represents a persistent object, such as a customer or a product. You have two choices for getting data (such as customer name and product number) from the bean to the database and back: You can let the bean's runtime environment ­ its container, in EJB speak ­ do the heavy lifting for you.... ....or you can provide the logic yourself along with your bean. It seems like an easy choice. Why write code when you don't need to? Frequently, in fact, container-managed persistence will be a good match for a project. However, if you want your bean to be portable across multiple EJB servers, or if you find that the container-managed persistence provided by your chosen EJB server is inadequate, you'll need to turn to bean-managed persistence. According to the current version of the Enterprise JavaBeans Specification (v1.1), a com... (more)

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning? "Because they can only give you answers." Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that readers can themselves infer where AJAX is headed. What are the top questions to ask next about AJAX? Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! 1.  (From March'08) How do I calculate the ROI of building my RIA on the iPhone SDK vs using AJAX? 2.  How do I assess the performance of my app and decide what to do next to make it faster?  3.  When it comes to accessibility, how do I know what's required of me for my rich web apps?  Beyond what's required, what makes good business se... (more)

Creating a Pet Store Application with JavaServer Faces, Spring, and Hibernate

JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology is a new user interface framework for J2EE applications. This article uses the familiar Pet Store application to demonstrate how to build a real-world Web application using JSF, the Spring Framework, and Hibernate. Since JSF is a new technology, this article will concentrate on the use of JSF. It presents several advanced features in JSF development, including Tiles integration and business logic-tier integration. Java Pet Store The Java Pet Store is a sample application from the Java Enterprise BluePrints program. It documents best practices, design patterns, and architectural ideas for J2EE applications. MyPetStore, the sample application for this article, is a reimplementation of the Java Pet Store using JSF, Spring, and Hibernate. I won't be able to cover all the features of the Pet Store in one article. MyPetStore allows a user ... (more)

Reporting Made Easy with JasperReports and Hibernate

JasperReports is a valuable and viable reporting solution for Java Web applications. It simplifies report generation through the use of XML report templates that are then compiled using the JasperReports engine for use in reporting modules. These compiled report templates can be filled by data received from a variety of sources including relational databases. JasperReports can be integrated into Web applications and create reports in several file formats including PDF and XLS. Reporting in Java Applications Often reporting modules increase in complexity and size during the course of application development. Clients tend to demand more information from report modules when they become aware of the benefits reports offer. The reporting module developed as something of an afterthought in such environments suddenly becomes a much more integral part of the application. Rep... (more)