Hanging Up My Java Boots

Posted on June 13, 2009
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It has been a good innings.  13 years of Java.  But it is with deep regret that I have to hang up my Java Boots and move into other spaces that are taking up a lot more of my time, naming content management.

For the last 3 years, my involvement in Java has been steadily dwindling so that its more of a passing interest.  Although I’ll still remain interested in new developments, I’ll no longer be debugging Java code and implementation production software on the platform.

Sigh! With this being my final post on this blog, you’ve gotta wonder where did all that time go?

Eclipse Demo Camp - Poznan

Posted on November 20, 2008
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Announcment: On 24th November, Eclipse Demo Camp comes to sunny Poznan, Poland. We will be there as sponsors of the event and there are some great talks lined up. Hope you can make it…

CQ5.1 Released

Posted on November 18, 2008
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CQ is a Web Content Management System from Day Software. Version 5.1 was released yesterday. So why is this important to me? Couple of reasons. Firstly, Cognifide have been using CQ for last 3 years and the underlying content repository CRX for nearly 4 years. Secondly, version 5 is a complete re-write and is based upon Sling, the web framework that sits atop of a Java Content Repository (JCR). I have only recently been tinkering with Sling and its noddy sample applications, when slam dunk, the mother of all Sling applications comes crashing down at my door.

Anyway, CQ 5.1 comes bundled with a single jar called cq-wcm-quickstart-5.1.0.jar. There are number of options for running it, so before you do all that issue the following command and do what you need:

java -jar cq-wcm-quickstart-5.1.0.jar -h

After reading the instructions, I found renamed the jar file and ran it as follows:

java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -jar cq-cleve-6789.jar -v

This will run CQ 5 with verbose logging out of port 6789 and fire up a browser once the server has started. Server startup on my Mac takes aroun 25 seconds. Although the recommended max heap size is 512Mb, its works better if that’s starting size. The three key urls when running cq5 are:

  1. http://localhost:6789/ [for the authoring environment]
  2. http://localhost:6789/admin [for the admin console]
  3. http://localhost:6789/crx [for access to the crx content repository]

Enjoy!

Sling Home Page

Posted on November 12, 2008
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I’ve created a Sling Home page and have started writing a few pages to get myself into the Sling frame of mind. Having built my first Sling OSGi bundle and successfully deployed it, things are looking up. However, to do this I had to step through the sling-dev mailing list, picked through source code and read up on stuff on the web site. All a bit random really, but I’ll post out with a page that explains all soon.

Java User Group in Poznan is very active

Posted on November 6, 2008
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We played host to the Poznan Java User Group yesterday at our offices. Although it was in Polish (slides in english), when I popped my head read round the corner I was surprised to find over 50 people sitting down laughing and nodding along to the presentations. I didn’t honestly expect there to be that many people. So the next thing I did was go downstairs to check how many beers we had. A quick count revealed 30 beers, resulting in a mad dash to the local off license stock up.

Anyway, Dawid Weiss, a lecturer at Poznan University of Technology, delivered a great talk on MapReduce. I will ask Dawid if he’ll make the presentation available via slideshare or something like that…

Poznan Java User Group

Posted on November 4, 2008
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The Poznan Java User Group are meeting at our offices in Poland, tomorrow Thursday 5th November @ 18:00 to discuss:

Afterwards, there will be beers and time to sit down and discuss all things Java related. Feel free to join us…

What is Apache Sling?

Posted on October 30, 2008
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Apache Sling is a web framework that uses a Java Content Repository to store and manage content. Michael Marth of Day.Com is the most vocal blogger on the web about Sling and lives out of http://dev.day.com. However, the David Nuescheler, CTO of Day, is never short of a word on anything JCR related, particularly with its connection to REST.

Anyway, I decided to take a little look and have only go as far as installing sling on my mac, but more will surely come…

Java 7 Platform: What’s In, What’s Out!

Posted on August 8, 2008
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Alex Miller maintains an unofficial Java 7 home page and recently updated his predictions about what will make it into Java 7. boy, did this spark off a discussion in the forums. So what’s the big deal?. Well, the only thing that appears clear in all of this is uncertainty. Stepping over to the official Java 7 home page is like walking through treacle. Access to information is slow, slow, slow!

Anyway, back to Alex’s post. A few things sprang out at me. First was that Closures are unlikely to make it into Java 7. Personally, I think this is a good thing. Let’s learn from the generic rollout and get it right. But Neal Gafter is chipping away at Closures. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The native language support for XML for me is just plain wrong. We need to be reducing the amount of XML we consume instead of making it easy for people to use more of it. Remember, the SAAJ Java SOAP API that made you write really verbose code. Well, with XML support you can do just as badly more easily. Why do we want to go there?

JSR-277 - Java Modules - ain’t this just the Java 7 love child. Let’s back up a bit here first. In the late nineties, after object-oriented design was well-established and component-based architectures started emerge, it was clear that modularity in Java was just not there yet. The whole class-path/class-loading was the oft-cited nightmare for component developers in the Java world, whilst the Windows guys wallowed in DLL-hell. OSGi took the bull by the horns and brushed aside a lot of these obstacles and is a core within Eclipse - invariably one of the most used and well-respected component-based, plugin-driven architectures within the Java community.

Then came JSR-277 that is a competitor (or alternative?) to OSGi. Trouble? Well, there is nothing wrong with taking a good idea and implementing it afresh, taking on board current industry thinking, tools and techniques to hand. Moreover, the folks over at OSGi are not, IMO, against JSR-277 as an alternative. In fact, it could be great for OSGi. However, given that JSR-277 will be packaged and delivered as part of the JRE, but does not interoperate with OSGi, some feel that this is no way to run a JSR, and is sad state of affairs when technology platforms submerge into the murky world of politics. However, with more examples and discussions around the new Java Module System, I think the fun and games are set to continue…

Moving on, the rather filthy date and time (JSR 310) api get a spring clean and a couple of concurrency (JSR 166) tweaks are knocking on the Java 7 door - multicore is every darling! And finally NIO 2 (JSR 203). Hands up if you have used NIO? Let me see, that’s 10% of the room. It’s just one of parts of the platform that the average Java developer either has zero knowledge and/or interest in. Why? I think this api is really for framework writers and/or vendor tool folks, that have above-average problems, not for the everyday Java developer. That said, you should really take a look at what nio is and what are its advantages and if you’ve got a spare hour (lucky you), check of the following NIO 2 presentation.

There’s plenty more meat on the Java 7 bone but I’m out of time. I’ll bury it for now and dig up for seconds sometime soon…

What is an Rich Internet Application (RIA)?

Posted on July 29, 2008
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I’ve started listening more and more to the podcasts from the JavaPosse recently. At first, I found the format a bit dry but these guys do grow on you. I’m now past the getting to know them period. Anyway there was an interesting discussion on what is an RIA that overflowed into another podcast given the amount of listener feedback they received.

Now I hadn’t given this much thought but what do you think an RIA is? Which of the following are RIAs:

Take a couple of seconds to think about that and then read David Herron’s Thoughts on Rich Internet Applications. Now go back and classify the above applications.

Now think about these new types of web application that can you tear off from the web browser and place on your desktop and for them to continue working. At that point I realised that RIA is too broad term and trying to stuff all this types of application into that bucket is only fuelling the confusion. But do we need another term? I think discussing the terms will deliver much more value.

So who’s gonna kick things off…

Grails in Action: Call to Action!

Posted on July 28, 2008
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I’m currently helping out with the review process for the new Grails in Action book. If you’re into Grails, why not help out as well.

keep looking »