I came across something disturbing recently and I want to get my two cents on the table because this isn’t the first time it’s come up. Several components in the project I’m assigned to store various configuration attributes in text files. Whether they’re name-value (properties) files or XML data, this is a good choice because it allows the customization of application behavior without code changes or redeployment … if you do it properly.
Read more…
I’m typing this post from the Gnome blog post client installed on my laptop which is now running Ubuntu Linux. I took the plunge a few days ago after getting the itch to try an alternative OS. I knew that if I did a dual-boot, I’d bail out and revert to Windows in a few days. So, I blew away the entire disk and let Ubuntu 6.10 have its way.
So far I’m pretty pleased. The out-of-the box suite of applications is more than adequite for the average user, and it’s Linux, so the power user will never be left wanting. The only stumbling I’ve done is on multimedia codecs. So far I have yet to get anything resembling Internet-type audio/video to play, but I’m not sure I’ve done everything right. Flash 9 beta is installed so all my favorite rich-clienty sites work well (Google Finance, YouTube, etc). No MP3 or AVI joy yet though.
I’ll wrap this up and hope it posts, with the thought that I’ll do a more in-depth review soon.
Not much else to say about this sweet plugin. It lets you view any webpage using IE without leaving Firefox. Kickass.
Thinking about beginning a new JEE project is as unsettling as it is exciting. On the one hand, you’re going to get your hands dirty with some new and challenging business problem to solve, you can use the latest and greatest JVM and of course let’s not forget the choice of many excellent application/persistence/web frameworks. On the other hand, you have … the choice of many excellent application/persistence/web frameworks!
I think we can all agree that choice is good, but is the sheer number of non-trivial frameworks really unifying the java community, or are we breeding segments of the population who know only a subset of what’s out there?
When you’re an ASP guy, you pretty much have you work cut out for you. Same goes for the new kid on the block Ruby [on Rails]. But Java, in its maturity, has brought so many innovations to market that one could make an entire project out of evaluating frameworks for use in any given project!
The days of Struts & JDBC are pretty much over, kids. Do you use Spring at the web tier? How ’bout JSF or Tapestry or WebWork? Do you decorate with SiteMesh, or assemble with Tiles? Maybe you are into JSP includes or writing a lot of custom tags. Do you manage your middle tier with Spring, or opt for the latest appserver’s EJB3 implementation? It might seem like everyone is using Hibernate for persistence, but it aint the only kid on the block. TopLink Essentials is bundled with GlassFish and other EE5 offerings will be supporting JPA as well. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
How do you decide?
This interesting post raises this very question and even makes the case that no, they should not be. Keeping salaries under wraps is the default protocol here in the U.S. of A., and I now wonder if it does more harm than good. Here’s one of the key points that made me think:
And here’s the problem: If Johnson’s salary is (unfairly) higher than mine, and secret, I can’t complain to my manager about it because I can’t admit that I know about it. When a company sets up a situation where people can see the unfairness but can’t address it directly, or even discuss it openly, they’re rigging the system for maximum frustration.
The author cites another potential problem, one I have experienced first hand:
I have worked at two different companies where salaries were secret and guess what: They weren’t. Most people knew what most others were getting. In one company I consulted for, the IT department had even found the Excel spreadsheets HR kept the salaries in. They knew what everyone was getting.
This blurb speaks to the larger issue of information asymmetry, the term given to a situation in which those who possess information can choose to use it against those who do not. Leaked information becomes contraband and fosters even more frustration. And as Young MC says, “From frustration first inclination / Is to become a monk and leave the situation”. But every dark tunnel has a lighter hope, so maybe transparency is the way forward.
What do you think? Would you prefer working in an open environment like this?
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This is just too freakin sweet not to pass along. I’m not a regular del.icio.us user, but I happend to stop by today only to be greeted with this gem:
Layout Gala
I had to give this treasure its own line because it embodies everything that is good and right in the field of web design. Pure, compatible, solid layouts that don’t rely on hacks. They’re all there, kids. Two-column, three-column, liquid, static — many even support any-order columns. Squirt.
Spring and Hibernate have long been my choice of frameworks with which to construct maintainable, scalable middle-tier software. Spring promotes good OO design using loose coupling and provides excellent declarative transaction support. Hibernate is the persistence tool of choice for the open source community. Any sane person who programs this way will have given up on EJB long ago. Coarse-grained entities, tightly coupled service objects and XML deployment descripters a-plenty are enough to bring a guy to his knees.
But no more. The EJB expert group, now composed of some of the very creators of modern persistence framework, has bequeathed upon us something wonderful. The lightweight POJO programming model we have come to love is apparent everywhere in the EJB 3.0 specifiction (JSR-220), which was unanimously accepted by the JCP earlier this year. EJB 3.0 is just one goodie in the larger Java EE 5 (JSR-244) bag – but this post is going to be long enough as it is. Read more…
This afternoon’s festivities were highlited by a characteristically colorful presentation by Gavin King. For those who don’t know, Gavin is the creator of the Hibernate persistence framework which was aquired eventually by JBoss.
Gavin & crew demonstrated quickly but effectively the lovely synergy that has been brought to EJB3 and JSF by their newest creation, Seam. Seam can hardly be called a web framework — you wouldn’t recognize it as such what with its lack of, well, just about everything that you’ve come to expect from a web framework.
Seam throws away boilerplate code a-la Rails, but does so in a way that leverages a lot of the untapped power of EJB3 and JSF. Seam is all about Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY). As such, we throw away form beans (a-la Spring MVC) and a whole lot of XML (in favor of annotations).
The most surprising theme that emerges from all of this is the rampant use of Stateful Session beans. You read that right – I said Stateful. Seam begs the question, “why on earth would I represent state in a database (slow is an understatement) or in HTTPSession (with no dirty checking) when I can use this lovely gift called Stateful beans?” He makes a damn good point. By representing web conversations as SFSB’s (which are POJO’s in EJB3, in case you’re wondering) you eliminate many of the headaches associated with web apps. Multiple tabs open in your browser? Piece of cake – each browser tab/session/window has a unique conversation (they’re stateful, remember?). Double submit? Ha! Don’t even try! Want to have a clean client redirect after performing some action, but still pass messages across? No problemo – you’ve got a lightweight stateful conversation behind you.
By logically grouping your flows into SFSB’s, you can leverage more sophisticated failover because the container dirty-checks each instance and replicates automatically. Try that with HTTPSession.
So, I will be doing a sandbox app soon with Seam, and I’ll post more as I know it. Till then, read all you can.