JIUL

I am very pleased to announce that Sun has released a new license for the JDK called the Java Internal Use License (JIUL or "jewel"). This license lets developers easily make changes to the JDK for internal deployments. It's free, click-through and should be easy-to-read by non-lawyers.

Nice explanation of one of the new Java licenses, I hope commentary on the other licenses will follow!

Geronimo - the chief!

Geronimo, the Apache Software Foundation's J2EE 1.4 server project, is integrating a large suite of existing open source services to achieve J2EE 1.4 compliance. Part 1 of this two-part series explors the reason for Geronimo, its design goals and architecture, and some core concepts and terminology. In the second part, Sing Li cuts to the chase and gets hands-on with Geronimo. Using the latest Geronimo distribution, you'll test and deploy a Web application, an enterprise application, Enterprise Java™Beans (EJBs), and more.

rating comment: These two articles give you a good overview of Apache's J2EE Server, not only from a user's point of view, but also from a developer's perspective. Covering almost every aspect, these articles give you enough background information to start using and understanding Geronimo.

Swing & Patterns

Chet Haase gives some thought to the pro and cons of Swing & Patterns, inspired by a dicussion at the JAX Conference in Frankfurt. Very interesting article!

PatchExpert

A small fix can be a big headache when you need to re-build, re-test, re-package and re-deploy software. If the change is small enough, distributing it as a minor "patch" makes a lot of sense. As Lu Jian explains, the java.net project PatchExpert makes this straightforward.

rating comment: The framework seems to be quite interesting and so is the article! It points out the pros and cons of PatchExpert and gives a brief example of how to use it.

IBM Voice Toolkit

Are you looking to create state-of-the-art, voice-driven applications? Look no further than to IBM; the latest iteration of the IBM Voice Toolkit integrates with the Rational Software Development Platform, giving you a turnkey development environment based on industry standards, including VoiceXML and Java.

rating comment: Very interesting article, though it only scratches the surface of voice-driven applications. The small introduction to VoiceXML is quite good.

My Google Site

Google testet eine alternative Homepage, auf der Personalisierungsfunktionen angeboten werden, um verschiedene Google-Dienste über eine zentrale Stelle erreichen zu können. Auf Wunsch erscheinen so aktuelle Gmail-Mitteilungen, Nachrichten, Aktienkurse, Wetterberichte oder Zitate auf der Google-Eingangsseite.

Jetzt sollte es das Ganze nur noch in deutsch geben!

Language Lessons

Java Tech columnist Jeff Friesen has been coding in Java for nearly ten years, and in that time, he's found some surprises in the language, like how += doesn't necessarily do what you expect, or the hazards of invoking a potentially overridden method in a constructor. In this article, he provides some important lessons based on this experience.

summary:

1. Do not use the string concatenation operator in
   lengthy loops or other places where performance could suffer.
2. Do not call overridable methods from superclass
   constructors.
3. Do not use assertions to validate method
   arguments. Use if statements that explicitly throw
   exceptions if those arguments aren't valid.
4. Use interfaces for flexibility. Use abstract
   classes for ease of evolution or to capture the essence of rigid
   class hierarchies while avoiding the creation of objects that mean
   nothing.
5. Use covariant return types to minimize upcasting
   and downcasting.
6. Don't forget the superclass while writing a
   subclass.
7. Remember that compound assignment operators
   automatically include cast operations in their behaviors.

rating comment: Articles like this on are always useful, cause you can never know enough of these little mysteries!

Goslin on Harmony

The open source community may be looking for 'Harmony' but "Father of Java" James Gosling says enterprise Java customers would sooner go "screaming into the hills." Gosling talks to DevX about why Sun is ambivalent about Apache's Harmony, the future of the tools market, and the expectation for a language that will one day eclipse Java.

I know there are different opinions out there, but I think Goslin has a point. I don't know the difference between Apache's and Sun's license in detail, but I know that I have the sources of sun's J2SE for free, which is definitely an advantage! As I said before, I'm gonna be excited about Harmony and what's it gonna be like, but I think it wom't be able to compete with sun's J2SE.

Using enumerated types

In this month's Taming Tiger, columnist John Zukowski explains how to work with enumerated classes and their predefined methods and shows how to add constructors, override methods, and have instance variables.

rating comment: Great article about enumerated classes. It shows how to use them effectively, but also points out to use them carefully, which I absolutely agree on. It's a nice feature to use, but use it deliberately.

SQLExplorer - Eclipse Plug-in

It's 2005 and you're using Eclipse. Should you still be creating your database tables and seeding them with data by hand, from an SQL command-line utility? Deepak Vohra introduces the SQLExplorer plugin for Eclipse, which allows you to put a GUI on your development-time database access.

Sounds great, I'm definitely gonna check it out! The only thing that's missing is Derby/Cloudscape support!

Mobile Web Service Clients

If Web services are expanding within your enterprise, it might be time for you to look at all those mobile devices as potential clients of your Web services. Learn how to use the J2ME Web Service APIs to extend the enterprise to include J2ME devices with a simple example application.

rating comment: Nice article, which shows how to use the J2ME Web Services Specification (JSR-172), using a simple example. Unfortunately I think there is no cell phone available right now, which implements this specification.

ASF Harmony - Java open source

Apache have proposed a new project "Harmony" to create an open source J2SE implementation...

I don't know, on the one hand I think it's quite cool to have an open source J2SE implementation and get involved in developing Java. On the other hand I'm not sure if there is a need to have a second J2SE implementation. Anyway, I'm quite curious about Harmony, we'll see about it...

Star Office 8 Beta download

Star Office 8 Beta was release a couple of month ago. Unfortunately beta test was closed last month and the Star Office 8 beta download is offline.
Since then I received a couple of emails, asking me for links and downloads. For all of you who are looking for the Star Office 8 beta, I uploaded it to my torrent tracker and with a lot of patience you can get it there! Unfortunately it's only the windows version...

Google Web Accelerator

Google will das Web beschleunigen und so helfen, Zeit zu sparen. Dazu nutzt Google sein globales Computernetzwerk, das zu einem Proxy-Server mutiert und über ein spezielles Browser-Plugin genutzt werden kann. Es geht aber nicht nur um ein Zwischenspeichern der Seiten, die Software soll deutlich mehr leisten.

Auch wenn ich Google nichts unterstellen möchte, aber der Web Accelerator scheint mir doch eine geniale Möglichkeit zu sein personenbezogene Daten zu sammeln - für was auch immer.

Spring WebFlow

Spring WebFlow is a new Web framework that brings an innovative and highly structured approach to building Web applications. Get a sneak peek of the features in this next-generation Spring offering.

rating comment: This article provides a very brief overview of the new Spring WebFlow framework.

Azureus 2.3.0

In der Version 2.3.0 wartet der BitTorent-Client Azureus mit einer verteilten, dezentralisierten Datenbank auf, so dass auch Torrents ohne Tracker ("Trackerless Torrents") unterstützt werden. Darüber hinaus wartet Azureus 2.3.0 aber mit zahlreichen weiteren neuen Funktionen auf.

Dezentralisierte Datenbank - hört sich wichtig an!