Object Design

I recently returned from an intense, one-month marathon consulting tour to three different companies. I came away with a sense of satisfaction that everyone had benefitted significantly from the experience -- including me. The common sticking point was understanding the process of object-oriented design.

A lot of interesting thoughts about the process of developing software. Especially the comment about UML being to complicated, which I definitely agree on.

Java Modules

Java Archives (JARs) date back to the mid-1990s. However, JAR files are hard to distribute, hard to version, and hard to reference in general. Sun has submitted JSR 277: Java Module System, which defines a distribution format and a repository for collections of Java code and related resources. It also defines the discovery, loading, and integrity mechanisms at runtime.

ajax

Anyone who has used Flickr, GMail, Google Suggest, or Google Maps will realize that a new breed of dynamic web applications is emerging. These applications look and act very similar to traditional desktop applications without relying on plug-ins or browser-specific features. Web applications have traditionally been a set of HTML pages that must be reloaded to change any portion of the content. Technologies such as JavaScript programming language and cascading style sheets (CSS) have matured to the point where they can be used effectively to create very dynamic web applications that will work on all of the major browsers. This article will detail several techniques that you can use today to enable your web applications to be more rich and interactive like desktop applications.

rating comment: This article gives a very detailed and good explanation of asynchronous JavaScript technology, which in my opinion is going to emerge in the near future! It enables rich client application, only with a simple browser!

JAVA content repository API

Relational and object databases lack many data management features required by modern applications, such as versioning, rich data references, inheritence, or fine-grained security. Content repositories extend databases with such additional capabilities. The Java Content Repository API (JSR 170) defines a standard to access content repositories from Java code, and promises to greatly simplify Java database programming. This article reviews the Java Content Repository API and its open-source implementation, Apache Jackrabbit, from a developer's perspective.

rating comment: Nice explanation of the Java Content Respository API and it's concepts. I would have preferred to read more about Jackrabbit, the reference implementation of JSR 170.

Test your Web application

Looking for a way to apply automated testing techniques to Web development? Look no further. jWebUnit, which plugs easily into most Java™ IDEs, is an open source framework for creating test cases for Web applications. Software engineer Amit Tuli introduces jWebUnit by using a sample application to describe a step-by-step approach for generating concise test cases.

rating comment: Neat articel, that gives you a taste of the jWebUnit framework. Sounds like it's a helpful tool to improve quality of a web application. The only thing I don't like is the way of integrating jWebUnit into Eclipse. There should be a plug-in...well I'm sure there is one, I just don't know about it.

Pixel Pushing

Users of desktop applications are demanding--something as simple as a misplaced or misaligned pixel is unacceptable to some users. So it's up to you to get things exactly right. But is this practical, and how do you do it? Jonathan Simon shows a process for analyzing, coding, and testing your GUI for pixel perfection, demonstrating it with a pixel-accurate mimicry of a Windows-specific icon.

rating comment: This article gives an introduction to the procedure of building a graphical interface, which can be a hyper-detailed, laborious
work, if you do it the right way! The most interesting thing about this article is getting an idea of the work of an GUI designer, which I'm definitely not going for...

Making JBoss Work

In this first article of a series, you'll learn how to download and install JBoss. Tom Marrs and Scott Davis, authors of the upcoming JBoss At Work: A Practical Guide, explore the directory structure and show you how to add and remove services and how to deploy an application to JBoss.

Simple guide for beginners, to install and configure JBoss. It covers only a small part of the whole JBoss AS topic, but it's worth a look if you are new to JBoss AS.