YOUR FEEDBACK
duwei wrote: 1. Low hourly rate + high quality. 2. Top Adobe Flex outsourcing service provid...


2008 East
DIAMOND SPONSOR:
Data Direct
Frontiers in Data Access: The Coming Wave in Data Services
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
Red Hat
The Opening of Virtualization
Intel
Virtualization – Path to Predictive Enterprise
Green Hills
IT Security in a Hostile World
JBoss / freedom oss
Practical SOA Approach
GOLD SPONSORS:
Software AG
The Art & Science of SOA: How Governance Enables Adoption
PlateSpin
Effective Planning for Virtual Infrastructure Growth
Fujitsu
Automated Business Process Discovery & Virtualization Service
Ceedo
Workspace Virtualization
Click For 2007 West
Event Webcasts

2008 East
PLATINUM SPONSORS:
Appcelerator
Think Fast: Accelerate AJAX Development with Appcelerator
GOLD SPONSORS:
DreamFace Interactive
The Ultimate Framework for Creating Personalized Web 2.0 Mashups
ICEsoft
AJAX and Social Computing for the Enterprise
Kaazing
Enterprise Comet: Real–Time, Real–Time, or Real–Time Web 2.0?
Nexaweb
Now Playing: Desktop Apps in the Browser!
Sun
jMaki as an AJAX Mashup Framework
POWER PANELS:
The Business Value
of RIAs
What Lies Beyond AJAX?
KEYNOTES:
Douglas Crockford
Can We Fix the Web?
Anthony Franco
2008: The Year of the RIA
Click For 2007 Event Webcasts
SYS-CON.TV
TOP THREE LINKS YOU MUST CLICK ON


Project Rave - First Thoughts
Project Rave - First Thoughts

Yesterday, Sun made an early access version of Studio Creator (i.e., "Project Rave") available. I downloaded it for both of my normal development platforms (the SPARCle, running Solaris, and Windows) and gave it a go.

On first impressions, Creator is meant to be a Web application development tool, from the looks of it. There's no mention of distributed APIs outside of the servlet environment and web services, although Web services do seem to be pretty deeply integrated. Further, the kind of Web applications it's designed to create are, specifically, JSF applications.

This is good and bad. I'm not a proponent of JSF, yet, because I can see horrible, horrible things from it. Sun apparently sees it as a competitor to MS' WebForms, which to me sounds like they're trying to compete against something that just isn't that good, in someone else's arena. However, it's technology people at Sun are pushing, hard, and that means - for better or for worse - we're probably stuck with it for a while.

Creator's JSF focus is really not that bad. It definitely makes using JSF as simple as its proponents have promised - no longer are you rushing from element to element trying to get interactions configured. Navigation seems to be fairly easy to get right, although I've not yet seen (or developed) complex navigation systems yet.

The initial documentation is very, very simple. As this is an early access release, that's okay. The docs gave me an idea of what could be done, which is enough. I haven't seen any kind of portal or portlet integration yet, although maybe I'm not looking at it the right way.

The standard deployment environment is Sun's App Server 8. This is amusing, in a way - AS8 is a huge, huge package, with all kinds of capabilities, and using it as the deployment environment is overkill in a big, big way. It's also very slow to start and deploy with - and for a development environment, this is not good. You want something like Orion for this, with its second-long deployment of applications - not a fifteen-second deployment cycle.

Plus, TDD seems to fall by the wayside. I'm waiting to see what Dan North, et al, think of this stuff, because there is no test cycle for it.

Overall, the environment itself feels like an early access release. It's a great initial stab at questionable technology. That said, maybe that's enough to build some serious momentum - which will make the technology worthwhile, in a positive feedback loop. I don't know that I'm ready to use it personally yet, because I haven't seen how to do some of the things I want to do in the environment itself yet - it looks like it's good for JSF development, and barely okay for Java development - it's doable, but not really actively good.

So far, it looks like a standalone version of something that should be a plugin for NetBeans and, given the JSR for IDE plugins, other editors as well. (I'm drooling at the thought of something like this in IDEA, for example.) We'll see how it goes, and I'll keep playing with it.

About Joseph Ottinger
Joseph Ottinger, formerly editor-in-chief of JDJ (2003-4), is a consultant with Fusion Alliance in Indianapolis and is one of the contributors to the OpenSymphony project.

YOUR FEEDBACK
Ramón Jiménez wrote: "I''m not writing as a nonpartisan reviewer. I''m biased in favour of myself [...]" "That said, it''s not fair to ME to expect my voice to be muted in my own editorials and reviews, which aren''''t official renderings of JDJ or any other community, but simply my views on things." I failed to see these points. I apologize. In a sense, I agree with your comments in that Eclipse is quite generic. Which I happen to like and take advantage of. I was a bit dissappointed that you had to say it the way you did, for I felt it was not necessary to do so in order to make your point. But I have reconsidered my stance. JDJ is a great place to get *facts* regarding Java. This may as well mean getting personal opinions from practitioners. Thank you for that. After all if I want to be evangelized about Eclipse (which I obviously don''t need :)) I should look somewhere else! And this is a goo...
Joseph Ottinger wrote: Well, we have a few choices there. I''m not impressed by Eclipse as a platform or as an IDE; I do think it''s fairly good at many things, excellent at a few things, and really bad at others (in various ways). These comments apply to Eclipse as a platform and as an IDE. As far as providing solutions and interesting perspectives (thank you, BTW), well, I certainly try to focus on being interesting and relevant - but I''m not writing as a nonpartisan reviewer. I''m biased in favour of myself, and I don''t think it''d be valid for me to pretend to like something I don''t especially care for, or pretend to dislike something I do enjoy quite a bit. It''s not really fair for the products I don''t like, I guess, because they don''t get "influential" support. (Am I really that influential? I don''t think so.) That said, it''s not fair to ME to expect my voice to be muted in my own editoria...
Ramón Jiménez wrote: Mr. Ottinger: Understood. But in your piece "Looking for Instant Solutions?", you have also classified Eclipse as "jack-of-all-trades, master of none". It seems as if you have serious issues with Eclipse :) Bear in mind, it is only a platform, not an IDE per se. It is a tool upon which we are all invited to contribute. I respect your point of view, it''s just that I think you are an influential writer and as such I humbly think you should focus on providing solutions and interesting perspectives. After all, like you said a couple of months ago, can''t we just get along? :)
Joseph Ottinger wrote: Mr. Jiminez, please note that I use WSAD daily, so I'm not unfamiliar with Eclipse's strengths and weaknesses. I was making that particular comparison on context, not as a rote statement.
Ramón Jiménez wrote: Mr. Ottinger: this article, as others you've written, is excellent. However I keep taking issue on your disdain for Eclipse. True, IDEA may be the best thing after sliced bread. But it is not fair to compare Eclipse to "a fully tricked out Yugo". The fact that Rave is easy to use - or intended to be so - doesn''t make it a Porsche. On the other hand, Eclipse is a *framework*, not an IDE. The internal structure is excellent and the plugin architecture is very good. This alone is highly responsible for the massive adoption Eclipse has experienced, both from developers like me and from companies providing their own development environments, like many RTOS sellers. I would like to see Rave succeed, but it will be a sad day when our main goal is to appeal to VS.NET developers. VS.NET is a good tool and probably the best .NET has to it, but we can do better.
Joseph Ottinger wrote: Bartok, Eclipse is virtually imcomprehensible to those VS.NET developers. They want to draw web forms and attach events to them, not "write java." From that perspective, comparing Rave to Eclipse is like comparing a Porsche - although early in development - to a fully tricked out Yugo.
bartok wrote: I fail to see how another non-free Java IDE is gonna make Java more attractive to VS.NET developers (since that''s the stated target market). People are much more likely to download Eclipse for free and use that.
Joel Parker wrote: Rave is great, well worth trying for Java apps-- but the homepage introduction is horrendous. powerful technologies that can be used productively and effectively. leverage the power of the Java platform Can someone at Sun get a clue about this? I''m a Java developer (and former Sun employee) and I don''t need to read words like "leverage" and "powerful technologies" and buzzwords. Instead: tell me what the tool is, what it does-- ideally with screenshots-- and how it fits with my other Java tools. Cheers, Joel
LATEST JAVA STORIES & POSTS
Doing network I/O on the user interface (UI) thread is bad. Most developers know that and can tell you why; unfortunately, it’s still done. At this year's JavaOne, one of the keynote JavaFX demos bombed because the network was slow, something that would be forgivable had the en...
Over the course of the past few decades, the consumer media industry has evolved from a slow-moving oligopoly dominated by a handful of vertically integrated networks to a highly fragmented and competitive marketplace of content creation, publication, and distribution players. Th...
Just because the web has been open so far doesn't mean that it will stay that way. Flash and Silverlight, arguably the two market-leading technology toolkits for rich media applications are not open. Make no mistake - Microsoft and Adobe aim to have their proprietary plug-ins, ak...
The open source community includes many early advocates of the recent wave of emerging SOA-related technology projects. Historically, however, open source has sometimes been considered a "late follower," with commercial products first to hit the market, and then followed by "me-t...
JavaScript is pretty much everywhere you look these days, reaching far beyond your desktop browser. Adobe AIR lets you use JavaScript to create desktop installed HTML and AJAX apps. Apple uses it in its gadgets and in the iPhone's browser. And Nokia recently announced support for...
Transmeta, the uppity microprocessor wannabe that pushed Intel to create low-power chips before Intel crushed it, is getting bought by Novafora Inc for $255.6 million in cash, roughly what Transmeta has in the bank thanks largely to an IP licensing deal with Intel. Novafora is a ...
SUBSCRIBE TO THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL NEWSLETTERS
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEEDS & GET YOUR SYS-CON NEWS LIVE!
Click to Add our RSS Feeds to the Service of Your Choice:
Google Reader or Homepage Add to My Yahoo! Subscribe with Bloglines Subscribe in NewsGator Online
myFeedster Add to My AOL Subscribe in Rojo Add 'Hugg' to Newsburst from CNET News.com Kinja Digest View Additional SYS-CON Feeds
Publish Your Article! Please send it to editorial(at)sys-con.com!

Advertise on this site! Contact advertising(at)sys-con.com! 201 802-3021


SYS-CON FEATURED WHITEPAPERS

SPONSORED BY INFRAGISTICS
In every field of design one of the first things students do is learn from the work of others. They ...
There are many forces that influence technological evolution. After a decade of building enterprise ...
2008 is going to be an important year for Rich Internet Applications. Most organizations are deliver...
The OpenAjax Alliance is developing an Ajax industry wishlist for future browsers, using a dedicated...
Infragistics announced the availability of two Community Technology Preview (CTP) User Interface (UI...
The YUI development team has released version 2.5.2; you can download the new release from SourceFor...
ADS BY GOOGLE