Vol: 9 Iss: 6 Read Back Issues

An i-Technology Weather Report Occasionally into any technology writer's life, a little rain must fall. Sometimes of course it's not so much a little rain as a full-blown typhoon, such as when free and open source software (also known as FOSS for short) blows in as a development methodology. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 20,006  Replies: 1

From Within the Java Community Process Program Welcome to the June edition of the JCP column! Each month you can read about the Java Community Process: newly submitted JSRs, new draft specs, Java APIs that were finalized, and other news from the JCP. This time we'll discuss a long-running JSR that has successfully finished, a new v... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 13,587

BPP: The Beanshell Preprocessor The Beanshell preprocessor, or BPP for short, is intended to be a convenient and powerful preprocessing tool for Java developers. It's convenient because the preprocessor is based on Beanshell, which is essentially interpreted Java. This means that Java or Beanshell programmers can qui... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 18,265  Replies: 1

Bringing Mars Down to Earth with Java3D You've probably seen the breathtaking photographs of the surface of Mars from the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. You've also seen the amazing high-altitude photographs taken from satellites orbiting Mars. But let's face it, the rovers must land on flat, boring areas and the satellites ... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 24,462  Replies: 4

Never Too Rich or Too Thin You can never be too rich or too thin. That's what Wally Simpson might have quipped to her stock trading application had she lived to enjoy the blessings of the Internet. Indeed, Wally may have had a point there: today's mainstream approaches to end-user computing are lacking. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 18,005

Frameworks - Strongest Support or Weakest Link? While software frameworks are always created with the best intentions, I believe that many of them fail for the same reason that any other software project does: a lack of clear understanding by the programmers of who their users are and what scenarios they are trying to solve. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 12,687  Replies: 3

StAX: Java's XML Pull Parser Specification Until recently Java programmers have had three options when wishing to access the XML infoset: they could use DOM, JDOM, or SAX. With the release of the JSR 173 StAX specification, Java programmers now have a fourth option, which gives them the efficiency of SAX with a convenient and e... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 24,382

Does Your Project Need a Rule Engine Many Java developers today have moved toward some form of logging and/or unit test framework, and their code has been purged of many System.out. println() statements that were the traditional approach. Now perhaps it's time to get rid of some of those if ( x ) {. . .} as well. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 29,346  Replies: 6

JFluid: A New Way to Profile Java Applications Anyone who develops production applications eventually spends some time profiling. JFluid is an experimental new technology for profiling Java code. It was developed at Sun Microsystems Laboratories and can be a handy tool in your profiling toolbox. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 33,921

Developing Web Portals in Jetspeed Using JSP A Web portal is an application that aggregates multiple Web applications on a single Web page. Popular examples of portals are My Yahoo (my.yahoo.com) and My MSN (my.msn.com). These portals allow users to aggregate multiple Web applications (like Stock Quote, News, and Weather). In add... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 24,218

The Theory of Innovation We know from the theory of relativity that the passage of time is relative to the perceiver. This is true of history as well. Sometimes history moves fast, e.g., during World War II and when communism was crumbling in 1989. Sometimes history moves slowly, as in the Cold War and the per... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 16,769

Managing Build Complexity with Apache Ant 1.6 As Apache Ant is applied to increasingly difficult tasks, its users are creating more complex and less legible build files. This is due, in part, to the limited tools for decomposition and code reuse within previous versions of Ant. Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 32,062  Replies: 2

Exposing J2EE Urban Myths It has become fairly common these days when looking through blogs and various opinion pieces to hear a common cry: J2EE is a terrible, unwieldy, and cumbersome specification. While documentations from Sun and other vendors praise it, there is a lot of hostility and negativity toward it... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 28,695  Replies: 4

Exclusive Q & A with Vinny Smith, Chairman and CEO of Quest Software A relative newcomer to the Java market, Quest Software's avowed mission is 'to simplify IT management.' JDJ asks Quest chairman and CEO Vincent C. (Vinny) Smith about J2EE, .NET, Web services, SOAs, the overall landscape for IT organizations, and the future of the technology space as h... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 26,552

Where Is Open Source in the App Server Surveys? Just recently Gartner reported that IBM has overtaken BEA in application server market share. The interesting thing is that Gartner's expression of market share is in a single number, dollars. While dollars are certainly an important factor in declaring a market leader, is this an accu... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 21,426  Replies: 8

In Search of Greatness It's hard to find great Java applications. Next month's JDJ contains our Editors' Choice Awards, and so far for me it has the feel of a repeat - even though I decided to focus on applications I've been using day-to-day outside my own personal development environment. That's frustrating... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 15,562

Job Discernment Those of you kind enough to read my editorials for JDJ would have noticed that I started a new job. A fresh start, a new year, a colossal waste of my time it turned out. Startup companies can be odd to work for sometimes and you have to read between the lines when it comes to statement... Jun. 3, 2004  Reads: 24,281  Replies: 2