2008-08-11 Monday: Linux Laptop Experiment

I'm in the process of configuring a new laptop - a Dell Studio 15 (4 GB RAM, 320 GB disk, dual CPU) running Windows Vista SP1.

My older machine is an HP Pavilion zv6000 (1GB RAM, 100GB disk) running Windows XP SP2. It has performed reliably and faithfully since 2005.

My first inclination was to simply install a Linux distribution and wipe out the Vista installation.

But my curiosity won - and I am spending some time learning more about Vista.

However, I am also pursuing my desire to migrate most of my consulting work to a Linux environment. I'm evaluating a VMWare Player configuration loaded with Fedora Core 8. Over the weekend I downloaded the latest Fedora Core 9 release - and will setup a disk partition so that I can experience the true performance of it without the overhead of Vista and VMWare. I suspect that I will be very pleased.

I also use a Western Digital external 1 TB USB drive (configured as 500 MB drive with RAID 1) as my primary repository and backup device. Sure the fan is a bit noisy at times (sort of like a 747 warming up for take-off - but I hardly notice it anymore).

2008-08-10 Sunday

Douglas Dooley reflects on the significance of JEE 6

JSR 316: JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) Specification

Release Management with Atlassian Bamboo

TheServerSide.com 2008 Java Trends Survey

2008-08-05 Tuesday

What's New in Spring 2.5: Part 1

Spring 2.5: New Features in Spring MVC

Book Review: Applied SOA

Eric Newcomer on the future of OSGi

Equinox: an implementation of the OSGi R4 core framework specification, a set of bundles that implement various optional OSGi services and other infrastructure for running OSGi-based systems. Equinox QuickStart Guide

Learn NHibernate with The Summer of NHibernate

jLibrary 1.2 has been released

jLibrary is a DMS (Document Management System), oriented for personal and enterprise use. This double approach make from jLibrary an unique product. With jLibrary, you can classify your documents, videos, or any other media type. You can export those contents to static web pages based on templates, search on those content, add comments, categorize it, etc.

Companies can find in jLibrary all the features present in most modern content management systems, including team work support, version management, offline document edition, document locking, security constraints based on roles, users and groups, easy web access, etc. jLibrary is multiplatform, so you can run the client and the server in both Windows and Linux. jLibrary is based on web services so it boosts interoperatility between platform and lenguages, being an ideal solution for heterogeneous environments.

2008-07-20 Sunday

SOA antipatterns: The obstacles to the adoption and successful realization of Service-Oriented Architecture

Did you Perform a Silo Analysis as part of your SOA Implementation?

REST Eye for the SOA Guy

Debunking Common Refactoring Misconceptions

Introduction to Agile for Traditional Project Managers

flash-db.com/services provides a directory to some public/free web services that can be useful when training team members on using such tools as soapUI.

GoToMeeting.com offers a free 30-day evaluation of their service.

2008-07-06 Sunday

I typically use Eclipse for the majority of my development work - or Microsoft Visual Studio. However, there are times when you just need to make some quick edits of config or xml files. For those tasks, I have typically used Windows Notepad - but always feeling that I wanted a better tool. In the last year I've adopted Notepad++ - and have been incredibly pleased with its ease of use, features, and utilities.

This recent article on smashingmagazine.com may be of interest if you are interested in adding some power to your text editing tools: 35 Useful Source Code Editors Reviewed

They also recently posted a very useful article identifying 55 Free High Quality Icon Sets


JProbe 8.0: The Java code, memory, and coverage profiler is back

The Personal Retrospective – Improving Your "Wetware"

This is a well written, insightful, and useful article by Ted Barbusinski, Published: June 16, 2008 (SOA Magazine Issue XIX: June 2008)
SOA Engineering Focal Points


Recently I was debugging a complex Java application deployment problem that involved many jar dependencies. I found the following tip helpful.

Launching Java Applications Programmatically

"In the Eclipse SDK, the command line used to launch a Java application can be viewed by selecting the associated process or debug target in the Debug View, and selecting Properties from the context menu. This displays a dialog containing the command line (including the classpath option) generated to launch a Java application. Examining the command used to launch a process can be useful when diagnosing launch problems."

As another technique, the latest release of Eclipse (Gaynamede) now supports a new feature: Runnable JAR export wizard

The Runnable JAR File Export wizard can create a JAR file based on a launch configuration. The generated JAR file contains all class files from the project including class files from required JARs and projects.

The generated JAR can be executed with the command:

java -jar generated_file.jar

GlassFish V3.0 on Eclipse Ganymede