Java EE and .NET Interoperability
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Coping strategies for co-existence Book review This book is aimed at practising Java and .NET developers, at a fairly novice level, who want to take advantage of the strong points of each of the two platforms in a single applications environment.â¦
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Tony Bibbs takes a look at an increasingly popular bit of functionality in PHP5, the SOAP extension, and notes that it still has a "ways to go".   In my latest round of web services work in PHP5 I was creating a PHP5 client that interacts with our Java-based ERP. The client needs to be a combination of a couple of WSDL's into one, nice, compact and powerful client. It should be noted this client will be distributed via the State of Iowa PEAR channel so it will undoubted by used by other project in our organization and throughout state government so the result needs to have a lot more fit-and-finish than would be typical.   He mentions his expectations for PHP's usage of the protocol, including the automatic generation of variables/methods/etc to help the developer use the remote application easier.
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Spring technology is an alternative to EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) for Java development, but an upcoming Java version will enable combinations of established Java platform technologies with Spring, the founder of the Spring Framework said on Tuesday.Interviewed at the WebGuild Web 2.0 Conference &amp; Expo, Rod Johnson, founder of the Spring Framework and CEO of SpringSource, anticipates accommodations with the enterprise Java platform once Java Platform, EE (Enterprise Edition) 6 is released. This is expected to happen sometime in 2008, according to a Java Community Process Java Specification Request focused on Java EE 6."I think it's pretty clear that Spring provides an alternative to EJB -- I recently blogged about how requirements for Spring skills have overtaken requirements for EJB in North America -- I don't think that necessarily means Spring is in opposition to Java EE as a whole, given that Java EE 6 is introducing the notion of profiles," Johnson said.?Java EE 6 could allow for standardized combinations of technologies without the legacy of the traditional, full Java EE platform, Johnson said. "We could combine our technology with the various standard technologies we support," he said.EJB provides the server-side component architecture in Java EE.SpringSource made a big splash Tuesday by announcing its acquisition of Apache technology support services vendor Covalent Technologies. This gives Spring and Apache technology users one-stop shopping for support for these open-source technologies.Shrinking IT budgets, if they are indeed shrinking, is likely to mean more use of open-source software, Johnson said. But during a panel session Tuesday, Johnson warned against uncontrolled use of open-source software. Governance will be needed over open source, he said."I certainly think that one popular misconception is that the 'free love' model is the right way to consume open source," Johnson said during the panel session, which focused on enterprise application development. "I think that there is a great danger in allowing uncontrolled consumption of open source." Panelists defined the 'free love' model as uncontrolled use of different software.Also during the session, Chris Keene, Chairman/CEO of Web 2.0 tool maker WaveMaker Software, emphasized that software development still remains the domain of developers and that the average user cannot do much with current tools."There's this great unwashed mass out there that today is not able to build very much," he said.With Web 2.0, the user community is able to drive requirements back to developers to produce applications, said panelist Joe Keller, chief marketing officer of mashup technology provider Kapow Technologies.Johnson also noted SpringSource plans in the virtualization space. The company intends to combine Spring software with the Apache Tomcat Java servlet container in a virtualization product to be announced later this quarter and ship by the end of 2008. The idea is the product would be used for the "internal cloud" at companies looking to get more use out of their existing infrastructure and add provisioning and deployment, said Johnson.
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(InfoWorld) - Looking to bolster AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and development of Web 2.0 applications, the OpenAjax Alliance on Wednesday plans to introduce a project that addresses AJAX interoperability issues. The alliance, which features vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, will roll out its OpenAjax Hub project. This effort involves developing a standard set of JavaScript functionality to tackle problems with interoperability arising when multiple AJAX libraries are used within the same Web page. With the hub, multiple AJAX run-time libraries would be able to coexist on a page. Version 1.0 of the OpenAjax Hub is planned for completion by the end of this calendar year; integration of the hub into AJAX toolkits expected in early 2007. "[In] today's world, AJAX libraries in general believe they own the entire browser [and] JavaScript environment, that they're the first one and the last one, so they assume a consequence-free environment where they can do whatever they want to do," said Jon Ferraiolo, acting director of the alliance and a Web architect in the emerging technologies group at IBM. What results, he said, are collisions of JavaScript objects and the toolkits managing HTML markup, and an inability to integrate functions such as drag and drop events. With development of the hub, the alliance is dealing with its top priority, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail response to questions. "There is a critical need for OpenAjax at this point in time, because each vendor's AJAX implementation is generally incompatible with the others," Bloomberg said. "Basically, even though each AJAX widget leverages XML and JavaScript, both of which are open standards, that doesn't mean that one widget from one toolkit will work with another widget from some other toolkit. The most important goal of OpenAjax is figuring out how to resolve this interoperability problem. Clearly, Ajax will be far more successful if any widget works with any other widget, toolkit, or platform." Support for the hub is expected in toolkits such as Dojo and script.aculo.us as well as in AJAX frameworks such as Tibco General Interface and offerings from Backbase, JackBe and Nexaweb. "No one has made any commitments [to use the hub yet] but generally, [the parties cited] are all active in the alliance," said Ferraiolo. The unveiling of the hub is part of an update on the alliance's activities that is being provided Wednesday. The group will announce a near-doubling of its membership since its formation in February. New members include The Ajaxian, American Greetings, Bling Software, Curl, edge IPK, eLink Business Innovations, ENOVIA, MatrixOne, Finetooth, The Front Side, Ikivo, ILOG, IN2, IT Mill, Javeline, JWAX, Merced Systems, Nexaweb, Nitobi, OpenLink Software, Seagull Software, Sitepen, Sun, Vertex Logic, Vircon, Webtide, and Zoho. Previously announced members of the alliance include: Adobe, Backbase, BEA Systems, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Fair Isaac, Google, IBM, ICEsoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Opera, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Scalix, Software AG, Tibco, XML11, Zend, and Zimbra. While the alliance already has an impressive list of members, one name remains conspicuously absent: Microsoft. "Yes, we have extended an invitation and attempted to recruit Microsoft to join," Ferraiolo said. "We would love to have Microsoft participate in the alliance." "The purpose of the alliance is to make interoperability successful such that you can take AJAX technologies from one source and use it with another vendor's. Microsoft is one of [those] vendors and an important vendor in the AJAX community and it would be to everybody's advantage, particularly customers, if Microsoft's products would interoperate well with other people's products," said Ferraiolo. He added he was not making a statement that Microsoft products currently do not interoperate. Although Microsoft has promoted AJAX via its Atlas technologies, Microsoft currently does not have plans to join. "Microsoft has no firm plans to join the OpenAjax Alliance. However, Microsoft is very committed to working with the developer community and is engaged in dialogue with the OpenAjax Alliance organizers to learn more about the initiative," Microsoft said in a prepared statement. The alliance seeks to serve as an industry catalyst to boost AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 applications. Ferraiolo defines Web 2.0 as a new generation of the Web focused on collaboration. OpenAjax technologies are intended to produce lower development costs, faster delivery of applications, vendor choice, interoperability, and a richer Web experience. Greater collaboration capabilities that can be added to existing HTML sites or used for new applications is another goal. Also being unveiled on Wednesday is the organization's Web site and a white paper covering a description of AJAX, the AJAX value proposition and a technical section on AJAX architectures. These architectures include single and dual DOMs (Document Object Model), in which the single model involves processing everything in HTML browsers, while the dual approach involves using an XML parser that holds the description of the UI. The dual model offers a richer set of functionality but requires a larger download, typically, Ferraiolo said. AJAX in the open source world also is being included in the alliance's list of issues to cover. One of the goals for the alliance is the ability to have a zero-cost option, but it's not trying to lock out vendors from making money at all," said Ferraiolo. A second meeting of the alliance is planned for Oct. 5-6 in Santa Clara, Calif. The alliance on Oct. 5 plans to announce it has moved to a formal governance model that includes a steering committee. Goals and procedural issues also will be discussed. Security of AJAX also will be on the agenda, Ferraiolo said.
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(InfoWorld) - Castle, which is an open source project to ease development on Microsoft's .Net platform, is nearing its general release. Spawned out of the defunct Apache Avalon object-oriented framework, Castle is built as a set of programming libraries. In addition to .Net, it also will work with Mono, an open source implementation of .Net.Â  "Castle's goals are avoid code repetition, use convention instead of configuration whenever it's possible, and handle common tasks on the programmer's behalf," said project creator Hamilton Verissimo, founder of the Castle Stronghold consultancy in Brazil. A second release candidate of Castle 1.0 is available as of several weeks ago. A general release is targeted for January.Â  Castle can be used for enterprise and Web application development. It features tools including MonoRail, which is a Web framework inspired by Ruby on Rails. MonoRail uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern for application flow, data, and views. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is featured as well. Also in Castle are ActiveRecord, for mapping objects to databases, and Windsor, which is an object lifecycle container for making code more maintainable.Â  "[Castle is] a collection of many different tools and features primarily designed for easing development and reducing development time," said Kevin Williams, who is a developer involved in Castle. Ease of use and intuitiveness are the primary draws of Castle, Williams said. "Of all the software that I've used over the years in .Net, I've never seen anything as easy to use or powerful as the Castle tools," Williams said. "It's very intuitive to use and you have a lot of control over things and it's very extensible," Williams said. Users can mold Castle to their environment or use it with the Visual Studio IDE. "Probably the best thing I can say is that as developers improve their practices and learn about new methodologies and techniques and design patterns and all these things, sometimes it's difficult to put all these tool together and make it work," Williams said. "Castle fits all those pieces together for you and gives you a jumpstart in what you want to build." Castle began as an attempt to bridge Avalon to .Net. Planning already is under way for version 2.0 of Castle. The MonoRail component in version 2.0 may be enabled to work with many view engines at the same time. A domain language to generate JavaScript also is eyed, as is a better template engine in the vein of Ruby. Performance improvements also are planned for MonoRail. Initialization and mapping improvements are expected for ActiveRecord in Castle 2.0. The IoC (Inversion of Control) microkernel in Castle may be more configurable as well.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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SableVM is a robust, extremely portable, efficient, and specifications-compliant Java Virtual Machine that aims to be easy to maintain and to extend. It features a state-of-the-art and efficient interpreter engine. Its source code is very accessible and easy to understand. It also has many robustness features that have been the object of careful design.     SableVM is a clean-room implementation of the publicly available specifications.    In this version, we added an experimental generational garbage collector, we imported a new GNU Classpath snapshot, we added handling of Jar/Zip files on boot classpath, we added user-friendly failure messages for bootstrap problems, we added added a profiling switch, we made sablevm-classpath install its files in standard locations, we made jikes and gcc be less verbose by default, and we made several important bugfixes and improvements.  You can download the SableVM from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5523&release_id=281502
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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InfoWorld - Application developers are getting a raft of new options this week with Sun updating J2SE, Borland upping its CORBA ante, and Compuware detailing products that will work with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 toolbox.
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Michael Kimsal has come up with the start of a series to introduce PHP developers to the world of Grails (the Java framework).   The comparisons I plan to make will be mostly to PHP, cause that's what I'm most familiar with, though there may be some other comparisons from time to time.  This is a work in progress, but I'd be very interested in feedback from anyone out there interested in this aea - Grails, Groovy, PHP, why another language/platform/framework, etc.   The first two installments have been posted - part one and part two - with an introduction to what Grails is and a brief dip into some "Hello world" sort of code to give you an idea of the structure.
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This step towards easy portability of software from one Java-enabled mobile device to another, which is currently not the case because there is no standard specification, would ultimately provide mobile customers with a wide choice of feature rich Java
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Mainsoft has introduced a new version of Mainsoft for J2EE, which now lets Visual Studio developers build applications for Java-based systems.
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JXplorer is a fully functional ldap browser written in java with a pluggable architecture, plug in security providers, ldif support, i18n support, online help, user configurable html forms for data display and much, much more. A stable release candidate for JXplorer 3.1 is now available for download; if it checks out it will become the 3.1 release. This release includes a bunch of new security goodies, such as improved SSL handling with browser-like detection of server certificates, optional client side password hashing, and kerberos support.    Otherwise, a number of bug fixes and some internal code refactoring.  If the second release candidate is good (the first had a minor gui problem with kerberos passwords) I'll make the OS specific install packages and re-release in a week or so!  You can find this release candidate here:  https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55394&package_id=52565
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Read and Write ICO,BMP formats in 100% pure Java   Been a long time in the making, but I've finally gotten round to the final release for 0.7  The library appears to be stable, hence my decision to finalize the current release.  Thanks to Olivier Le Tiec for reporting a bug with irregular icons (width != height), together with the necessary bug fix.  Thanks for using image4j!
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The Java Studio Enterprise 7 platform, available now, offers a collaboration feature called Code-Aware that allows distributed teams of developers in different buildings and different continents work together on projects, according to Sun.
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BIE (Business Integration Engine) is an Open Source data integration system for exchanging data with internal or external sources. Built in Java, this platform-independent integration system includes a web-based management and configuration GUI, a drag-and-drop Map Builder and a wide variety of built in protocols, message formatters and listeners. It competes in the same EAI space as applications like MicrosoftÂ® BizTalkÂ®, WebmethodsÂ®, and TibcoÂ®.   BIE 6.0.3 adds message Aggregation Actions based on the Combine and Gather integration patterns, Stylesheet export and compiler enhancements to the Map Builder, as well as stability and bug fixes.  BIE can be downloaded at http://www.brunswickwdi.com/bie
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(InfoWorld) - Over two years in the making, Sun Microsystems is due to release the latest version of its Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software Monday, placing particular emphasis on the application development platform's support for other scripting languages. Java SE 6 is the first version of the software where developers will be able to mix Java technology with other languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby and JavaScript. "Going multilingual is a big theme of this release," said Mark Reinhold, Sun's chief engineer for Java SE. Sun's approach used to be that Java was the solution for all developers' problems, he said. But it has since become clear to Sun that developers want to use other languages in conjunction with Java to create hybrid applications. Sun has created a collection of scripting engines on its Web site, and Java SE 6 includes a preconfigured version of Mozilla's open-source Rhino JavaScript engine. "Java SE 6 is an extremely significant release for us," said Jean Elliott, Sun's senior director of Java platform product marketing. She drew particular attention to community participation in the platform's development. For the first time, hundreds of non-Sun developers had some input into the Java SE development process, beginning in September 2004 as Sun released Java SE 5. One area where developers influenced the platform was their request that an add-on for Sun's NetBeans Java integrated development environment be included, Reinhold said. So the new platform features a new layout manager component based on NetBeans GUI Builder, formerly known as Matisse. Working more closely with external developers and enabling more than 160 third-party software vendors to test their Java-based applications on pre-release builds of Java SE 6 should result in more rapid adoption of the new software, Elliott said. "We expect the transition from Java SE 5 to 6 be very easy because of the focus we put on compatibility," she said. Michael Cote, a software analyst with RedMonk, thinks it could take developers up to a year or more to adopt Java SE 6. "Some teams will work it into their next release cycle, others will take several cycles to evaluate it, while others will have to wait on their applications server vendors to update to 6," he said via e-mail. Sun's done a lot of work around the Java HotSpot virtual machine and garbage collection to ensure that Java SE provides good "out-of-box performance," Reinhold said. The vendor has also spent time significantly improving tools within Java SE 6 aimed at diagnosing, managing and monitoring application development. Java SE 6 comes with support for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, the business release of which made its debut late last month. Sun had to engage in some "difficult workarounds" with pre-release versions of Vista, but Reinhold said that such issues are no longer a problem when integrating Java SE 6 with the APIs (application programming interfaces) contained in the final, shipping version of the Microsoft OS. Some of the joint engineering work Microsoft and Sun have done as part of interoperability effort Project Tango appears in Java SE 6's support for new Web services APIs such as the Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0, he added. "There's a very clear message from Sun's customers: 'You need to work with Microsoft,'" Reinhold said. When the full-blown open-source version of Java SE known as OpenJDK Project appears in March next year, it will include all the new functionality of Java SE 6, according to Elliott.
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A new concept - part of Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.5 - called the Dynamic Language Runtime is gaining popularity, not only among Web developers but also business program developers who see this as a possibility to build dynamic and flexible functionality that Java hasn't provided yet.  BetaNews spoke with one of the new technology's chief evangelists last week at TechEd.