Apache announced this week the first release of Apache Sling, an open-source Web framework intended to make Java development fun again, according to a bulletin from the organization.
Sling brings content into the Web and provides a platform to manage and upgrade content. It makes use of a Java content repository such as Apache Jackrabbit.
"Sling is intended to bring back the fun to Java developers and make the life of a Web developer easier," an Apache representative said.
"It's really just a framework for building a Web app," said Santi Pierini, senior vice president of marketing at Day Software, which has contributed code for Sling and uses the technology in its Communique' (CQ) content management platform. Sling still is in an incubator stage but could become an official Apache project in a few months, Pierini said.
"We're trying to create a Web framework that makes it easier to build what they call RESTful apps," said Pierini in an interview on Friday morning. With Sling, a content delivery framework and content access capabilities are provided so that developers not have to code these themselves, he said.
Sling can be used for building various types of Web applications, including wikis, blogs, customer self service, and digital asset management systems, Pierini said.
The framework is based on Java Specification Request 170 for Java Content Repositories. That specification features an API for interacting with these repositories. Additionally, an embedded Apache Felix OSGi framework and console provide a dynamic runtime environment enabling code and content bundles to be loaded, unloaded, and reconfigured at runtime.
Sling, Apache said, makes it easy to implement simple applications while providing an enterprise framework for more complex applications.
A scripting layer using Apache BSF (Bean Scripting Framework) enables Sling to be used with any scripting language. Developers also can use Java and develop applications in RESTful way.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Google Mobile Maps adds mass transit
The mobile version of Google Maps has long ranked among my favorite cellphone applications. It makes it dead easy to find local businesses when I'm on the go.
That said, I've always thought the mobile program should add a major feature from the Web-based version of Google Maps: information about public transit in many major cities -- including Dallas.
The folks at Google apparently agree because they've just added public transit information. This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.
Unfortunately, the upgraded Mobile Maps won't work on all phones that support the older version (including my Motorola Q). It only works for BlackBerry handsets and most other Java-based phones.
If you have such a device and a data plan, you should definitely check out what the program can do and then download it from http://www.google.com/gmm.
That said, I've always thought the mobile program should add a major feature from the Web-based version of Google Maps: information about public transit in many major cities -- including Dallas.
The folks at Google apparently agree because they've just added public transit information. This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.
Unfortunately, the upgraded Mobile Maps won't work on all phones that support the older version (including my Motorola Q). It only works for BlackBerry handsets and most other Java-based phones.
If you have such a device and a data plan, you should definitely check out what the program can do and then download it from http://www.google.com/gmm.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
JavaOne: AMD cites Java improvement efforts
The company promoted its Java support at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco during a keynote presentation. AMD is working on improvements in compilers, operating systems, middleware and development tools as well as Java Virtual Machine improvements. AMD is finding ways to improve Java performance across multi-core environments and has been researching improvements in garbage collection, according to AMD. Garbage collection involves the discarding of objects from memory after they are no longer needed or referenced.
"AMD understands that good software is critical to our product roadmap," said Leendert van Doorn, a senior AMD fellow. Without software, silicon just conducts energy, he said.
Multi-threaded programming "is inherently easier to do in Java," because of Java's built-in support for concurrent programming, van Doorn said.
But there are hurdles to overcome in application performance, said van Doorn. "This is an issue we're working on to help address," he said.
AMD has proposed its Light-Weight Profiling software parallelism specification to help managed code like Java run more efficiently by using continuous performance feedback. Also, AMD's Advanced Synchronization Facility proposal increases software concurrency.
"AMD understands that good software is critical to our product roadmap," said Leendert van Doorn, a senior AMD fellow. Without software, silicon just conducts energy, he said.
Multi-threaded programming "is inherently easier to do in Java," because of Java's built-in support for concurrent programming, van Doorn said.
But there are hurdles to overcome in application performance, said van Doorn. "This is an issue we're working on to help address," he said.
AMD has proposed its Light-Weight Profiling software parallelism specification to help managed code like Java run more efficiently by using continuous performance feedback. Also, AMD's Advanced Synchronization Facility proposal increases software concurrency.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
The Million Dollar SOA Question: Software ESBs or Hardware Appliances?
Service-oriented architectures have now become the norm for IT to deliver value to their respective businesses. A SOA-based approach promises an environment of agility, loosely coupled integration, and a composition-based approach, all of which results in faster adaptability to the demands of the business, lower operational costs, and the increased “pluggability” of standards-based applications. A service is nothing but an abstraction of something that does some business unit of work. This could be something like placing an order, retrieving customer information, or modifying personal information. Technically these services could be exposed with any binding/protocol/interface with request/response parameters being structured or ad-hoc data. Standards-based services have their payloads structured as XML.
In a traditional old school infrastructure, business functions were encompassed in packaged or customized applications with their predefined user interfaces. In a SOA, these traditionally "trapped" business functions tend to add more value when encompassed within a much larger scoped entity and then used by a more modern interaction mechanism. The true emancipation of these business functions required the transition of traditional IT infrastructure toward a new class of technology components. The two major roles of this new services infrastructure are a service brokering role and a gatekeeping role. There are other auxiliary roles, including that of a repository, endpoint management, and some higher-level roles such as orchestration in this new services infrastructure. However, the remainder of this article discusses the primary roles of service brokering and gatekeeping in detail and addresses the different technology components that can fulfill the roles.
In a traditional old school infrastructure, business functions were encompassed in packaged or customized applications with their predefined user interfaces. In a SOA, these traditionally "trapped" business functions tend to add more value when encompassed within a much larger scoped entity and then used by a more modern interaction mechanism. The true emancipation of these business functions required the transition of traditional IT infrastructure toward a new class of technology components. The two major roles of this new services infrastructure are a service brokering role and a gatekeeping role. There are other auxiliary roles, including that of a repository, endpoint management, and some higher-level roles such as orchestration in this new services infrastructure. However, the remainder of this article discusses the primary roles of service brokering and gatekeeping in detail and addresses the different technology components that can fulfill the roles.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Dream java: HashSet from Sun, but likely BitSet from GNU
As the majority knows we now have two FOSS implementations of java runtime library: OpenJDK from Sun Microsystems and the parallel GNU Classpath project. There are various opinions on how this situation will be resolved in the future. Hence there is a natural interest to compare these two implementations.
GNU Classpath usually runs with the different java virtual machine than the Sun's code and is used as a whole, without trying to separate any part apart. In that way, no honest comparison is possible between any units that are smaller than all jre + all rtl together. However many packages in GNU Classpath are written entirely in java and are relatively weakly dependent from each other. This opens opportunity to test (and, if wanted, to use) them separately from the main project.
For Sun, we used the classes and jre of the 1.6.0_04 release (not to give opportunity to argue later that results of this research do not apply to the “original” java). GNU Classpath java.util. package was taked from CVS repository and modified to run on the same 1.6.0_04 Sun's jre (simply moving classes into another package). That way we have got the two java.util.* implementations that were capable to coexist on the same virtual machine and to be directly compared with each other.
GNU Classpath usually runs with the different java virtual machine than the Sun's code and is used as a whole, without trying to separate any part apart. In that way, no honest comparison is possible between any units that are smaller than all jre + all rtl together. However many packages in GNU Classpath are written entirely in java and are relatively weakly dependent from each other. This opens opportunity to test (and, if wanted, to use) them separately from the main project.
For Sun, we used the classes and jre of the 1.6.0_04 release (not to give opportunity to argue later that results of this research do not apply to the “original” java). GNU Classpath java.util. package was taked from CVS repository and modified to run on the same 1.6.0_04 Sun's jre (simply moving classes into another package). That way we have got the two java.util.* implementations that were capable to coexist on the same virtual machine and to be directly compared with each other.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Eclipse launches super run-time project as alternative to Java and .NET
The Eclipse organization has amassed a huge installed base of developers using its Java-based open source development tools. Now the organization has set its sights on the run-time arena and will take on Sun’s Java and Microsoft’s .NET with what it says is an agnostic open source component model that runs across multiple operating systems and computing tiers.
At EclipseCon 2008 in Santa Clara, Calif on Monday, the project leaders announced the Eclipse Runtime project (Eclipse RT) an initiative to build an open source run-time technology based on its own Equinox, a lightweight OSGi compliant run-time. Equinox, the core run-time platform for Eclipse, is not new. The run-time is used by Actuate, BEA, Code 9, Iona, IBM and Oracle and is reportedly deployed on millions of developers’ desktops. (the announcement comes three days before the vernal Equinox
What is new is the overarching effort to unify the organization’s many run-time projects including Equinox, the Eclipse Communications Framework, EclipseLink, Rich Ajax Platform (RAP), Riena and Swordfish into a unified project and establish a consistent open source run-time and component model that runs across all operating systems and computing tiers.
At EclipseCon 2008 in Santa Clara, Calif on Monday, the project leaders announced the Eclipse Runtime project (Eclipse RT) an initiative to build an open source run-time technology based on its own Equinox, a lightweight OSGi compliant run-time. Equinox, the core run-time platform for Eclipse, is not new. The run-time is used by Actuate, BEA, Code 9, Iona, IBM and Oracle and is reportedly deployed on millions of developers’ desktops. (the announcement comes three days before the vernal Equinox
What is new is the overarching effort to unify the organization’s many run-time projects including Equinox, the Eclipse Communications Framework, EclipseLink, Rich Ajax Platform (RAP), Riena and Swordfish into a unified project and establish a consistent open source run-time and component model that runs across all operating systems and computing tiers.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Tech to java: LeBlanc now tackles retail
JazzyBird Coffee isn’t Brian LeBlanc’s first business startup.
Bitten by the same bug that 23 years ago led his father Bob to create Bengal Products — the maker of Bengal Roach Spray and other insecticides — Brian LeBlanc worked for that multimillion-dollar family venture 15 years while starting his own technology businesses.
He operated Intersurf Online for five years before the Internet service provider merged eight years ago with Network Technology Group. It’s now a data storage firm that complements the Louisiana Technology Park in the former Bon Marché Mall on Florida Boulevard. PNHS of Dallas acquired NTG last year.
More than a decade ago, LeBlanc also launched Celestial Technologies — a company that proposed an online music jukebox using compressed music files. LeBlanc hit a near home run with the concept that licensed Lucent Technologies compression software to encode digital music and tilted at beating rival MP3’s format.
Bitten by the same bug that 23 years ago led his father Bob to create Bengal Products — the maker of Bengal Roach Spray and other insecticides — Brian LeBlanc worked for that multimillion-dollar family venture 15 years while starting his own technology businesses.
He operated Intersurf Online for five years before the Internet service provider merged eight years ago with Network Technology Group. It’s now a data storage firm that complements the Louisiana Technology Park in the former Bon Marché Mall on Florida Boulevard. PNHS of Dallas acquired NTG last year.
More than a decade ago, LeBlanc also launched Celestial Technologies — a company that proposed an online music jukebox using compressed music files. LeBlanc hit a near home run with the concept that licensed Lucent Technologies compression software to encode digital music and tilted at beating rival MP3’s format.
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