I have grappled with this topic before. Tonight, after 13 hours of struggle, I finally got my web app perfected in this regard. It all started when I needed to start the Transaction out in the view, i.e. as soon as the resource is opened on the HTTP side (rather than when the database service [...]
Recently been deeply stuck in building software (apart from starting my PhD part-time). A long time ago I wrote about dynamically loading Spring contexts and component discovery – this system I’ve been building is an evolution of that one. We decided to adopt an most REST-based style to integrate between our components. Now, “run-time” discovery [...]
Recently I’ve been working on two projects. They are an exercise in contrasts. First the technologies and the development methodologies. So the first company uses a very Waterfall process and the integration platform is SOA. We’ve managed to build, in the middle of this, a small and focussed Java component that uses JMS in and [...]
Lately I’ve been writing a Tapestry 5 based web application. I’ve used it before for a smaller application but this is the first time I’ve used it on a larger project. In a number of ways it is a very powerful framework to write web applications. The basics of Tapestry is that it is a [...]
Strange IM conversation came my way the other night, whilst discussing some code a team I led wrote at a previous workplace, I think it highlights some crucial factors Oracle bring to the Enterprise Java World: anon 9:04PM [about that code] crazymcphee 9:05 PM well, it WAS perfect … CRAZY perfect anon 9:06 PM lol… [...]
The Paranoid Engineer has declared ‘Screw All Gui Builders‘, with an excellent example of the genre of code that can be produced by one such tool, contrasted against the much nicer hand-written code. Now I can certainly sympathise with his pain. The thing that really gets my goat up, and the subject of this post, [...]
Adam Bien still wants to believe that a JPA layer can directly replace a formal ‘DAO layer’. And I still disagree. I might agree that for simple enough systems, it could end up being that in fact the service layers end up with PersistenceManager logic directly in their methods. But then I might say a [...]
Simon Mittag says that Java Architecture is becoming irrelevant. I am now a contractor for a large government organisation and as part of my role there, I get to participate in these workshops. Trust me, a fruitless exercise. People bickering about their favourite frameworks, why to use Axis over Spring-WS, why everyone should use maven [...]
Eric Spiegelberg recently speculated that the new Java portal specification JSR286 was at the edge of irrelevance. And others agree. I think it’s worse than irrelevant – it’s a solution in search of a problem. I’ve worked on a successful (JSR168) portal implementation, just last year. I truly don’t see what the concept of ‘portal’ brings [...]
“Programmerless programming” is a fad that never dies. It’s a mirage that never fades but always recedes to just out of reach. Every few years a vendor, or a group of vendors comes out with some bright idea to allow some class of end-user, or business analyst, or what have you to build their own [...]