Thursday, April 20, 2006
Playing to Our Strengths
O'REILLY NETWORK'S ONJava.com NEWSLETTER
--------------------------------------------------
The Independent Source for Enterprise Java
==================================================================
Sponsored by Oracle
Oracle ADF Faces--a library of 100+ JavaServer Faces components that works
with any JSF-compliant IDE and application server--simplifies development
of rich web user interfaces. With the most comprehensive set of render
kits available, you can extend your applications to run on a host of
clients, from telnet to PDAs.
Download now. http://www.oreilly.com/go/orc_jav42006
==================================================================
Greetings...
So, let me take an aggregate guess. While every Java developer is
different, I'll bet a lot of you:
1. work with databases
2. use Tomcat
3. use Solaris
Not everyone. In fact, the group that matches all three of these is
probably fairly small. But in general terms, most of us in the Java realm
are doing enterprise work, which almost always involves touching a
database. Many of us use Tomcat because its reference implementation for
servlets and JSP is all but a standard, and lots of us use Solaris because
it's always been a popular choice as an enterprise server. So this week's
ONJava plays to our strengths, as we feature database strategies for the
Tomcat-based web app, and some configuration tips to keep Solaris humming.
We also feature an introduction to EJB 3.0 and its many changes, and
throw a bone to the Swing developers with a nifty multi-split pane that
just might bring a few of you back to desktop Java.
Beginning and intermediate developers may have heard of object pooling
(keeping reusable objects around in a "pool" instead of frequently
creating and destroying objects) without having had an opportunity to put
the concept to work. It's critically important in database work, given
the expense of creating and destroying database connections, and Kunal
Jaggi walks through an application of the idea in "Database Connection
Pooling with Tomcat," in which he shows how to use JNDI to allow your
components to find and use the pool.
<http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2006/04/19/database-connection-pooling-with-tomcat.html>
Do you have a stake in the startup scripts of the server your app runs on?
Well, it depends--do you want your application to run fast, and to have
expected services present? Ah, now I've got your attention. Chris
Josephes writes "In most Unix environments, the startup process consists
of a handful of autonomous boot scripts. They act independently of one
another; unaware of what scripts have already run or which ones will run
after them. When they are invoked, there is no serious error checking and
no recourse if the script fails." In "Using Solaris SMF," he introduces
Solaris 10's Service Management Facility (SMF), which "addresses the
shortcomings of startup scripts and creates an infrastructure to manage
daemons after the host has booted."
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/sysadmin/2006/04/13/using-solaris-smf.html>
EJB brings scalability, security, and support for transactions, but
traditionally it has also required a pedantic assortment of deployment
descriptors, implementation of rarely used callbacks, and the resulting
code is ill-suited to testing outside of a container. EJB 3.0 addresses
these complaints in a major reworking of the framework, and these changes
are described by Vimala Ranganathan and Anurag Pareek in the dev2dev
article "An Introduction to the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 Specification."
<http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2006/01/ejb-3.html>
In our feature article from java.net, Hans Muller introduces a compelling
JSplitPane replacement in "MultiSplitPane: Splitting Without Nesting."
"MultiSplitPane is not a general-purpose docking framework. It's a Swing
container that just supports a resizable tiled layout of arbitrary
components. It's intended to be a generalization of the existing Swing
JSplitPane component, which only supports a pair of tiles. The
MultiSplitLayout layout manager recursively arranges its components in row
and column groups called 'splits.' Elements of the layout are separated by
gaps called 'dividers' that can be moved by the user, in the same way as
JSplitPane. The overall layout is defined with a simple tree-structured
model that can be stored and retrieved to make the user's layout
configuration persistent. The initial layout, before the user has
intervened, is defined conventionally, in terms of the layout model and
the component's preferred sizes."
<http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/03/23/multi-split-pane.html>
Recent O'Reilly Network weblogs of interest to Java developers:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2006/04/jsr_170_jcr_content_management.html>
Check out more O'Reilly Network Java weblogs at:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/weblog_s?x-subject=3&>
Please join us again next week.
Chris Adamson, Editor
ONJava.com
cadamson@oreilly.com
==================================================================
Advance Your IT Career with O'Reilly Learning
"I can now go into the Unix program on the Apache server and customize the
Metalib program so it works for our library. Wow! :-) It feels great."
-Ingrid Mifflin, Systems Librarian
Since 2004, Systems Librarian Ingrid Mifflin has enrolled in 11 O'Reilly
Learning courses, and has already earned two University of Illinois
Certificates! We're proud of Ingrid--she ramped up her career, and so
can you.
Now, until April 30th, use code APRIL2006 and save 15%.
<http://oreillylearning.com/promotion/>
==================================================================
*** Java News and Weblogs ***
java.net Weblogs
http://weblogs.java.net/
O'Reilly Network Java Weblogs
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/weblog_s?x-subject=3
Other Java News (channel -- LANG: JAVA)
http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/index.php
Java Cookbook Recipe of the Day
http://www.onjava.com/onjava/javacook/solution.csp?day=1
Java Events
http://www.onjava.com/onjava/events/
==================================================================
BUY 2 BOOKS DIRECT, GET 1 FREE
Take advantage of O'Reilly's "Buy 2 Books, Get 1 Free" offer by cutting
and pasting code "OPC10" into our shopping cart. Any orders over $29.95
also qualify for free shipping in the US.
http://www.oreilly.com/store/?CMP=NLC-0Z7E11150382&ATT=java4
==================================================================
*** Other Related O'Reilly Network sites ***
O'Reilly Network
http://www.oreillynet.com
XML.com
http://xml.com/
ONLamp.com
http://onlamp.com
O'Reilly Media
http://www.oreilly.com/
O'Reilly Java
http://java.oreilly.com/
***
ONJava.com Affiliates
Servlets.com
http://www.servlets.com/
JDOM.org
http://www.jdom.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Interested in sponsoring the ONJava.com newsletter? Please email us
at advertising@oreilly.com for rate and availability information.
Thank you!
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your newsletter subscription options, please visit
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/nl/home
For assistance, email help@oreillynet.com
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(707) 827-7000
------------------------------------------------------------------
