Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

JEEConf 2012 Trip Report

2012-05-20T02:40:14+00:00

600+ participants, 3 days, 4 concurrent tracks, 28 sessions, 3 workshops, 30+ speakers - a quick summary of JEEConf 2012.

This is second year of the conference and they've grown >50% from last year. This is the only major Java conference in Ukraine and there is a huge demand for Java speakers in this region. Even though the conference started with a focus on enterprise Java but has diversified into broader Java ecosystem covering Play, Gradle, Hazelcast, Scala, Hadoop, Cassandra, and other topics.

I gave a talk on Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud to about 400+ developers. I used the newly refreshed slide deck with tons of code samples from different technologies such as JAX-RS 2.0, JPA 2.1, and Bean Validation 1.1. The slide deck is available.

Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud at JEEConf 2012

I had the opportunity to spend some time with Yakov Fain, a Java Champion, who gave two day-long workshops on Java EE 6 and JavaScript. I also spent some time with Ruslan, CEO of Jelastic and thanked them for their continued support of GlassFish. The local JUG is not active but I learned about Club of Anonymous Developers where geeks meet couple of times a month to talk about different technologies. If you live in the local region, then consider joining this group and learn/share your experience.

Thank you Nikolai and Alexsey for taking the lead on running a Java conference in Ukraine. I hope to be back next year!

Here are some pictures captured from the trip ...

I also managed to run in the streets of Ukraine:

And now the complete photo album

Next and last stop in this trip, Java Developer Day, Johannesburg ...

Geecon 2012 Trip Report

2012-05-18T21:45:32+00:00

What moved the Java world in Poland ? About 600 participants, 60+ sessions, 45+ speakers, and 3 days at Geecon!

This was my first time at the conference and they kept me busy :-) I've delivered the self-paced Java EE 6 hands-on lab multiple times all around the world, but this is the first time where I used the content to demonstrate the simplicity and ease-of-use of the platform in a code-driven session. The 2 hrs were entertaining with constant interaction from about 50+ attendees. The lab material can be downloaded from here anyway.

Then right after I gave a talk on Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud. This talk gave an introduction to the upcoming Java EE 7 platform to about 50 attendees. And I refreshed the slide deck with tons of code samples from different technologies such as JAX-RS 2.0, JPA 2.1, and Bean Validation 1.1 that have released their early drafts so far. The slide deck is available.

Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud at Geecon 2012

Pete Muir also helped me provide a more thorough insight into Contexts & Dependency Injection 1.1.

The talk on JAX-RS 2.0 had about 100+ attendees where I gave an introduction to JAX-RS, explained the motivation behind upcoming features, and showed code samples of how the API is evolving. The slide deck is available here.

JAX-RS 2.0: RESTful Web services on steroids at Geecon 2012

And finally the last talk shared our experience of building a PaaS platform using GlassFish, the slides are available.

PaaSing a Java EE 6 Application at Geecon 2012

This talk explained the internals of GlassFish and how Orachestration Engine, Service Provisioning Engine, IaaS Management Service, and Cloud Elasticity Manager work together to provide a Java EE 7-based PaaS environment.

Overall, the movie theater-style seating worked well and the technical crew knew their job very well. The volunteers were very prompt in showing the time remaining which was helpful. Everybody in the conference team gave a very welcome feeling which certainly wants me to go back there again next year (provided they accept my submissions ;-) Thank you AdamD (Poznan JUG leader and conference organizer), AdamP, Adrian, Marcin, Lukasz, and everybody else for a great show!

The speakers' dinner was in the old part of the town and I enjoyed sharing stories with Gavin King, Pete Muir, Stephane Eperdaud, Anton Arhipov, Joonas Lehtinen, and many others.

Here are some pictures captured from the trip ...

And the complete album

Next stop JEEConf ...

JSON-P: Java API for JSON Processing (TOTD #178)

2012-05-15T12:11:10+00:00

JSR 353 is Java API for JSON Processing (JSON-P) and will define an API to process (e.g. parse, generate, transform, and query) JSON. This JSR will be delivered as part of Java EE 7. The API will allow to produce and consume JSON in a streaming fashion (StAX equivalent in XML world) and build a Java object model for JSON (DOM equivalent in XML world). Note, binding JSON to Java objects and vice versa is not part of the scope of this JSR.

json-processing-spec.java.net is where all the specification work is happening and jsonp.java.net is the project for the Reference Implementation. Its still early days but this Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will explain how to get started. The workspace can be checked out as

git clone git://java.net/jsonp~git
Cloning into jsonp~git...
remote: Counting objects: 313, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (218/218), done.
remote: Total 313 (delta 110), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (313/313), 64.13 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (110/110), done.

Building the workspace require JAVA_HOME to be set (/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home or /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home). Once set, the workspace can be built as

mvn install
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Reactor Build Order:
[INFO] 
[INFO] RI for JSON-P JSR
[INFO] Java API for Processing JSON (JSON-P)
[INFO] jsonp-tests
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building RI for JSON-P JSR 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

. . .

Tests run: 22, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.3.1:jar (default-jar) @ jsonp-tests ---
[WARNING] JAR will be empty - no content was marked for inclusion!
[INFO] Building jar: /Users/arungup/code/workspaces/jsonp~git/tests/target/jsonp-tests-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-install-plugin:2.3.1:install (default-install) @ jsonp-tests ---
[INFO] Installing /Users/arungup/code/workspaces/jsonp~git/tests/target/jsonp-tests-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar to /Users/arungup/.m2/repository/org/glassfish/jsonp-tests/1.0-SNAPSHOT/jsonp-tests-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
[INFO] Installing /Users/arungup/code/workspaces/jsonp~git/tests/pom.xml to /Users/arungup/.m2/repository/org/glassfish/jsonp-tests/1.0-SNAPSHOT/jsonp-tests-1.0-SNAPSHOT.pom
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Reactor Summary:
[INFO] 
[INFO] RI for JSON-P JSR ................................. SUCCESS [0.528s]
[INFO] Java API for Processing JSON (JSON-P) ............. SUCCESS [12.214s]
[INFO] jsonp-tests ....................................... SUCCESS [1.695s]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The API .jar file is in api/target/jsonp-ri-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar and javadocs are in api/target/jsonp-ri-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar. There are several tests in the tests directory that shows the API usage. The RI JARs are not pushed to a public maven repo yet but are installed in the local repo with the above command. These can be included in your "pom.xml" with the following coordinates:

<dependency>
 <groupId>javax.json</groupId>
 <artifactId>jsonp-ri</artifactId>
 <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

The key APIs are

DOM-based APIs (javax.json package)

JsonBuilder - Builds a JSON object or JSON array
JsonReader - Reads a JSON object or array from the stream
JsonWriter - Writes a JSON object or array to the stream

Streaming APIs (javax.json.stream package)

JsonGenerator - Streaming JSON generator
JsonParser - Allows forward, read-only access to JSON

Here is an sample usage of JsonBuilder:

JsonObject value = new JsonBuilder() 

   .beginObject() 

     .add("firstName", "John") 

     .add("lastName", "Smith") 

     .add("age", 25) 

        .beginObject("address")


          
.add("streetAddress", "21 2nd Street") 

          
.add("city", "New York") 

          
.add("state", "NY") 

          
.add("postalCode", "10021") 

        .endObject() 

       
.beginArray("phoneNumber") 

          
.beginObject() 

             
.add("type", "home") 

             
.add("number", "212 555-1234") 

          
.endObject() 

          
.beginObject() 

             
.add("type", "home") 

             
.add("number", "646 555-4567") 

          
.endObject() 

        .endArray() 

   .endObject() 

.build();

Here is a sample usage of JsonReader:

String json = "...";
JsonReader reader = new JsonReader(new StringReader(json));
JsonValue value = reader.readObject();
reader.close();

A sample usage of JsonWriter:


JsonWriter jsonWriter = new JsonWriter(new FileWriter(...));
JsonObject jsonObject = new JsonBuilder()
 .beginObject()
 . . .
 .endObject()
 .build();
jsonWriter.writeObject(jsonObject);
jsonWriter.close();

Here is a sample usage of JsonGenerator:

JsonGenerator generator = new JsonGenerator(new FileWriter(...));
generator
 .beginObject()
 . . .
 .beginArray()
 . . .
 .endArray()
 .endObject()
.build();
generator.close();

And finally a sample usage of JsonParser:

String json = "...";
JsonParser parser = new JsonParser(new StringReader(json));
Iterator<Event> it = reader.iterator();
Event event = it.next();

The event can be of the following types:

START_OBJECT
END_OBJECT
START_ARRAY
END_ARRAY
KEY_NAME
VALUE_STRING
VALUE_NUMBER
VALUE_FALSE
VALUE_TRUE
VALUE_NULL

Here are some references to track the progress and provide feedback:

Join the specification project at json-processing-spec.java.net
The Reference Implementation is built at jsonp.java.net
Mailing Lists

users@json-processing-spec.java.net
jsr353-experts@json-processing.java.net

Issue Tracker: java.net/jira/browse/JSON_PROCESSING_SPEC

This JSR will be delivered as part of Java EE 7. Here are some other early work that has been explained:

Have fun!

Java Day, Istanbul, May 2012 Trip Report

2012-05-14T18:27:31+00:00

About 120+ 150 attendees at Java Day, Istanbul learned about Java EE 6/7 earlier today. The Java track had about 100 110 attendees during most of the day. I gave 4 sessions:

Developing Modern and Lightweight Java EE 6 Applications using WebLogic 12c (keynote to all the attendees)
What's coming in Java EE 7
Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab using NetBeans/WebLogic
RESTful Web services using JAX-RS

The attendees were generally quiet but the hands-on session had some interesting conversations around Java EE 6 usage. TOTD #177 showcase the WebLogic Maven plugin usage TOTD #176 shows how to run Conference Planner application on WebLogic 12c. I also had the opportunity to meet the Istanbul JUG leader and local GTUG leader. Show your passion about Java by participating at the local JUG, all the more better to volunteer as a speaker :-)

The slides presented are available below.

WebLogic 12c Developer Deep Dive at Oracle Develop India 2012

Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud at Java Day, Istanbul, May 2012

RESTful Web services using JAX-RS

The self-paced instructions for Java EE 6 hands-on lab using NetBeans and WebLogic is available here.

Some pictures from the event and around the city ...

Here are a couple of more pictures from the local events team:

And the complete album:

Next stop Geecon, Poland ...

wls-maven-plugin: WebLogic 12c Maven Plugin Usage (TOTD #177)

2012-05-11T16:41:13+00:00

Oracle WebLogic Server 12c provides full Java EE 6 platform support. The screencast #39 shows how to build a complete application using NetBeans. The self-paced hands-on lab provides detailed instructions on the same as well. The Maven support in WebLogic 12c is much more improved. Steve Button and Markus Eisele wrote detailed blogs on how/what/why of Maven support in WebLogic. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will provide a quick overview of how to get started with using the maven plugin for deploying a Java EE 6 web application.

Download and install WebLogic 12c using the zip installer as explained in TOTD #174.
The Maven plugin can be installed using "$MW_HOME/wlserver/server/lib/wls-maven-plugin.jar". Change the directory to "$MW_HOME/wlserver/server/lib" and give the following commands:
```
mvn install
mvn install:install-file –Dfile=wls-maven-plugin.jar -DpomFile=pom.xml
```

The maven plugin usage can be seen by giving the following command:

mvn com.oracle.weblogic:wls-maven-plugin:help

Or add the following to "~/.m2/settings.xml":

<pluginGroups>     
<pluginGroup>com.oracle.weblogic</pluginGroup>
</pluginGroups>

And then give the following command:

mvn wls:help

to see the output as:

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building wls-maven-sample 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- wls-maven-plugin:12.1.1.0:help (default-cli) @ wls-maven-sample ---
[INFO] 
WebLogic Server Maven Plugin
The following goals are supported by wls-maven-plugin:

appc:
 The appc compiler generates and compiles the classes needed to deploy 
 EJBs and JSPs to WebLogic Server. It also validates the deployment 
 descriptors for compliance with the current specifications at both the 
 individual module level and the application level. 

deploy:
 To deploy a weblogic server application (supports all formats WAR,JAR 
 etc..)

create-domain:
 Create a domain for WebLogic Server using the default domain template. 
 For more complex domain creation use the WLST goal. 

help:
 Provides a list of all the goals supported by the wls-maven-plugin 

install:
 Install WebLogic Server 

list-apps:
 Lists the deployment names for applications and stand-alone modules 
 deployed distributed, or installed to the domain 

redeploy:
 Redeploys a running application or part of a running application 

start-app:
 Starts an application deployed on weblogic server. 

start-server:
 Start WebLogic Server 

stop-app:
 Stops an application 

stop-server:
 Stop Weblogic Server 

undeploy:
 Undeploys the application from weblogic server. Stops the deployment unit 
 and removes staged files from target servers 

update-app:
 Updates an application's deployment plan by redistributing the plan files 
 and reconfiguring the application based on the new plan contents. 

wlst:
 WLST wrapper for Maven 


For detailed help on a goal, use -Dgoal=<goal-name> -Ddetail=true options.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.794s
[INFO] Finished at: Thu May 03 06:38:23 IST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 8M/125M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

More details about each goal can be found using the following command:

mvn wls:help -Dgoal=<GOAL> -Ddetail=true

For example:

mvn wls:help -Dgoal=install -Ddetail=true
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Maven Stub Project (No POM) 1
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- wls-maven-plugin:12.1.1.0:help (default-cli) @ standalone-pom ---
[INFO] 
WebLogic Server Maven Plugin
The following goals are supported by wls-maven-plugin:

install:
 Install WebLogic Server 

 Available Parameters:

 installCommand:
 The command to use to install the product when using an 
 'executable' installer. The following macros are supported - 
 @INSTALLER_FILE@ - the path to the installer file, @JAVA_HOME@ - 
 path to the java home. eg: @JAVA_HOME@ -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -jar 
 @INSTALLER_FILE@ one two 

 artifactLocation:
 The address of the artifact. This can be one of the following - 
 1) A ':' separated maven coordinates of the form (groupId:artifac-
 tId:packaging:classifier:version) 2) A file on the local system 
 (/home/prash/myapps/helloworld.war)3) A remote http url 
 (http://foo/a/b.zip)

 middlewareHome:
 The home directory for Oracle WebLogic Server or Fusion 
 Middleware installation. Required unless WLS was installed in the 
 default location selected by the WLS Maven Plugin's install goal. 

 domainHome:
 Location of WLS domain 

 localRepository:
 The absolute path of a local maven repository. 

 artifactFactory:
 The artifactFactory is used to locate an artifact with a 
 groupId:artifactId:artifactName:version in the remote Repository 
 as provided by the remoteRepsitories parameter. 

 artifactResolver:
 Artifactresolver resolves the artifact from the remote 
 repository. Downloads an updated version of the artifact if 
 present in the remote repo. 



[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.889s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed May 02 17:35:46 PDT 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 6M/89M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Build a Java EE 6 application

Create a Java EE 6 Maven web application as:

mvn archetype:generate
-DarchetypeGroupId=org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes
-DarchetypeArtifactId=webapp-javaee6 -DgroupId=example
-DartifactId=wls-maven-sample -DarchetypeVersion=1.5
-DinteractiveMode=false

Add a trivial servlet to the sample project by following the screencast #39. The complete source code for the project can be downloaded here.

Add the following code fragment to the generated "pom.xml":

<plugin>                
<groupId>com.oracle.weblogic</groupId>
<artifactId>wls-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>12.1.1.0</version>
</plugin>

Try some Maven commands in the "wls-maven-sample" directory

The server can be started as:


mvn wls:start-server 
 -DmiddlewareHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/12c 
 -DdomainHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building wls-maven-sample 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- wls-maven-plugin:12.1.1.0:start-server (default-cli) @ wls-maven-sample ---
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
[INFO] ++ wls-maven-plugin: start-server ++
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
.[INFO] Starting server in domain: /Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain
[INFO] Check stdout file for details: /Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain/server-922019421247284651.out
[INFO] Process being executed, waiting for completion.
................
[INFO] Server started successful
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 16.919s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed May 02 18:06:22 PDT 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 5M/88M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Build and deploy the application as:


mvn wls:deploy 
 -DmiddlewareHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/12c 
 -DdomainHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain 
 -Duser=admin 
 -Dpassword=admin007 
 -Dsource=/Users/arungup/code/samples/weblogic/wls-maven-sample/target/wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building wls-maven-sample 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- wls-maven-plugin:12.1.1.0:deploy (default-cli) @ wls-maven-sample ---
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
[INFO] ++ wls-maven-plugin: deploy ++
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
weblogic.Deployer invoked with options: -noexit -user admin -deploy -source /Users/arungup/code/samples/weblogic/wls-maven-sample/target/wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war
<May 3, 2012 8:24:17 AM IST> <Info> <J2EE Deployment SPI> <BEA-260121> <Initiating deploy operation for application, wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT [archive: /Users/arungup/code/samples/weblogic/wls-maven-sample/target/wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war], to configured targets.> 
Task 0 initiated: [Deployer:149026]deploy application wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT on myserver.
Task 0 completed: [Deployer:149026]deploy application wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT on myserver.
Target state: deploy completed on Server myserver

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 7.745s
[INFO] Finished at: Thu May 03 08:24:18 IST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 11M/130M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The application is accessible at localhost:7001/wls-maven-sample-1.0-SNAPSHOT/TestServlet.

Stop the server as:


mvn wls:stop-server 
 -DmiddlewareHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/12c 
 -DdomainHome=/Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain 
 -Duser=admin 
 -Dpassword=admin007
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building wls-maven-sample 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- wls-maven-plugin:12.1.1.0:stop-server (default-cli) @ wls-maven-sample ---
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
[INFO] ++ wls-maven-plugin: stop-server ++
[INFO] ++====================================================================++
[INFO] Stop server in domain: /Users/arungup/tools/weblogic/mydomain
[INFO] Process being executed, waiting for completion.
[INFO] [exec] Stopping Weblogic Server...
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Type help() for help on available commands
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid admin ...
[INFO] [exec] Successfully connected to Admin Server 'myserver' that belongs to domain 'mydomain'.
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the 
[INFO] [exec] server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or 
[INFO] [exec] Admin port should be used instead.
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Shutting down the server myserver with force=false while connected to myserver ...
[INFO] [exec] WLST lost connection to the WebLogic Server that you were 
[INFO] [exec] connected to, this may happen if the server was shutdown or 
[INFO] [exec] partitioned. You will have to re-connect to the server once the 
[INFO] [exec] server is available.
[INFO] [exec] Disconnected from weblogic server: myserver
[INFO] [exec] Disconnected from weblogic server: 
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.
[INFO] [exec] 
[INFO] [exec] Done
[INFO] [exec] Stopping Derby Server...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 10.847s
[INFO] Finished at: Thu May 03 06:37:48 IST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 9M/125M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simple, quick, and easy!

Are you building Java EE 6 applications on WebLogic ? With Maven ? Now you can fully integrate the WebLogic lifecycle with your "pom.xml".

The WebLogic Application Development Guide provide detailed documentation on the maven plugin.

OTN Developer Days in Turkey and Johannesburg, Geecon in Poland, JEEConf in Ukraine

2012-05-10T04:45:00+00:00

Several Java EE sessions around the world over next few days ...

Where: Ceylan Intercontinental Istanbul, Turkey
When: May 14, 9am
Sessions: Several Java EE 6/7 sessions
Agenda, Register

Where: Poznan, Poland
When: May 16-18
Sessions:
    Java EE 6 = Less Code + More Power (May 16, 9am)
    Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud (May 16, 11:10am)
    JAX-RS 2.0: RESTful Java on Steroids (May 18, 11:20am)
    PaaSing a Java EE 6 Application (May 18, 2:30pm)

Where: International Exhibition Center, Kiev, Ukraine
When: May 19, 10am
Session: Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud
Register

When: May 21
Where: The Forum, Johannesburg, South Africa
Session: Several
Agenda, Register

Where will I see or run with you ?

JavaOne and Oracle Develop India 2012 Trip Report

2012-05-06T09:14:18+00:00

JavaOne and Oracle Develop India 2012 concluded earlier this week. About 2000 attendees for JavaOne makes it the biggest Java developer conference in South Asia. The conference showed Oracle's continued commitment to move Java forward and demonstrated progress on different fronts.

Several attendees told me that they liked Java EE related sessions and how it demonstrated how the platform is making progress. The automatic service provisioning feature was particularly well appreciated. The complete instructions to download the Conference Planner sample showing some PaaS capabilities of the platform is available at glassfish.org/javaone2011. And the video that explains the PaaSing a Java EE application is shown below.

I had several speaking engagements at the conference including Technical Keynote, Meet The Experts, 2 Hands-on Labs, and 2 Technical Sessions.

I helped mentor a hands-on lab that explained how to Develop/Deploy/Monitor a Java EE 6 Application in a GlassFish Cluster. The room was packed with 120 attendees and several folks made good progress by following the instructions in the document. The complete self-paced lab instructions can be downloaded here and the source code here. The lab explains how to create a 2-instance cluster, front-end the cluster with a load balancer, verify that session replication works, and then monitor the application using JavaScript.

The session on GlassFish REST Administration Backend explained the internals of how GlassFish exposes a RESTful API for administration, monitoring, and management. But other than learning internals, the emphasis was more on how to build a large-scale RESTful application. The tips and tricks part of the presentation shared the lessons learned during our exercise of publishing this API. The slides are available:

GlassFish REST Administration Backend at JavaOne India 2012

Do you know the RESTful management API is at localhost:4848/management/domain and the monitoring API is localhost:4848/monitoring/domain. And did you know that you can append ".xml" or ".json" to the RESTful URIs and the data is displayed in the requested format ?

The evening concluded with a dinner with several JUG leaders and Java Champions from all around the world. There was Kevin Nilson from the Silicon Valley JUG, Vinicius and Yara Senger from the SouJava, Stephen Chin from the Java FX User Group, Raj Mahendra from the JUG Chennai, Kayal from JDuchess Chennai, Murali Vallath from AIOUG and several other luminaries. However its still surprisingly shocking that in a country of 1.2 billion+ people, there are only 4 active JUGs - Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, and Nagpur. And then Hyderabad JUG was created at JavaOne India. I plan to write a detailed blog on what it takes to start a JUG any where and hopefully that will motivate some individuals to start more JUGs around the world. Anyway, here are some pictures from the dinner:

Day 2 for me started with Meet The Experts session with Dalibor Topic, Terrence Barr, Michael Heinrichs, and Markus Hirt. The 9am session started low on attendance but the 250+ capacity room was packed within 15 minutes. And the questions ranged from merged JVMs, comparison between HTML5 and JavaFX, NoSQL support in Java EE, JavaFX on mobile, features in JDK 8/9/10, Project Avatar, and all over the Java landscape. The engaged audience kept asking questions all the way to the end.

Then I delivered a session on WebLogic 12c: Developer Deep Dive at Oracle Develop. This session gave an overview of some of the new features that are available in Oracle WebLogic Server 12c such as zip installer (TOTD #174), simplified programming model with Java EE 6, new Maven goals, and extensive IDE support. The slides are available.

WebLogic 12c Developer Deep Dive at Oracle Develop India 2012

A comprehensive Java EE 6 application was explained with a code walk-through and deployed on WebLogic server using NetBeans. TOTD #176 explains how you can deploy this application on WebLogic as well. There are several blogs that explain new Maven support in WebLogic and I've already prepared a blog draft (to be published soon) explaining the same using the TOTD format. There were some cases of Websphere -> WebLogic migration and that is always welcome!

The final session of the day for me was the Java EE 6 Application Development using NetBeans and WebLogic hands-on lab at Oracle Develop. This self-paced guided the attendees to build a complete end-to-end application using different Java EE 6 technologies such as JavaServer Faces 2, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, Java Persistence API 2, and Contexts & Dependency Injection. The self-paced lab instructions are available here. I was told that with about 75 attendees this was the most heavily attended lab of Oracle Develop.

The evening concluded with the GlassFish & Friends Party. We've conducted this party at the premier JavaOne event for the past 5 years and this is the first time we've taken it to a regional event. There were about 110+ JavaOne attendees who were present at the party and had some great conversations. Several folks told me that they enjoyed the party and are already looking forward to it next year. The Nagpur JUG had the biggest presence at the party and they are a charged up bunch of folks. I really wish other cities have similar amount of passion and energy as well. Here are some pictures from the party:

On a personal side, the fitness center of Novotel Hotel is pretty good and this allowed me to continue following the Spartacus Workout. A visit to Hyderabad must include a trip to Paradise Biryani and so managed to sneak in that after the GlassFish party. The OTN welcome party was a good way to decompress at the end of Day 1 and got the attendees dancing to the latest bollywood flicks by Vasundhara Das. Here are some pictures from the dance party:

Here are some more pictures captured from the event:

And now the complete album:

Many thanks to the Novotel Hotel and HICC staff, competent technical crew, events team running around for logistics, attendees, local and international speakers, and everybody else. A good conference is a blend of all of these together and JavaOne India certainly had a good mix.

For me, the next stops are Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, Johannesburg ...

Java EE 6 Sample Application on WebLogic 12c: Conference Planner (TOTD #176)

2012-05-02T11:16:43+00:00

Oracle WebLogic 12c provide a Java EE 6 Full Platform compliant application server. During the launch event last year, a Java EE 6 application was shown that demonstrated all the features of Java EE 6. This application allows conference organizers to publish details about their conference such as tracks, sessions, and speakers. It also allows attendees to register for the conference and prepare their schedule. The application is built as a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 application using JavaServer Faces (with PrimeFaces widgets) for the front-end, Enterprise JavaBeans for the middle tier business logic, and Java Persistence API for connectivity with the database.

This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) shows how to deploy the application on WebLogic 12c.

Check out the application from svn.java.net/svn/glassfish~svn/branches/arun/ConferencePlanner/trunk/ or download the source bundle.
Download and install Apache Derby. If you are using JDK7 then it comes bundled with Derby and installed in directory (/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/db). Any other database can be used as well but the instructions will differ accordingly.

Create "derby.properties" file in the main directory of and specify the following content:

#
derby.user.sa=sa

This creates a user "sa" with the password "sa".
Start the database by invoking the "bin/startNetworkServer" script.
Copy "derbyclient.jar" to "mydomain/lib" directory and restart the server by using "mydomain/startWeblogic.sh" script.

Create and populate the database by invoking the interactive SQL scripting tool "bin/ij". Specify the location of the SQL from the application as shown.

./ij
ij version 10.8
ij> driver 'org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver';
ij> connect 'jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/cp;ServerName=localhost;databaseName=cp;user=sa;password=sa;create=true';
ij> run '/Users/arungup/code/workspaces/arun/ConferencePlanner/trunk/src/main/sql/javaone-sf-2011.sql';
ij> . . .
1 row inserted/updated/deleted
ij> exit;

Download, unzip, and configure WebLogic 12c as described in TOTD #174. Here is my simple script that performs all the steps required:
```
mkdir 12c
cd 12c
export CLASSPATH=/Users/arungup/tools/db-derby-10.8.2.2-bin/lib/derbyclient.jar
unzip ~/Downloads/wls1211_dev.zip
export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home
./configure.sh
. $MW_HOME/wlserver/server/bin/setWLSEnv.sh
cd ..
mkdir mydomain
cd mydomain
$JAVA_HOME/bin/java $JAVA_OPTIONS -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m weblogic.Server
```
Notice, here we are explicitly including "derbyclient.jar" in the CLASSPATH. This will ensure that Derby database's JDBC driver is available to WebLogic Administration Console which was not able to pick up JAR files from "mydomain/lib" directory otherwise.
Access WebLogic Admin Console at localhost:7001/console, the login/password used in TOTD #174 is admin/admin007.
Create a JDBC data source

Click on "Data Sources" as shown.
Click on "New" and select "Generic Data Source" as shown.
Specify the values as shown.

The JDBC resource name is "jdbc/cp" and the database is "Derby".
Change the "Database Driver" to "Derby's Driver (Type 4) Versions: Any" and click on "Next". Make sure to not choose Type 4 XA driver which is the default.
Take the defaults and select "Next".
Specify the connection properties as shown.

And click on "Next".
Click on "Test Configuration" to make sure that every thing is configured correctly. Make sure to see the message "Connection test succeeded.". Verify the defaults and click on "Next".
Select the target "myserver" as shown

and click on "Finish".

Deploy the application

In the localhost:7001/console, click on "Home" (at the top center) and then "Deployments".
Click on "Install".
Specify the location of the WAR file as shown

Make sure to pick the WAR file by selecting the radio button and click on "Next".
Take the defaults and click on "Next".
Take the defaults again and click on "Next". Notice that "myserver" is chosen as the target of deployment.
Click on "Finish". After the application is deployed the console shows the following snapshot:

Access the application at localhost:7001/ConferencePlanner to see the output as:

Feel free to browse through the source code!

Download WebLogic and play with it! Screencast #39 explains how to build a more comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans and WebLogic.

JavaOne India 2012

2012-04-25T17:12:00+00:00

JavaOne India is right around the corner. Several Oracle and community speakers will be there sharing the latest and greatest around Java technology in Hyderabad.

The main tracks are:

Client Side Technologies and Rich User Experiences
Core Java Platform
Java EE, Web Profile, Platform Technologies, And Cloud
Java ME, Java Card, Mobile, Embedded, and Devices

Here are some important links to remember:

More details in the flyer below:

Did you see this advertisement in PCQuest or Chip magazine ?

Don't wait, register before May 2 to save 1200 Rupees.

I'll be there, will you ?

Chennai Java Summit 2012 Trip Report

2012-04-23T06:25:46+00:00

I attended my first Chennai Java Summit last weekend. The one-day conference had two parallel tracks. The conference was organized as part of AIOUG (All India Oracle User Group) and so there was a parallel track covering Oracle technologies as well. Nagaraj Paduvare from Oracle talked about what User Groups. The title of the presentation "User Groups - Are you a member yet ?" clearly conveyed the urge for the community to join the local User Groups - be it Java . Oracle's vision is to promote a world-class user group community where community and customers realize outstanding value from participation and experience constant and healthy dialogue with one another and Oracle at all levels. There are 870+ independent Oracle user groups related by interests and location. You can find all the information about them at iouc.org.

I gave two presentations and the slides are available.

Java Summit Chennai: Java EE 7

There were about 40+ attendees in this talk. Some of the audience were not even aware of Java EE 6 so I started the talk with a NetBeans-driven introduction to the platform. A more comprehensive video of Java EE 6 tooling with NetBeans is available at screencast #36. The screencast #37 covers the same with Eclipse. And then I explained how Java EE 7 platform is embracing cloud by providing support for dynamic service provisioning, metrics-driven elasticity, and multi-tenancy. Its important to remember that Java EE 7 will offer lot more than cloud as several specifications such as Java Message Service 2.0, Java API for RESTful Web Service 2.0, and Expression Language 3.0. Several other specifications are getting a minor update as well. You can get all the latest updates at javaee-spec.java.net.

The demonstration of taking a Java EE 6 application and deploying it to GlassFish 4 showing service provisioning hit the point home. The complete instructions to download and build the sample are available at glassfish.org/javaone2011.

Java Summit Chennai: JAX-RS 2.0

This talk gave a brief overview of REST Architecture, how JAX-RS provides support for RESTful Web services, and a complete overview of the new features coming in JAX-RS 2.0. I also demonstrated how NetBeans wizards make life simple for generating RESTful Web services from JPA Entity classes. The working JAX-RS 2.0 sample codes convey the point that an early implementation is already available. You can get all the latest updates at jax-rs-spec.java.net.

It was certainly good to spend some time with Venkat Subramaniam and Scott Davis.

On a personal side, I enjoyed Dal-Baati-Churma at a Rajasthani restaurant in the hotel. For me, enjoying the local cuisine is definitely one of the joys of staying in India. However the humidity was very high and so that prevented me from running in the morning. In times like this, the Spartacus Workout from Men's Health Magazine has been really helping me recently. If you have not tried this workout, you must!

Here are some pictures captured from the event:

And the complete video album:

Thank you Raj Mahendra for holding the Java flag strong and leading the community in Chennai. Only Bangalore, Nagpur, Chennai, and Pune has an active JUG. The JUG community in India is in its infancy and I hope more cities start planning activities like this.

Next stop JavaOne India ...

Great Indian Developer Summit 2012 Trip Report

2012-04-22T10:44:47+00:00

I attended the fifth, and my first, Great Indian Developer Summit in the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore. The conference is spread over 4 days with each day covering .NET, Web, Java, and Workshops respectively. The Java track had 800+ attendees (roughly based on a cursory headcount for the opening keynote) and the hall was packed. The theater style seating allowed the attendees to enjoy the wide screen presentations.

Another unique and cool thing about the conference is that they create life size posters of all the speakers and display them outside the speakers' room. This not only help you identify your room easily but also makes you feel like a celebrity ;-) Here are some pictures of the posters:

Venkat's opening keynote is always fun. He talked about "Refactor your Language Knowledge Portfolio: We're What We Can Code In". His entertaining presentation style keeps the audience engaged and laughing. His Essence vs Ceremony analogy was particularly impressive and I recommend reading that blog.

I gave three presentations and a hands-on workshop and the slides are now available.

GIDS 2012: Java Message Service 2.0

This presentation gave an overview of JMS 2.0 and the new features coming there. This presentation had 200+ attendees and 50% of the audience were existing users of JMS. There was a lot interactivity during/after the session. Do you know JMS 2.0 Early Draft is already available ?

The primary goal of this specification is to provide a simplified API and clarify the ambiguities discovered over the past few years. Check out this blog for a quick comparison between the existing and the simplified API. If you have any feature request then its highly recommended to file a JIRA issue at jms-spec.java.net.

GIDS 2012: JAX-RS 2.0: RESTful Java on Steroids

This presentation gave an overview of JAX-RS 2.0. Do you know that Early Draft 2 is already available ? Check out this blog for a brief overview of the new features coming in JAX-RS 2.0. You can find the latest updates at jax-rs-spec.java.net and also follow @gf_jersey.

GIDS 2012: PaaSing a Java EE Application

This presentation explained the key concepts of how GlassFish PaaS-enable your Java EE application. The talk also showed how a Java EE application can be deployed where all he services required by the application are dynamically provisioned. A working version of the application, along with instructions, are available at glassfish.org/javaone2011. A video of the application in action is shown below:

The video also shows how the cluster dynamically adjusts to meet the elasticity constraints pre-defined for the application.

The Java EE 6 hands-on lab had about 20 attendees. The self-pace instructions can be downloaded here. I was pretty amazed by the level of interaction. There was one particular guy who who came from the PHP land, was taking notes on a paper notebook, and was asking the most intelligent questions. There were other experienced J2EE/Java EE users who also enjoyed the simplicity introduced in the platform.

And somehow for the past few days the question of Java EE 6 over Spring has come up during each such engagement. My views are clearly expressed at Why Java EE 6 is better than Spring. And do read the interesting discussion in the comments, all the way to the end.

The conference was well organized with a personal introduction of each speaker. The rooms were well marked and the projectors worked very well. The conference crew was very helpful and prompt in reminding about the time remaining. However a 45 minute session is a few minutes too short and so had to tweak my existing slide deck to meet the time requirements.

Multiple conflicting talks were arranged such as Mike's Java EE 7 and mine JMS 2.0, Venkat's "Java 8: A Sneak Peak" and Simon's "Java SE 8 & Beyond". This feedback was conveyed to the organizers. Hopefully they'll be able to do a better job of this next time around.

On a personal side, I enjoyed a team dinner at BBQ Nation and is definitely worth visiting once at least. And could also manage to enjoy a lunch at MTR with Vivek. The ITC Windsor is a nice hotel with a decent fitness center and a great restaurant. The breakfast buffet had a great variety and very scrumptious.

Here are some pictures captured from the event:

And now the complete album:

The Java EE 7 platform will be much more mature by this time next year and who knows I might even submit a Java EE 7 hands-on lab!

Thank you Salt March Media for putting up a great show and providing me an opportunity to present. Looking forward to my participation again next year!

JMS 2.0 Early Draft - Simplified API Sample Code

2012-04-21T10:00:00+00:00

Java Message Service (JSR 343) is undergoing a major revision as part of Java EE 7. The Early Draft of the specification has been available for a few weeks now and online javadocs are now available. Several other specifications such as JPA 2.1, JAX-RS 2.0, EJB 3.2, JavaServer Faces 2, and CDI 1.1 in the Java EE 7 umbrella have released early drafts. Some of the specs have been explained in detailed:

JAX-RS 2.0 Early Draft Explained
JPA 2.1 Early Draft Explained
What's new in JSF 2.2 ? (external contribution)

This blog will provide an update on JMS 2.0 Early Draft.

JMS 1.1 was released in Dec 2003. A lot has chnged in the Java landscape since then - think about annotations, generics, auto-closeable, dependency injection, and a lot more. The Java EE platform itself has evolved extensively since then, especially Java EE 6 is a "game changer". There are multiple JMS implementations still running solid and so there is lot of development/deployment experience on that as well. Keeping all of that, and much more, in mind, the main goals of JMS 2.0 are:

Changes to improve ease of development
Clarification of relationship between the JMS and other Java EE specifications
Definition of a new mandatory API to allow any JMS provider to be integrated with any Java EE application server
Extensions to support Java EE 7
Other enhancements as requested by the community

This blog will take a code sample from the section 11.4 of the Early Draft to highlight how ease-of-development changes are now coming to JMS 2.0.

This is how a message is sent using the existing JMS API:

@Resource(lookup = "jms/connectionFactory ")
ConnectionFactory connectionFactory;

@Resource(lookup="jms/inboundQueue")
Queue inboundQueue;

public void sendMessageOld (String payload) {
 Connection connection = null;
try {
 connection = connectionFactory.createConnection();
Session session = connection.createSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
MessageProducer messageProducer = session.createProducer(inboundQueue);
TextMessage textMessage = session.createTextMessage(payload);
messageProducer.send(textMessage);
} catch (JMSException e) {
 // do something
 } finally {
 try {
 if (connection != null)
 connection.close();
 } catch (JMSException e2) {
 // do something else
 }
 }
}

This works very well but several issues with it:

Multiple intermediate objects such as Connection, Session, and MessageProducer need to be created in order to send a message. All these objects serve a purpose but makes the JMS application more complicated. It also leads to lots of boilerplate code as well.
The arguments to createSession are confusing. The first argument specifies whether the session is transacted or not. The second argument specifies, how, if you used the session to receive messages, how those messages would be acknowledged. These two arguments are not independent. If the first argument is set to true then the second argument is irrelevant. So we only need one argument here.

The other part is when this method is in a EJB then the transactions are controlled by the container. Or if a bean-managed transactions are used then the transaction would be started and committed using the UserTransaction API, not by methods in the JMS API. In fact, the EJB spec says that if this code is running in a transaction then the arguments to createSession are completely ignored. And even then we are required to supply some arguments here to satisfy the contract.
The Connection need to explicitly closed in the finally block in order to release the resources appropriately on the server side. The code does not even show closing of MessageProducer and Session and And the finally block gets ugly with nested exceptions.

Now lets take a look at how the new API will simplify the programming model:

@Resource(lookup = "jms/connectionFactory")
ConnectionFactory connectionFactory;

@Resource(lookup="jms/inboundQueue")
Queue inboundQueue;

public void sendMessageNew (String payload) {
try (JMSContext context = connectionFactory.createContext();){
context.send(inboundQueue,payload);
}
}

Simple, isn't it ?

Here are the main changes:

All the boilerplate is gone. Instead just create a ConnectionFactory, create a context from it, and invoke send on it.
The destinatation (inboundQueue) is now specified on send insead of MessageProducer.
Connection is now auto-closeable so try block will close it autoamatically.
New methods throw runtime exception so the code looks much cleaner.

And if you are using Dependency Injection, then the code can be further simplified to:

@Inject
@JMSConnectionFactory("jms/connectionFactory")
private JMSContext context;

@Resource(mappedName = "jms/inboundQueue")
private Queue inboundQueue;

public void sendMessageNew(String payload) {
 context.send(inboundQueue, payload);
}

Some clean ups to note here are ...

No need for application to instantiate JMSContext
The same injected JMSContext is available in other places, if within the same CDI scope

How cool is that ?

Here is yet another example on how the simplified API receives a message synchronously:

@Inject
@JMSConnectionFactory("jms/connectionFactory")
private JMSContext context;

@Resource(lookup="jms/inboundQueue")
Queue inboundQueue;

public String receiveMessageNew() {
JMSConsumer consumer = context.createConsumer(inboundQueue);
return consumer.receivePayload(String.class);
}

The section 11.4 of the JMS 2.0 Early Draft provide more lot more samples with the standard (or existing) API and the simplified (or new) API.

Do you like the direction that the JMS 2.0 Expert Group is taking ? Would you like to provide feedback and contribute ?

The latest progress on JMS 2.0 can be tracked at:

jms-spec.java.net
JSR 343 EG archive at jsr343-experts
Discussion at users@jms-spec
JSR 343

Early Draft
Latest Javadocs (download, online)

Help us make JMS 2.0 better, simpler, easier to use. Join users@jms-spec and contribute!

JavaOne Moscow/Russia Trip Report

2012-04-17T15:11:05+00:00

JavaOne Moscow/Russia was kick started this morning and followed the usual pattern of a strategy keynote providing an overall strategy of the Java platform, technical keynotes providing more detailed overview of Java SE, JavaFX, Java ME, and Java EE, and then there were hands-on labs and sessions. The big keynote theater was packed with 1300+ audience in the morning and then scattered to different rooms.

The "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor a Java E 6 Application on GlassFish" hands-on lab had about 40+ attendees. The network was a little slow and so it took a long time to download the maven repository. However as I was explaining the Java EE 6 applications, folks started drawing analogies with Spring and realizing how much simpler Java EE 6 has become from its predecessors. An existing Spring user pointed out that "Java EE 6 is much simpler than Spring because of the default conventions and require minimal configuration". Read a more engaged discussion on Why Java EE 6 is better than Spring.

Anyway, the content for the hands-on lab can be downloaded from here. It explains:

Walk through a Java EE 6 application
Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster and front-end with a Web server and a load balancer
Show session replication when one of the instances fail
Use extensible monitoring infrastructure to generate application-specific monitoring data

I also delivered the Java EE Technical Keynote which gave an update on Java EE 7. It also showed a demo of how GlassFish automatically provisions service as part of the initial work in Java EE 7. The complete demo instructions, along with a video are available at glassfish.org/javaone2011.

Here are some pictures captured from the day:

Do you know the man in the last picture on right column ?

You probably will not see him in person. But he is the man who maintains the master JavaOne schedule, besides many other tasks. Its not an easy job as you can imagine :-)

Many thanks to Ralph Crawford for doing an outstanding job for all these years!

And now the complete album:

JavaOne Russia continues tomorrow so make sure you attend the sessions, talk with the speakers, and make the best use of this premier conference in your neighborhood.

For me, next stop is Great Indian Developer Summit!

Running by Moscow River

2012-04-16T07:15:27+00:00

JavaOne Russia is starting tomorrow! I got in the city early this morning, slept a little but got up early because of jet lag.

New country, new city and how do you get familiar ? Run!

Running would you take you places that you would generally not see otherwise. And the hotel is right by the Moskva River with long empty sidewalks right next to it. Here is how my running route from this morning:

Fortunately, it was not "Moscow cold" and I enjoyed the run. I could've gone longer but had to revert back because of other activities already planned during the day. Here are some pictures captured during the run:

And then some more pictures from around the city ...

And the evolving album at:

JavaOne and Oracle Develop Russia starts tomorrow and I hope to see you there!

Java EE 6 and NoSQL/MongoDB on GlassFish using JPA and EclipseLink 2.4 (TOTD #175)

2012-04-11T01:30:00+00:00

TOTD #166 explained how to use MongoDB in your Java EE 6 applications. The code in that tip used the APIs exposed by the MongoDB Java driver and so requires you to learn a new API. However if you are building Java EE 6 applications then you are already familiar with Java Persistence API (JPA). Eclipse Link 2.4, scheduled to release as part of Eclipse Juno, provides support for NoSQL databases by mapping a JPA entity to a document. Their wiki provides complete explanation of how the mapping is done.

This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will show how you can leverage that support in your Java EE 6 applications deployed on GlassFish 3.1.2.

Before we dig into the code, here are the key concepts ...

A POJO is mapped to a NoSQL data source using @NoSQL or <no-sql> element in "orm.xml".
A subset of JPQL and Criteria query are supported, based upon the underlying data store
Connection properties are defined in "persistence.xml"

Now, lets lets take a look at the code ...

Download the latest EclipseLink 2.4 Nightly Bundle. There is a Installer, Source, and Bundle - make sure to download the Bundle link (20120410) and unzip.
Download GlassFish 3.1.2 zip and unzip.
Install the Eclipse Link 2.4 JARs in GlassFish

Remove the following JARs from "glassfish/modules":

org.eclipse.persistence.antlr.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.asm.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.core.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.modelgen.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.moxy.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.oracle.jar

Add the following JARs from Eclipse Link 2.4 nightly build to "glassfish/modules":

org.eclipse.persistence.antlr_3.2.0.v201107111232.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.asm_3.3.1.v201107111215.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.core.jpql_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.core_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.jpql_2.0.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.modelgen_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.jpa_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.moxy_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.nosql_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar
org.eclipse.persistence.oracle_2.4.0.v20120407-r11132.jar

Start MongoDB

Download latest MongoDB from here (2.0.4 as of this writing).
Create the default data directory for MongoDB as:
```
sudo mkdir -p /data/db/
sudo chown `id -u` /data/db
```
Refer to Quickstart for more details.

Start MongoDB as:

arungup-mac:mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.4 <arungup> ->./bin/mongod
./bin/mongod --help for help and startup options
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=3124 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 64-bit host=arungup-mac.local
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] db version v2.0.4, pdfile version 4.5
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] git version: 329f3c47fe8136c03392c8f0e548506cb21f8ebf
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] build info: Darwin erh2.10gen.cc 9.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.8.0: Wed Jul 15 16:55:01 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1228.15.4~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_40
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] options: {}
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] journal dir=/data/db/journal
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] recover : no journal files present, no recovery needed
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [websvr] admin web console waiting for connections on port 28017
Mon Apr  9 12:56:02 [initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017

Check out the JPA/NoSQL sample from SVN repository. The complete source code built in this TOTD can be downloaded here.
Create Java EE 6 web app

Create a Java EE 6 Maven web app as:

mvn archetype:generate
-DarchetypeGroupId=org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes
-DarchetypeArtifactId=webapp-javaee6
-DgroupId=model -DartifactId=javaee-nosql
-DarchetypeVersion=1.5 -DinteractiveMode=false

Copy the model files from the checked out workspace to the generated project as:

cd javaee-nosql
cp -r ~/code/workspaces/org.eclipse.persistence.example.jpa.nosql.mongo/src/model src/main/java

Copy "persistence.xml"

mkdir src/main/resources
cp -r ~/code/workspaces/org.eclipse.persistence.example.jpa.nosql.mongo/src/META-INF ./src/main/resources

Add the following dependencies:

<dependency>
 <groupId>org.eclipse.persistence</groupId>
 <artifactId>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa</artifactId>
 <version>2.4.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
 <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
 <groupId>org.eclipse.persistence</groupId>
 <artifactId>org.eclipse.persistence.nosql</artifactId>
 <version>2.4.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
 <groupId>org.mongodb</groupId>
 <artifactId>mongo-java-driver</artifactId>
 <version>2.7.3</version>
</dependency>

The first one is for the EclipseLink latest APIs, the second one is for EclipseLink/NoSQL support, and the last one is the MongoDB Java driver.

And the following repository:

<repositories>
<repository>
 <id>EclipseLink Repo</id>
 <url>http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?r=1&amp;nf=1&amp;file=/rt/eclipselink/maven.repo</url>
 <snapshots>
 <enabled>true</enabled>
 </snapshots>
 </repository>  
</repositories>

Copy the "Test.java" to the generated project:
```
mkdir src/main/java/example
cp -r ~/code/workspaces/org.eclipse.persistence.example.jpa.nosql.mongo/src/example/Test.java ./src/main/java/example/
```
This file contains the source code to CRUD the JPA entity to MongoDB. This sample is explained in detail on EclipseLink wiki.

Create a new Servlet in "example" directory as:

package example;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

/**
 * @author Arun Gupta
 */
@WebServlet(name = "TestServlet", urlPatterns = {"/TestServlet"})
public class TestServlet extends HttpServlet {

 protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
 throws ServletException, IOException {
 response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-8");
 PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
 try {
 out.println("<html>");
 out.println("<head>");
 out.println("<title>Servlet TestServlet</title>"); 
 out.println("</head>");
 out.println("<body>");
 out.println("<h1>Servlet TestServlet at " + request.getContextPath() + "</h1>");
 try {
 Test.main(null);
 } catch (Exception ex) {
 ex.printStackTrace();
 }
 out.println("</body>");
 out.println("</html>");
 } finally { 
 out.close();
 }
 }

 @Override
 protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
 throws ServletException, IOException {
 processRequest(request, response);
 }

 @Override
 protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
 throws ServletException, IOException {
 processRequest(request, response);
 }
}

Build the project and deploy it as:

mvn clean package
glassfish3/bin/asadmin deploy --force=true target/javaee-nosql-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war

Accessing http://localhost:8080/javaee-nosql/TestServlet shows the following messages in the server.log:


connecting(EISLogin(
 platform=> MongoPlatform
 user name=> ""
 MongoConnectionSpec()
))

. . .

Connected: 
 User: 
 Database: 2.7  Version: 2.7 

. . .

Executing MappedInteraction()
 spec => null
 properties => {mongo.collection=CUSTOMER, mongo.operation=INSERT}
 input => [DatabaseRecord(
 CUSTOMER._id => 4F848E2BDA0670307E2A8FA4
 CUSTOMER.NAME => AMCE)]

. . .


Data access result: [{TOTALCOST=757.0, ORDERLINES=[{DESCRIPTION=table,
 LINENUMBER=1, COST=300.0}, {DESCRIPTION=balls, LINENUMBER=2, COST=5.0}, 
{DESCRIPTION=rackets, LINENUMBER=3, COST=15.0}, {DESCRIPTION=net, 
LINENUMBER=4, COST=2.0}, {DESCRIPTION=shipping, LINENUMBER=5, 
COST=80.0}, {DESCRIPTION=handling, LINENUMBER=6, COST=55.0},
{DESCRIPTION=tax, LINENUMBER=7, COST=300.0}], SHIPPINGADDRESS=
[{POSTALCODE=L5J1H7, PROVINCE=ON, COUNTRY=Canada, CITY=Ottawa,
STREET=17 Jane St.}], VERSION=2, _id=4F848E2BDA0670307E2A8FA8,
DESCRIPTION=Pingpong table, CUSTOMER__id=4F848E2BDA0670307E2A8FA7, 
BILLINGADDRESS=[{POSTALCODE=L5J1H8, PROVINCE=ON, COUNTRY=Canada, 
CITY=Ottawa, STREET=7 Bank St.}]}]

You'll not see any output in the browser, just the output in the console. But the code can be easily modified to do so.

Once again, the complete Maven project can be downloaded here.

Do you want to try accessing relational and non-relational (aka NoSQL) databases in the same PU ?

Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS), JavaOne Moscow, Java Summit Chennai

2012-04-09T03:00:00+00:00

My whirlwind tour of Java EE and GlassFish starts next weekend and covers the following cities in the next 6 weeks:

JavaOne and Oracle Develop, Moscow
Great Indian Developer Summit, Bangalore
Java Summit, Chennai
JavaOne, Hyderabad
OTN Developer Day, Pune
OTN Developer Day, Istanbul
Geecon, Poznan
JEEConf, Kiev
OTN Developer Day, Johannesburg

Several other members of the team will be speaking at some of these events as well. Please feel free to reach out to any of us, ask a question, and share your passion. Here is the first set of conferences coming up:

Date: Apr 17-18
Schedule
My Schedule
      Deploying your Java EE 6 Applications in Producion hands-on lab
      Technical Keynote
      Some other technical sessions
Venue: Russian Academy of Sciences
Register
Connect: @OracleRU

Date: April 17-20
Schedule (date decided, time slots TBD)
My Schedule: NetBeans/Java EE 6 workshop on April 19th, Other sessions (as listed above) on April 20
Venue: J. N. Tata Auditorium, National Science Symposium Complex, Sir C. V. Raman Avenue, Bangalore, India
Register
Connect: @GreatIndianDev

Date: April 21, 2011
Schedule
My Schedule: Java EE 7 at 9:30am, JAX-RS 2.0 at 11am
Venue: VELS University
Register (FREE)
Connect: @jug_c

Where will I meet or run with you ?

Do ask me to record a video session if you are using GlassFish and would like to share your story at blogs.oracle.com/stories.

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2012 - Submit Your Talks

2012-04-02T12:48:22+00:00

Silicon Valley Code Camp follows three rules:

Given by/for the community
Always free
Never occur during work hours

I've spoken there at 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007 and have again submitted a talk this year as well, and will submit more!

Its one of the best organically grown code camps with the attendance constantly growing over the past 6 years. Here is a chart that shows how the number of conferences attendees that registered and attended and the sessions delivered over past 6 years. If you wonder why there is such a big gap between "registered" and "attended" that's because this event is FREE!

Yes, 100% free.

If you are in and around Silicon Valley then you have no reason to not participate/speak at SVCC. You have the opportunity to meet all the local JUG leaders and the community "rockstars" :-)

Date: Oct 6/7, 2012
Venue: Foothill College, 12345, El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills, CA

Submit today or register!

Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

2012-03-22T20:16:43+00:00

Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is

Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ?

There are already several blogs covering that topic:

Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke
Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS)
Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger
Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter
Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG
Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS
Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011
Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener
Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta

I will try to share my perspective in this blog.

First of all, I'd like to start with a note:

Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework!

While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts.

I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/.

I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find:

./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar

And it is not even using any database!

The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log.

Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added):

./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar

2 more JARs for just doing Ajax.

Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error:

Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V
    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20)
    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407)

Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml".

Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below:


./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar

The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database!

Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:
Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:
org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect 
dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), 
org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), 
javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), 
org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), 
commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), 
org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), 
org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:
3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), 
org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), 
org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:
com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.
caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), 
javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), 
org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), 
javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read 
artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could 
not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to 
JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://
repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/
spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom

It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here.

With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies. I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below.

And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here.

The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ...

NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat)
Spring Tool Suite 2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger)

This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application ....

In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as:

./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\
com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\
javax.sql.DataSource --property \\
portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\
myConnectionPool
./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource

I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them:

	Java EE 6	Spring
WAR File Size	0.021030 MB	10.87 MB (~516x)
Number of files	20	53 (> 2.5x)
Bundled libraries	0	36
Total size of libraries	0	12.1 MB
XML files	3	5
LoC in XML files	50 (11 + 15 + 24)	129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x)
Total .properties files	1 Bundle.properties	2 spring.properties, log4j.properties
Cold Deploy	5,339 ms	11,724 ms
Second Deploy	481 ms	6,261 ms
Third Deploy	528 ms	5,484 ms
Fourth Deploy	484 ms	5,576 ms
Runtime memory	~73 MB	~101 MB

Some points worth highlighting from the table ...

516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server.
36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in.

Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ?
3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications.
Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation.

Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ...

	Java EE 6	Spring
Web Container	✓	53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition)
Security	✓	12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0)
Persistence	✓	6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required)
Dependency Injection	✓	5.3 MB (Framework)
Web Services	✓	796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4)
Messaging	✓	3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936)
OSGi	✓	1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1)
	GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB)	83.3 MB

There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options.

The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications.

The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you!

Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software.

Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ...

Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether.

Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ?

Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be.

The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly.
Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform.

Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse.
Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ?

Do you really use tcServer ? ;-)
Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ?

Yep, you got it, its YOU!
If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you!
Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own!

The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle.

While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6.

A message to the Spring lovers ...

The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples:

Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB
EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors
"web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases
Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform
Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource
EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC
Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds
Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers

So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying:

screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans
screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse
javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans

Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6.

Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6:

List of files in the Java EE 6 project:

./index.xhtml
./META-INF
./person
./person/Create.xhtml
./person/Edit.xhtml
./person/List.xhtml
./person/View.xhtml
./resources
./resources/css
./resources/css/jsfcrud.css
./template.xhtml
./WEB-INF
./WEB-INF/classes
./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties
./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF
./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml
./WEB-INF/classes/org
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class
./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml
./WEB-INF/web.xml

List of files in the Spring 3.x project:

./META-INF
./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
./WEB-INF
./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml
./WEB-INF/classes
./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties
./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service
./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class
./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml
./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml
./WEB-INF/jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp
./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp
./WEB-INF/lib
./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar
./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar
./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml
./WEB-INF/spring.properties
./WEB-INF/web.xml

So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources:

Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc)
GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community)
Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial)
Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video)
Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video)
Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

JavaOne 2012 CFP Open - Ends April 9

2012-03-14T16:05:27+00:00

JavaOne 2012 San Francisco is the 17th edition of the premier Java developer conference. The Call For Papers for this conference is now open. The main tracks are:

Core Java Platform
Development Tools and Techniques
Emerging Langauges on the JVM
Enterprise Services Architectures and the Cloud
Java EE Web Profile and Platform Technologies
Java ME, Java Card, Embedded, and Devices
Java FX and Rich User Experiences

What are the key dates ?

Call for Papers Start	Mar 14, Wednesday
Call for Papers End	11:59 pm PDT, April 9
Accept/Decline Notifications	End of May/Early June
Speakers to Accept Sessions	Mid-June

Here is some personal insight into the review process and tips for submissions. Bottom line ...

No product/marketing pitches, pure technology talks
Make titles catchy
Use all the characters for providing details about your session
Make sure to submit talks in the appropriate track

More tips here.

This year the conference is happening again at The Zone:

View The Zone - JavaOne Conference Location in a larger map

Here is some of the feedback from last year's JavaOne:

Not only thrill + thunder, but also fun is back! #javaone11
Big thanx to Oracle for this really nice conference...really enjoyed it... #javaone11
JavaOne ended for me at breakfast this morning. Now we're heading home. Great to be a part of such a successful show this year! #javaone11
#FF to all my fellow dev ghat attended #javaone11. Really happy to be part of such a great community.
Good nigth San Francisco, I had a great week at #javaone11 very productive and motivating. Will I ever be back
Sitting at SFO waiting for my plane back. What an amazing #javaone11 lies behind us. Thanks to everybody who made it happen.
Thanks @Sharat_Chander for an excellent #javaone11. Looking forward to many more to come.
#JavaOne11 is a wrap! Great conference and thanks @Oracle for listening to the community for improvements.
last session at #javaone11 #javaone. it was most productive week in this year for me as developer
It would be a great achievement in my dev life if I come back to #javaone11 as a speaker.

Don't you want to be part of this premier Java event ?

What are you waiting for ? Just go ahead and share your passion with rest of the Java community. You can submit a Technical Session, Panel, and Birds-of-Feather. Read more details about submission guidelines.

You've 27 days to submit your talk! Don't wait too long though ;-)

Check out blog reports and pictures from last year.

Stay connected on JavaOne using any of the social media channels:

Don't wait, submit your talk now!

Java EE 6/7 at 33rd Degree (Krakow) and Codemotion (Rome and Madrid)

2012-03-12T06:00:00+00:00

The conference circuit for March takes Java EE 6/7 to Krakow, Rome, and Madrid ...

What ? Java EE 6 hands-on workshop (Mar 20, 9-12:30pm), The Java EE 7 Platform (Mar 21, 11:30am)
Date ? Saturday, Mar 20 and Sunday Mar 21, 2012
Where ? Best Western Premium Krakow
Register ? Here (sold out already)
Prep work: Download and Install NetBeans 7.1 or later ("All" version) from netbeans.org, JDK 6 or 7 latest update from oracle.com/javase.

What ? JAX-RS 2.0: RESTful Java on Steroids
Date ? Mar 23, 2012
Time ? 9:50am
Where ? Engineering Department of Roma
Register ? codemotion.it
Website: codemotion.it
Twitter: @CodemotionRoma

What ? The Java EE 7 Platform, Developing for the Cloud (10:30 - 11:15am) , JAX-RS 2:0: RESTful Java on Steroids (4-4:45pm)
Date ? Mar 24, 2012
Time ? All Day
Where ? School of Computer Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid
Register ? codemotion.es
Website: codemotion.es
Twitter: @Codemotion_es

Where will I meet or run with you ? :)

JavaOne India 2012 CFP Now Open - Submit Now!

2012-03-02T17:42:23+00:00

When ? May 3-4, 2011

Where ? Hyderabad International Convention Center, India

What ? Technical keynote, technical sessions, exhibitor halls, hallway conversations, biryani, etc.

Tracks ? Four tracks cover the entire Java landscape ...

Core Java Platform
Client-side Technologies and Rich User Experience
Java EE Web Profile, Platform Technologies, and the Cloud
Mobile, Java Card, Embedded, and Devices

Interested ? Submit paper now! CFP ends Mar 15 (13 more days).

Some other useful links ...

Get some more insight into the CFP review process and tips for submissions based upon multiple years of involvement as a speaker, track lead, attendee, etc.

Are you working on something exciting using the Java platform ?
Would you like to share it at the premier Java conference ?
What are you waiting for ?
Remember CFP ends on Mar 15.
Submit now!

And in case you are wondering what does it mean to be participate in JavaOne India ? This blog report from last year will provide you some details.

GlassFish 3.1.2 is released!

2012-02-29T19:35:59+00:00

GlassFish 3.1.2 is here and download it now!

This is the latest and the greatest release for GlassFish 3.x. The three main themes of this release are:

Higher Quality: 500+ bug fixes improving the overall quality of 3.1.x and still maintaining backwards compatibility. Several community-filed bugs are fixed in this release.

Updated components (see below) alone provide 300+ bug fixes

New Features

Administration Console Improvements

Better startup time and option to load in background after server startup
Feature parity with asadmin CLI
Enabling and disabling secure administration
Viewing and monitoring app-scoped resources
Setup SSH and Node installation
Configure JMS clusters
Consolidation of monitoring data in a single tab
Administering Loadbalancer plug-in configurations (only in Oracle GlassFish Server)

Improved clustering

New DCOM Support for Windows (as an alternative to SSH for remote management of GlassFish instances)
Non-Multicast clustering
mod_proxy_ajp support

Improved EclipseLink integration with EclipseLink MOXy support and TopLink Grid support (Coherence as 2nd level data cache and only in Oracle GlassFish Server)
WebSocket (RFC 6455) Support
Transaction recovery using database (in addition to the existing file system support)
Improved Security (secure admin requires password, Oracle GlassFish Server secure by default with new password required be set during installation or on first use), and SSL Encrypted traffic between the Domain Administration Server and remote instances
NetBeans 7.1.1 ships with GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (more samples in NetBeans Update Center)

Updated Platforms & Components (in addition to existing platforms, complete supported matrix here)

Supporting Mac OSX 10.7.1 and Ubuntu 11.0.4 as developer platform
JDKs

JRockit 28.2.2
JDK 7 U3 and JDK 6 U31
IBM/AIX JDK 6

Browsers: Chrome 15.x, Firefox 9+, Safari 5.x, IE 7.x+
Updated component bundles: JSF/Mojarra 2.1.6, Grizzly 1.9.46, Metro 2.2, Jersey 1.11, Shoal, EclipseLink 2.3.2, OpenMQ 4.5.2, OSGi Core 4.3.0, Update Center, Hibernate Validator, JavaDB 10.8.1.2, Weld 1.1.4

Check out this video by GlassFish 3.1.2 engineering manager providing highlights of the release:

Here are some other pointers for you to get started:

Release Notes
Download

GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (unsupported community release)
Oracle GlassFish Server (supported commercial offering)
Java EE 6 SDK Update 4 (include samples, docs, APIs, etc)

Installation Guide
Quick Start Guide
All-in-one documentation archive (Zip bundle of PDFs)
Java EE 6 API Javadoc
Feedback to GlassFish Forums

Java EE 6 workshop delivered at Umeå JUG

2012-02-21T22:39:28+00:00

What's common between Austin (Texas), Reykjavik (Iceland), Stockholm (Sweden), and Umeå (Sweden) ?

They all had a Java EE 6 workshop in the past 2.5 weeks
All of them had fairly higher attendance than normal/expected
Every where the attendees stayed much longer than originally planned
The simplicity and power of awesome threesome of Java EE 6, NetBeans, and GlassFish was very well appreciated by the attendees

The recently concluded workshop at Umeå JUG proved yet again how Java EE 6 can easily attract audience. And now that WebLogic and GlassFish are Java EE 6 compatible, there is a wide variety of containers available to deploy your applications.

This JUG, part of Javaforum Sweden, is the second most northern JUG (Reykjavik is the northern most by about 150 km) in a small university town of about 115,000. The constant sub-zero temperature and tons of snow during my stay made the cross-country an interesting first time experience. Running outside in the cold was harder than I originally thought as the cheeks were getting cold and making it difficult to talk. Thank you Jonas for teaching me the basic skills and sharing your spiked running shoes. Quite an enjoyable experience over all!

The interactive attendees learned all about:

Improvements in Java Persistence API 2
"web.xml"-free and annotation-driven Servlets
Simplified packaging of EJBs in a WAR file, no-interface and single file definition of EJB
Session preservation across redeploys
Facelets (XHTML/CSS) as templating language for JavaServer Faes to achieve true MVC
Integration of Bean Validation with JPA and JSF
Typesafe dependency injection and Producer/Observer of events using CDI
RESTful resources using JAX-RS

The hands-on lab document is available here and the complete application here.

Here is a picture with Jonas and Mattias - the JUG leaders. Their mission is to learn and spread knowledge about Java in Umeå by bringing in speakers from all around the world. A local tech publication (InfoTech Umeå) also talked about the workshop. Here is a picture from the article:

(Image Credits: InfoTech Umeå)

And some more pictures from the visit ...

The complete photo album is available at (pictures are from trip to JUGICE and Jfokus) ...

Next stop 33rd Degree and Codemotion ...

Jfokus 2012 Trip Report

2012-02-15T22:43:58+00:00

If I were to summarize Jfokus 2012 in two words then they would be - bigger and better!

Bigger because ...

8 tutorials/hands-on lab in 2011 -> 10 in 2012
1 fully booked in 2011 -> 5 in 2012
About 1450 attendees, 15% more from 2011

Better because ...

Coffee was served all day
The best speakers' dinner at a top-notch restaurant. Any body willing to beat that ? Make your speakers feel more special ? ;-)
REST interface to the program schedule
All-day Java Spotlight
Speakers from Brazil, attendees from Morocco, more international participation (about 15-20% attendees were outside Sweden)
Flawless wireless connection, no complaints on #jfokus or elsewhere
#jfokus was trending

There were several talks by Oracle speakers. I gave a Java EE 6 hands-on lab and two talks - PaaSing a Java EE Application and The Java EE 7 Platform: Developing for the Cloud.

Again and again the awesome threesome of Java EE 6, NetBeans, and GlassFish continue to attract audience - this time at Jfokus 2012. Lot more folks showed up for the hands-on lab than originally registered and the conference organizers had to arrange extra table and chairs.

One of the attendees forgot to bring his laptop and connected to a remote server running NetBeans using his Samsung Galaxy S1 smart phone. He built some part of the application that way and then got his laptop during one of the coffee breaks. That was pretty awesome!

The interactive attendees learned all about:

Improvements in Java Persistence API 2
"web.xml"-free and annotation-driven Servlets
Simplified packaging of EJBs in a WAR file, no-interface and single file definition of EJB
Session preservation across redeploys
Facelets (XHTML/CSS) as templating language for JavaServer Faes to achieve true MVC
Integration of Bean Validation with JPA and JSF
Typesafe dependency injection and Producer/Observer of events using CDI
RESTful resources using JAX-RS

Most of the attendees stayed for the 3.5 hrs long workshop. Several folks gave positive feedback afterwards and suggestions on some troubleshooting tips. The following bugs were filed/followed upon:

190988 (Refactor fields of an existing entity class to an Embeddable class)
203659 (Generate new lines between fields of a JPA entity)
208355 (Injecting a POJO shows a warning message)
205392 (Change the default RESTful URL to /webresources or /restful - will be fixed in 7.2.

The revised hands-on lab document is available here and the complete application here.

Many thanks to Markus Eisele for helping me with the lab!

The slides for "PaaSing your Java EE Application" are available below:

PaaSing a Java EE Application

This session explained different components of GlassFish to provide a standards-based PaaS platform. There were about 25 attendees in this 9am session.

And the slides for "The Java EE 7 Platform: Developing for the Cloud" are available below:

The Java EE 7 Platform: Developing for the Cloud

This session gave an overview of the Java EE 7 platform. It also gave a quick preview of Early Drafts from JAX-RS 2.0, JavaServer Faces 2.2, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.2, and Contexs and Dependency Injection 1.1. There were about 200+ attendees in this session.

The Java Spotlight podcast #69 had six different Java Champions - Jonas Boner, Stephan Janssen, Chris Richardson, Mattias Karlsson, Fabiane Nardon, and Bert Ertman talked about "Is Java Dead ?", "How is Oracle doing with the Java community ?" and similar topics.

The opening keynote by Jurgen Holler reminded me of the famous quote by Gandhi:

First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win

I think we are at the last but one stage :-)

IMHO product pitches and negative campaigning (feels like Republican party primaries back home) should be strictly avoided from such conferences (not for the keynote at least) otherwise they leave a bad taste!

Check out some more pictures from the conference ...

Even though it snowed overnight yesterday and a little bit this morning as well but I managed to get a run in the city

The city certainly has tons of running/biking trails and they look beautiful covered with snow!

An evolving album is available at (the first few pictures are from the trip to JUGICE and then Jfokus) ...

Also watch a lovely set of photos by Markus Eisele:

The returning speakers at Jfokus are only 7% in contrast with other big Java conferences such as JavaOne, Devoxx, and W-JAX. I've already attended two years in a row so guess getting into the smaller percentage already ;-)

Next stop Umeå and finally home ...

Java EE 6, NetBeans, and GlassFish workshop at Reykjavik, Iceland

2012-02-13T01:00:00+00:00

The JUGICE normally has about 10-25 attendees, and once again, the awesome threesome of Java EE 6, NetBeans, and GlassFish attracted about 50+ attendees in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The interactive attendees learned all learned about:

Improvements in Java Persistence API 2
"web.xml"-free and annotation-driven Servlets
Simplified packaging of EJBs in a WAR file, no-interface and single file definition of EJB
Session preservation across redeploys
Facelets (XHTML/CSS) as templating language for JavaServer Faes to achieve true MVC
Integration of Bean Validation with JPA and JSF
Typesafe dependency injection and Producer/Observer of events using CDI
RESTful resources using JAX-RS

Most of the attendees stayed for almost 4 hrs long workshop. Several folks gave positive feedback afterwards and tweets like this are much more explicit about it:

Almost everybody could complete all the exercises, which was definitely satisfying. Most importantly I coached them on how to debug errors and got them little more comfortable in NetBeans and GlassFish. Some folks were even asking for the next level of workshop already. I'd love come back in Summer to enjoy the Icelandic hospitality!

I had an interesting discussion with a J2EE-to-Spring-converted architect on the benefits of Java EE 6 over Spring. Stay tuned on that and I'll post more details in a few days :-)

Check out some more pictures from the workshop ...

The attendees helped me clarify the document further and the revised document is available here and the complete application here.

I also had some good discussions with Reynir Hubner, the marvelous and extremely hospitable JUGICE leader. He is the CTO at Eplica and also the Vice President of Reykjavik Cycling Club. We had some interesting talks about cross training. He took me around Golden Circle and to Blue Lagoon.

And some more pictures from the stay ...

Some interesting facts about Iceland ...

The country has about 300k people with two-thirds living in Reykjavik metro.
Even though its close to Arctic circle, the temperature is still relatively warm because of the Gulf Stream.
Fishing, Aluminium smelting, Tourism, and Geothermal power are the primary industries.
One of the first countries to have a democratically elected female head of state.
The landscape is vast, diverse (lava, craters, snow, lakes, glacier, geysir to name a new), and beautiful (some pictures).
Team handball is the national sport and other sports are popular too. Icelanding wrestling (Glima) is a particularly interesting one!
The heat bill is received yearly because of the widespread usage of geothermal power.
Iceland is all green, Greenland is all icy (more here)
Very low crime rate in Iceland is proven by the fact that the country's name does not even exist in this list for 2010 and this shows 0 murder per 100k for the year 2008. The country has no Army, Navy, or Air Force and only has a Coast Guard. The only folks carrying guns is the Viking Squad which is about 50 cops in the entire country.
Everybody talks in terms of before and after the 2008 financial crisis.
The roof colors in Reykjavik are very bright and vibrant and is by design. I guess this might be to complement the gray sky which is prominent all through out the year ;-)
CrossFit Games overall runner up is Annie Thorisdottir, an Icelander.
66 ^o North is a common brand that sell outer wear for all weather. No such thing as bad weather, just need to be properly dressed.
If you fly Iceland Air over Atlantic then you can take a 7-day stopover in Iceland without any additional cost.
Icelandic horses are short but neve call them pony. More about them at www.icelandichorsefestival.is.
Check the latest weather conditions from vedur.is instead of weather.com

And finally the complete set of pictures from Reykjavik and an evolving album of the trip of Nordics trip so far ...

Next stop JFokus ...

Pictures from Golden Circle, Iceland - Þingvellir, Gullfoss, Geysir, Strokkur, and Kerið

2012-02-11T23:06:54+00:00

After a very interactive and successful Java EE 6 workshop (more on that later), Reynir, the esteemed Iceland JUG leader, took me out for a trip of Golden Circle in Iceland covering Þingvellir, waterfall Gullfoss, Haukadalur which contains the geysers Geysir and Strokkur, and a volcanic crater Kerið.

Þingvellir is home to the largest natural lake in Iceland. It is also one of the unique places in the world where tectonic plates between North America and Eurasia plates can be clearly seen in the faults, otherwise they are mostly deep under the water.

"Geysir" is the first known geyser and even the English word "geyser" is derived from it. It was quite a surreal experience to watch the now dormant geyser. However Strokkur which is about 50 m south still erupts any where between 2-8 minutes.

Check out some pictures below:

Thank you Reynir for the wonderful trip!

Running in Reykjavik, Iceland

2012-02-10T23:24:52+00:00

How do runners explore a new country ?

Yep, by running!

That's exactly what I did after sleeping for about 2.5 hrs during San Francisco/Boston/Reykjavik night :-) Met an ex-Sun colleague who arranged a wonderful trail run by Ellioa River and Atlantic Sea. The river is the largest river to run through Reykjavik and is well known for fishing salmon during summer. There was still sopme residual snow, from last week's storm, on the trail and of course water was all over. We also experienced some hail towards the end of the run but a quick ride to the hotel and a warm shower was a great ending.

Here is the running route that we followed:

And some pictures from the trail:

Running seems to becoming more main stream in Reykjavik. Each swimming pool has a "hlaupakort" (running map) posted near the entrance with routes marked in different lengths. The 3 most frequented pools in the downtown area are Laugardalslaug, Sundhöllin, and Vesterbær. There is no way to reach out the running groups except the last one has a presence here. Generally the rule is just show up in running clothes and look for the spandex-clad group stretching. Learn more about running meetups in Reykjavik in this thread. There is even a 1/2 Ironman in July and a full marathon in August and . Read more about running in Reykjavik here.

Thank you Kristinn for arranging the run and Agust for showing me the trail!

Now to Java EE 6 workshop tomorrow morning ...

JAX-RS 2.0 Early Draft Explained - Java EE 7 Making Progress

2012-02-07T11:00:00+00:00

JAX-RS 2.0 Early Draft has been available for about 3 months now. JAX-RS 2.0, just like JPA 2.1, was one one of the first JSRs to be filed as part of Java EE 7. Several other specifications in Java EE 7 have released early drafts as well (JavaServer Faces 2.2, CDI 1.1, EJB 3.2, and more coming as well) and I'll cover them in later blogs.

Here are the topics covered so far:

JPA 2.1 Early Draft Explained
What's new in JSF 2.2? (external contribution)

JAX-RS 2.0 is a brand new specification and here are the main highlights so far:

Client API: The HTTPUrlConnection is too low level and is not RESTful-oriented. Invoking a RESTful resource using this class would look like:

URL url = new URL("http://.../atm/balance"); HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection(); conn.setRequestMethod("GET"); conn.setDoInput(true); conn.setDoOutput(false);             BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream())); String line; while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {     out.println(line); }

Notice, how much code has to be written and its brittle. Some JAX-RS 1.0/1.1 implementations already provide a higher-level client-side API to access the Web resources. For example, read TOTD #57 for more details about Jersey Client API. A slightly more advanced sample to access Twitter timeline using Jersey Client API is described in TOTD #143.

JAX-RS 2.0 introduces a standard Client API to in javax.ws.rs.client package to access the Web resource. It also share features with JAX-RS server API (readers/writers).

A simple usage looks like:

Client client = ClientFactory.newClient(); String balance = client.target("http://.../atm/balance")                        .request("text/plain")                        .get(String.class);

Instead of Client client = ClientFactory.newClient(), would you like @Inject Client client then vote for JAX_RS_SPEC-170.

Path and query parameters can be easily specified using the builder pattern as shown below:

Client client = ClientFactory.newClient(); String balance = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/balance")                        .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                        .queryParam("pin", "1234")                        .request("text/plain")                        .get(String.class);

See how the template in the target path is automatically substituted with the correct value. The request type is specified to be "text/plain" and GET method of this web resource is invoked. This will be translated to:

http://.../atm/1111222233334444/balance?pin=1234

A POST request will look like:

Money balance = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/withdraw")                       .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                       .queryParam("pin", "1234")                     .request("application/json")                       .post(text("50.0"), Money.class);
There is also generic command pattern that enables separation of concern between the creator and submitteruseful for batch processing using Invocation. And the code would look like:

Invocation inv1 = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/balance")                         .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                         .queryParam("pin", "1234")                       .request("text/plain")                       .buildGet();

Invocation inv2 = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/withdraw")                         .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                         .queryParam("pin", "1234")                       .request("application/json")                       .buildPost(text("50.0"));
And once the Invocations are ready then they can be invoked.
Filters and Handlers: The filters and handlers allow app developers to perform message request pre-processing and response post-processing via well-defined extension points on the client- and server-side. This is yet another feature that was supported by several JAX-RS 1.0/1.1 implementations with each using slightly different semantics and now getting standardized in JAX-RS 2.0.

Filters are non-wrapping extension points, allow pre-processing without modifying the request itself. A filter implements interface RequestFilter or ResponseFilter or both and is annotated with @Provider. A logging filter that simply logs the message may look like:

@Provider class LoggingFilter implements RequestFilter, ResponseFilter {     @Override     public FilterAction preFilter(FilterContext ctx) throws IOException {         logRequest(ctx.getRequest());         return FilterAction.NEXT;     }     @Override     public FilterAction postFilter(FilterContext ctx) throws IOException {        logResponse(ctx.getResponse());         return FilterAction.NEXT;    } }
Multiple filters are grouped in filter chains. The response from preFilter and postFilter indicate whether the next filter in the chain need to be executed (FilterAction.NEXT) or stopped (FilterAction.STOP).

Handlers provide wrapping extension points. A handler implements interface ReadFromHandler or WriteToHandler or both and is annotated with @Provider. A GZIP filter that provides deflate and inflate capabilities may look like:

@Provider class GzipHandler implements ReadFromHandler, WriteToHandler {     @Override     public Object readFrom(ReadFromHandlerContext ctx) throws IOException {         InputStream old = ctx.getInputStream();         ctx.setInputStream(new GZIPInputStream(old));         try {             return ctx.proceed();         } finally {             ctx.setInputStream(old);         }     }    @Override     public Object writeTo(WriteToHandlerContext ctx) throws IOException {        OutputStream old = ctx.getOutputStream();         GZIPOutputStream gzipOutputStream =new GZIPOutputStream(old);
        ctx.setInputStream(gzipOutputStream);         try {             return ctx.proceed();         } finally {             gzipOutputStream.finish();             ctx.setOutputStream(old);         }    }
}
Multiple handlers are grouped in handler chains. The proceed method must be explicitly called in order for the next handler in the chain to be invoked.

In the direction of flow the filters always executed before handlers. The following diagram shows the exact execution order on client and server-side:

The handlers and filters can be associated to each method of a resource specifically using @NameBinding. The specification defines @GlobalBinding to associate handlers and filters to all methods of a resource but the recent version of the specification removes it and makes it a default. Also look at JAX_RS_SPEC-146 that asks for a mechanism to override the global filters/handlers.

The dynamic binding, enabled by implementing DynamicBinding, provide more control on the association with resources and methods.
Hypermedia: Linking resources together is one of the main RESTful principles. There are structural links that are used to avoid sending a complete representation of a resource and enable lazy loading. The clients can follow these type of links to retrieve the "pieces" they need. A transitional link is used to update the state of a resource and is typically identified by a "rel" attribute. Structural links are normally in the entity; transitional links could be in link headers or the entity.

JAX-RS 2.0 will only support transitional links in headers using newly added Link and LinkBuilder classes. The proposed Client API can also create a target from a link. The code may look like:
Response r = client.target("/product").request("application/json").get(); ResponseHeaders rh = r.getHeaders(); if (rh.hasLink("ship")) { client.invocation(rh.getLink("ship")).invoke(); }

On the server side, ResponseBuilder has support for adding one or more link headers. The code may look like:

@Path("/products") public class MyResponse { @GET @Path("{id}") @Produces({"application/json", "application/xml"}) public Response getProduct(@PathParam("id")int id) { Product product = new Product(id); return Response .ok(product) .link("http://.../orders/" + id + "/ship", "ship") .build(); } }
Validation: Web resources must validate data received in query or header parameters or entity bodies. Currently this validation has to be performed in the application code. The Bean Validation specification already defines a extensible mechanism to specify validation constraints on a bean. So the JAX-RS specification leverages that and introduces support for declarative validation. The constraint annotations can be specified in public constructor parameters, method parameters, fields and bean properties. In addition, they can also decorate resource classes, entity parameters and resource methods. Here is a sample class augmented with constraint annotations:

@Path("/") class ProductResource { @POST @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED) public void addProduct(@NotNull @FormParam("productName") String name, @NotNull @Category @FormParam("category") String category) { . . . } }

The @NotNull is a pre-defined constraint in the Bean Validation API and ensures that the target parameters are not null. The @Category is a user-defined constraint using the extensible mechanism provided by the Bean Validation API. If the constraints are violated then the resource method is not invoked and instead a response with status code 400 (Bad Request) and an entity that describe the violations is returned to the client.

Here is a sample code of how to validate request entity bodies when they are mapped to resource method parameters:

@CheckProduct class Product { . . . } @Path("/") class ProductResource { @POST @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON) public void addProduct(@Valid Product product) { . . . } }

The presence of @Valid (a pre-defined annotation in Bean Validation API) next to the method parameter ensures that the @CheckProduct constraint is called to verify the mapped entity.

The JAX-RS specification also defines the sequence to validate root resource class instances. The recommendation is to return as many violations as possible instead of aborting after the first violation is encountered.
Asynchronous Processing: JAX-RS 2.0 introduces asynchronous processing on server- and client-side APIs for the usual reasons. The server-side code will look like:

@Path("/async") class ProductResource {     @Context ExecutionContext ctx;     @GET     @Suspend     public Product longOp() {         Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor().submit(             new Runnable() {                 public void run() {                     Proruct product = longQueryFromDatabase();                     ctx.resume(product);                 }             }         );     } }
The longOp method is invoked when this resource is accessed using GET, forks a new thread, and returns immediately without producing the result. Once longQueryFromDatabase returns the product then the connection is resumed and the response is returned by calling ctx.resume and setting the value.

ExecutionContext also provide suspend() that allows to override the values, such as timeout, specified in the annotation based upon the runtime state.

On the client-side, the code will look like:

Client client = ClientFactory.newClient();Future<String> future = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/balance")                       .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                       .queryParam("pin", "1234")                           .request("text/plain")                           .async()                           .get();
The async() is called during building the client request. The return Future<String> can be used to query/cancel the status of execution on the server-side using isDone and cancel. Once the response is ready then Future<T>.get() is invoked to receive an instance of T if the response was successful or null if the invocation failed.

Optionally an InvocationCallback<T> may be registered during the request invocation. The completed method is called when the invocation completes successfully and a response is available and failed method is called when the invocation fails. The code looks like:

Future<String> future = client.target("http://.../atm/{card}/balance")                       .pathParam("card", "1111222233334444")                       .queryParam("pin", "1234")                           .request("text/plain")                           .async()                           .get(                                   new InvocationCallback<String>() {                                      @Override                                      public void completed(String result) {                                          // got the correct result                                          System.out.println(result);                                      }

                                      @Override                                      public void failed(InvocationException error) {                                          // ouch, got an error!
                                          System.err.println(error.getCause());                                      }
                                  }                                );

Notice, the type of the result is specified as type parameter to InvocationCallback.
Client and server developers optimize their resources (threads) depending upon their needs and are independent of each other. A client really can't tell if a resource is implemented asynchronously or not and shouldn't even need to know.
Improved connection negotiation: This would allow a server to specify a preferred MIME type if the client does not care about it. This can be easily specified using the "qs" qualifier as shown below:

@Path("/") class ProductResource { @GET @Produces({ "text/xml;qs=0.75", "application/json"}) public Product[] getProducts() { . . . } }

The default server-side qs-value and the final order of server-side served types preferences follow the same rules as those specified for HTTP Accept Header. Per those rules an unspecified value takes the default value of 1. So the above @Produces rule says "application/json" will be served as the preferred type if there is no Accept header from the client. The section 3.5 talks more about qs parameter and the section 3.8 in the specification provide complete details about how media type of the response is chosen by a JAX-RS runtime.

The Appendix D in the specification provide a comprehensive list of changes from the previous version of the specification.

Here are some final set of references for you:

JAX-RS 2.0 Specification
Javadocs
JAX-RS Specification Wiki
JAX-RS Workspace (including API and javadocs)

And of course, it'll all be delivered as part of GlassFish 4.0!

Learn the latest and greatest about JAX-RS 2.0 from Marek Potociar's talk on JAX-RS at Devoxx 2011:

Java EE 6 and 7 at JUGICE, Iceland, JFokus 2012, and Umeå JUG, Sweden

2012-02-06T16:50:06+00:00

After an easy January month, the conference circuit is starting with a tour of the Nordics.

What ? Java EE 6 hands-on workshop
Date ? Saturday, Feb 11, 2012
Time ? 9am - 1pm
Where ? Reykjavik University, Fönix (m-105)
Register ? jugice-ag2012-eorg.eventbrite.com
Prep work: Download and Install NetBeans 7.0.1 or later ("All" version) from netbeans.org, JDK 6 latest update from oracle.com/javase.
Twitter: @JUGICE

What ? Java EE 6 hands-on workshop (Feb 13, 9am), PaaSing a Java EE Application (Feb 15, 9am), Java EE 7: Developing for the Cloud (Feb 15, 1pm)
Date ? Monday - Wednesday, Feb 13 - 15, 2012
Time ? All Day
Where ? Stockholm Waterfront Congress Center, Sweden
Register ? jfokus.com (almost sold out, register quick)
Prep work: (For hands-on workshop only) Download and Install NetBeans 7.0.1 or later ("All" version) from netbeans.org, JDK 6 latest update from oracle.com/javase.
Website: jfokus.com
Twitter: @jfokus

Check out my reports from JFokus 2011.

What ? Java EE 6 hands-on workshop
Date ? Thursday, Feb 16, 2012
Time ? 6pm
Where ? Umeå University (Triple-Helix), Umeå, Sweden
Register ? Just show up
Prep work: Download and Install NetBeans 7.0.1 or later ("All" version) from netbeans.org, JDK 6 latest update from oracle.com/javase.
Website: umejug.blogspot.com

Where will I meet or run with you ? :)

Java EE 6 pulled crowd at Austin JUG

2012-02-02T01:29:27+00:00

I delivered a NetBeans-driven Java EE 6 session to about 80+ attendees at the Austin JUG yesterday. The session built a typical three-tier Web application using the new/updated technologies in the Java EE 6 platform. I was told this is one of the largest attendance seen at the JUG in recent months. Java EE 6 is indeed a crowd puller ;-)

Rob Ratcliff, the JUG leader, started with a great overview of "Whats new in Java" covering recent JDK update releases, Java FX 2.1 Developer Preview for Mac and Linux, Java EE 6 and WebLogic 12c, NetBeans 7.1 and other stuff. His complete slides are available here. I was fortunate to speak at the JUG because an informal survey of the attendees showed that nobody attends (or plan to attend) a conference in the coming months.

During my session, the highly interactive attendees learned about NetBeans wizard-driven Java EE 6 application development. Here are some of the features that were demonstrated in the talk:

Improvements in Java Persistence API
"web.xml"-free and annotation-driven Servlets
Simplified packaging of EJBs in a WAR file, no-interface and single file definition of EJB
Session preservation across redeploys
Facelets (XHTML/CSS) as templating language for JavaServer Faes to achieve true MVC
Integration of Bean Validation with JPA and JSF
Typesafe dependency injection and Producer/Observer of events using CDI
RESTful resources using JAX-RS

The application was built using NetBeans and deployed on GlassFish. This same application can be easily deployed on WebLogic 12c as well since it is full Java EE 6-compliant as well now. The complete instructions for NetBeans/GlassFish are available here and same instructions for NetBeans/WebLogic will be made available shortly as well.

The session ran almost 45 minutes beyond the scheduled time with most of the attendees staying late and asking questions. The feedback from the attendees was very positive. One of them was even starting a new project using NetBeans + Java EE 6 + GlassFish next week so this talk was directly relevant. Also found another attendee using GlassFish for development and WebLogic for deployment for their Java EE 6 application. Rob used GlassFish for an internal US Military project and has been deployed for more than 2 years with nearly zero maintenance.

Check out some pictures from the JUG visit ...

A tweet like the one below definitely make the quick trip worth it ...

The formal JUG session was followed by a beer-a-thon (lemonade-a-thon for me ;-) at BJs.

Some interesting facts about Austin ...

Michael Dell (chairman and CEO of Dell) lives in Austin, Dell worldwide headquarters are in Austin.
Lance Armstrong is from Austin.
Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, and Brad Pitt has homes in Austin.
Whole Foods chain started and headquartered in Austin. I was lucky enough to squeeze time out for a lunch with a colleague at one of their stores in this less-than-24-hour visit to Austin.
Keep Austin Weird

Download the NetBeans/GlassFish instructions and let us know how you are using Java EE 6.

Next stop is Reykjavik (Iceland), Stockholm (Sweden) and Umeå (Sweden), more on that later ...