Java is a static typing language, meaning you have to define a type before you can use it and the compiler checks the types for you. Some people like the static typing and others don’t. People like it would like even more into the language. Some others would prefer less typing. The rest don’t have strong opinions and are OK with both.
In the last several years, we actually see two opposite trends in Java programming: stronger typing and weaker typing. This blog analyzes in depth why these two trends happened and what do they mean for you. Read more »
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
With SpringSource being part of VMware family, getting a Spring training is certainly a lot easier than before. For one thing, my boss doesn’t need to pay for it.:-)
I just finished my 4-day training starting from this Tuesday. It’s been pretty exhausting given that I had to get up before 7AM to match the central time. But what’s learnt worth the effort.
The coverage of the training includes:
- Day 1 – Integration Foundations including concurrency, remoting, etc.
- Day 2 – Effective Web Services
- Day 3 – Message-Based Systems and Advanced Transaction Management
- Day 4 – Applying Spring Batch and Spring Integration
More details can be found here.
What interested me the most are the Spring JMS and Spring Batch. For those don’t know Spring Batch yet, it’s a batch processing framework similar to the concept of running Shell commands in a batch. As I can see, these two are two important enabling technologies for cloud computing, especially in federated cloud environments where you want to seamlessly shifting workload and balancing them across the boundaries.
I will blog them more when I start to use them in future projects. Stay tuned.
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
Done with the four day training, finally! It’s pretty exhausting given that I had to get up two hours earlier to match the Central time schedule.
Spring Faces
I talked about JavaScript and AJAX two days ago. They are all good to some extent, but seemingly disconnected from the server. You have to think and manage the Web app as two pieces, bad for the productivity.
JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology was created to solve this problem. It a server-side framework, which provides GUI components, manages their states from the server side, handles events, and etc. You can then develop a web app more like the standalone application in some sense. Because JSF manages the state from the server side, it uses more resources and less performant than it’s JS/AJAX equivalent.
Spring Faces is not a replacement for JSF, but complements in the “Spring” way. It facilitates deeper JSF and Web Flow integration, manages JSF components’ states, and provides more lightweight JSF components. Therefore, you can get leaner web application than using pure JSF.
Debugging
Several tools can be handy for your debugging: Read more »
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
Web flow is the most confusing part so far in RIA with Spring training, therefore a whole day was dedicated to this.
From a very high level, a Web flow is just like a wizard in a stand-alone application. It guides a user through several steps of interactions. Complicated wizards may branch out depending on the information entered in early steps, so do the Web flows.
Well, Web environment has its uniqueness and challenges. Spring Web Flow is designed to ease it. Like any other framework, you have to overcome the learning curve before you can really take advantage of it.
The good news is the Web Flow still fits in the MVC framework overall, just with a new set of handler mapping, handler adapter, plus the new flow executor. Read more »
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
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