In this interview, Gary Baney, Chief Technology Officer at Flashline, talks about the evolution of the component architecture, the tough decisions corporations have to make on their reuse initiatives, and the top barriers to component development; he also discusses how J2EE components should be architected and how to delineate the component interface from the JSP/Servlet presentation layer.


Watch Gary Baney's Interview Here

Can someone from BEA really confirm that weblogic server dev licence are free and not only for a 30 day evaluation purpose....
I've contacted patrick.orourke at BEA, and he said nothing but that you can download weblo and use it for 30 days...

I would be very pleased to know if this is a rumor or a real statement since i'm about to buy 50 dev licences..

thanks,

Laurent.
PS : sorry for this cross-post, but it seems that noone pays attention to this.
I love theserverside since it brings some valuable fresh news, but it would be cool if one can rely on.

Gary's talk is very interesting and is nicely divided into segments that cover off different topics. Give it a listen.

Gary suggests that component reuse relies on a stable architecture. I agree. Based on my direct experience on two J2EE eCommerce projects and significant amounts of time investigating best practices, I think that J2EE architecture has a way to go. To illustrate this point, consider the number of web presentation frameworks and database persistence alternatives. See also this thread on lack of portability:
  http://www.theserverside.com/discussion/thread.jsp?thread_id=11051

Architecture maturation and reuse (and not components) is probably a higher ROI acitivity for most organizations (at this time).

Overall, I am unconviced of the value of component reuse except for the largest of enterprises. Consider the lesson of XP and Agile Programming: "Build only what you need and no more". I don't want to start a war about XP good/bad. My point is Component Reuse and XP are at opposite ends of the spectrum. My own project experience cautions against building for reuse as I have seen attempts at genralization lead to functionality bloat and project delays.