[TheServerSide Newsletter #8]
April 15, 2003 Newsletter Circulation: 130 000+ No. 8


 This newsletter sponsored in part by Oracle
GartnerGroup reports 35% of IT budgets are spent on integration. Now you can tackle all your IT projects with a single, comprehensive platform! Using Oracle9i Application Server you can reduce deployment time, integrate business processes, link disparate information systems, and future-proof your infrastructure. Click for a FREE product review from DM Review, "Oracle9iAS Provides 360 Degrees of Integration."

In This Issue


Tales From TheServerSide
 o The Unusual Suspects

Featured Articles
 o Struts Tiles 101/201
 o Continuous Performance

Tech Talks
 o Joshua Bloch on What's New in Java 1.5

New Public Review Chapters
 o AspectJ In Action: Policy enforcement - system-wide contracts

TheServerSide Matrix
 o Oracle 9iAS, JOnAS, Orion 2.0, LiteWebServer

TMC Education Strategies
 o Get A $500 Amazon.com Gift Certificate

TheServerSide Symposium
 o J2EE and the Web Services Movement
 o Aspect Oriented Java Development

Key J2EE Industry News Headlines
 Some key headlines:
 o IBM to offer J2EE-based MS Office Alternative
 o Ironflare becomes official J2EE licensee

This newsletter is transmitted twice a month. It is printer-friendly and available online



Tales From TheServerSide


The Unusual Suspects

Are you still deciding on the right technology for your project? Making the wrong choice can cost your company millions. In the latest Tales from TheServerSide cartoon, see what caused the latest project to fail.



Back to Top

Featured Articles


Continuous Performance - The Next Advance in Software Development
By Cody Menard

This article examines a proposed best practice known as Continuous Performance. According to the theory behind Continuous Performance, testing performance several times a day makes performance tuning vastly more efficient, and can result in software that performs better overall, because code is cleaner throughout the development process.


Struts Tiles 101/201
By Patrick Peak

This article will show you how to handle page layout, and create a well-organized, maintainable, Struts-based application using the Tiles Framework. The article is divided into two sections: Tiles 101 looks at how to create a standard layout using tiles; In Tiles 201 you will use Tiles Controllers to improve the overall architecture of your application. The Tiles framework is discussed in the context of an online Penguin Store sample application.



Tech Talks


Joshua Bloch - Core Java Platform Group Senior Architect, Sun Microsystems

Topic: What's New in Java 1.5

Joshua looks at the new features scheduled for the Java 1.5 'Tiger' release. He discusses the new language features defined in JSR 201 including Typesafe Enums, autoboxing, and static imports, and looks at the Generics JSR and how it will impact development. He outlines the reasons for not adding AOP to the Tiger Release and talks about the various people, groups and institutions that are driving the Java language forward.




New Public Review Chapters


Policy enforcement: system-wide contracts
Excerpted from Manning's AspectJ In Action, by Ramnivas Laddad

AOP/AspectJ provides a better way of enforcing policies that requires little human diligence and ensures a continual enforcement. This chapter presents an aspect-oriented solution that illustrates how you can detect violations by simply compiling your code along with a few prewritten aspects. You can include these aspects during the development phase to help detect policy violations, and for deployment, you can exclude them without affecting the core system behavior.



TheServerSide Matrix


TheServerSide Application Server Matrix is a detailed listing of J2EE vendors and their application server products, with information on latest product version numbers, J2EE spec support and licensing, pricing, platform support, and links to product downloads and reviews. Here is a listing of some recent updates/additions to the Matrix:

Check out TheServerSide Application Server Matrix



TMC Education Strategies


Get A $500 Amazon.com Gift Certificate

Get A $500 Amazon.com Gift Certificate when you register for an Enterprise Java Training Public Course! This offer is good for any class happening between April 2003 and June 2003. However, you must confirm your registration by April 30, 2003 to qualify for the complimentary gift certificate. Just enter promotion code AMAZON-01 when you register.

With courses by The Middleware Company, you'll accelerate your career, as well as benefit your company. Well-trained Enterprise Java programmers mean projects get done faster, and have a higher chance of success.

Don't delay, take a moment to ask your boss to sponsor you to take these classes today!

How will you enjoy your $500 Gift Certificate? For starters, here are some ideas...

Click Here to find out more or visit http://www.middleware-company.com/500



TheServerSide Symposium


TheServerSide Symposium - Register by April 30th and Save $300
Boston, June 27 - 29 Weekend

TheServerSide Symposium, your J2EE conference is going strong. We're almost sold out on available rooms at the hotel of the venue on the June 27-29 weekend in Boston, and we expect those rooms to sell out by the end of the month. Meantime, we are preparing to announce the final speaker and keynote schedule later this week. Here is another small sample of the great speakers/talks that will be presented at the symposium.

J2EE and the Web Services Movement - This talk will discuss the influence of Web services on the J2EE platform. Starting with laying the basic foundation for Web services at the message manipulation level, the talk will move on to J2EE 1.4's inclusion of Web services and a discussion on the potential impact of Web services standards on future J2EE versions.
Jim Knutson: Spec Lead of the J2EE Webservices JSR 109, Websphere J2EE Architect.



Aspect Oriented Java Development - In this session, Bob discusses the state of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) in Java, outlining the various approaches to implementing AOP (custom compilers, dynamic proxies, and byte code manipulation), the pros and cons, and application strategies and patterns. Bob also gives an overview of JBoss AOP and how developers can leverage it.
Bob Lee: jAdvise AOP framework founder, co-author of the book Bitter EJB.

If you're thinking about benefiting from this incredible show, you should register by April 30th. If you register in April you will get the whole symposium for $1195 ($300 discount) and you'll get to choose from over 15 books written by J2EE experts speaking at the show and meet them in person to get a personally autographed copy. We will NOT be offering the autographed book after April 30th.

Checkout http://www.theserverside.com/symposium.

I hope to meet you there,

Floyd Marinescu
Director of TheServerSide.com
Author, EJB Design Patterns



Key J2EE Industry Headlines

IBM to offer J2EE-based MS Office Alternative

IBM Software and its Lotus Group have built J2EE-based spreadsheet, document and presentation graphics apps that will be bundled for free with the company's WebSphere portal. The software is purely server-side with functionality delivered to the user over the network. IBM claims that this package will support 80% of the features of MS Office.

Java, J2EE - the most wanted tech skills on dice.com

Java and J2EE are the most wanted tech skills on dice.com. Numbers show job offerings in last 30 days with no other restrictions. In a short list picked up from dice.com on 11.04.2003, Java was at #1 with 4355 offerings, with J2EE at #2 with 4227. Unix was at #3 with 4173 offerings.

Ironflare becomes official J2EE licensee

Ironflare AB is proud to announce a strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems to officially license J2EE. The Orion Application Server is an industrial strength J2EE application server, and the formal licensing of the J2EE platform underlines Ironflare's current and future dedication and adherence to open standards.

Exadel Announces Struts Studio

Exadel has announced Exadel Struts Studio, a visual building tool for the Struts Framework. A key feature of Struts Studio is Web Flow, drag-and-drop framework that allows defining and visualizing the Struts configuration XML file, and is directly linked to the XML source (real-time roundtrip). It also supports automatic management of the relationships between Struts artifacts.

Sun Prepares to Unleash Java 'Tiger'

Broadening the reach and appeal of Java is at the top of Sun's list for J2SE 1.5 (coden-named Tiger), to be released this year. Tiger will add technology from ongoing JSRs that will simplify development and smooth the language in four areas: ease of development; monitoring and manageability; scalability and performance; and XML and client-side Web services support, officials said.

Whats new in J2EE 1.4 and Servlets 2.4

J2EE 1.4 provides the groundwork for Web services development with J2EE, as well as important tool enhancements, new standards for application deployment and server management, integration and security enhancements, and improvements to J2EE's web app development capabilities. Two new articles take a look at these upcoming improvements.





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