- SpringSource hires BEA vet
- IBM touts open source app server use
- BEA previews app server
- Test Center Tracker: The zen of Web apps and Mac OS X
- JBoss offers enterprise product bundle
- OSGi technology upgraded for Java community
- BEA certifies Java EE 5 backing
- Spring Web Flow released
- JRuby milestone is reached
- Sun: Java runs great on Vista
June 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)
SpringSource, keeper of the popular Spring Framework for Java development, has hired a former BEA Systems official.
Peter Cooper-Ellis, former executive vice president and general manager for the WebLogic Server product line at BEA, has joined SpringSource as senior vice president of engineering and product management, SpringSource said. He will lead the team that recently unveiled the SpringSource Application Platform, featuring a Java application server positioned as an alternative to legacy Java application servers.
“Peter is a heavyweight in the enterprise Java market,” says Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource, in a statement released by the company. “His broad engineering and product management experience will greatly help us continue to redefine the application server market by developing world-class, industry leading enterprise Java products that are compelling alternatives to their legacy counterparts.”
Cooper-Ellis also had management responsibility for many acquisitions for BEA and participated in product strategy, SpringSource said. BEA recently was acquired by Oracle.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 13, 2008 08:42 AM
February 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
IBM touts open source app server use
IBM this week announced two companies using its open source application server, WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE).
The two companies are Avada Software and Nexxar Group. Avada plans to offer its messaging management solutions with WAS CE. Avada also will support the product.
Nexxar, a money transfer company, is using WAS CE for regulatory compliance in global financial services for enterprises and individuals, IBM said.
WAS CE Version 2.0 uses Java enterprise edition standards to help deploy SOA technologies, IBM said. It based on the Apache Geronimo application server.
Distribution of WAS recently surpassed the two million mark, IBM said.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 5, 2008 11:12 AM
November 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
BEA Systems has posted a technology preview of the WebLogic Server 10.3 application server, which features Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 compatability.
Also featured is Web 2.0 rich Internet application support and improved interoperability with platforms such as Microsoft .Net and Spring 2.1. The download is available free here.
The application server has been set for general release in 2008.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 7, 2007 12:34 PM
August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: The zen of Web apps and Mac OS X
Have you been thinking to get yourself a Mac for a long time and never did? Then don't miss this week Enterprise Windows where Oliver Rist asks (with his well known subtlety): "Does Mac OS X suck?". Oliver's column is the closest you can get to walking the Apple road yourself, and may be you will after reading it.
Is the Web treating you well? Or more to the point, are Web applications treating you well? Moving an application from the quiet waters of a corporate network to the stormy weather of the Net takes more than being technically savvy, warns Tom Yager in this week's "Ahead of the Curve". In his column Tom explains why, and reveals what's the secret sauce to make good Web apps. A useful reading also for non-developers.
Posted by Mario Apicella on August 29, 2007 08:30 AM
July 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
JBoss offers enterprise product bundle
Continuing its pursuit of enterprise IT shops, JBoss is releasing on Tuesday JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2, which offers a single package of three of the company's open source middleware technologies.
Featured in the platform are JBoss Application Server 4.2, Hibernate 2.4, for object--relational mapping, and Seam 1.2, a application development framework for building enterprise Java applications. Users get updates and patches to the three products, eliminating the guesswork for customers, said Ram Venkataraman, JBoss's director of product management.
"They're all packaged together and integrated together, so the customer has the out-of-the-box experience of actually installing one product," Venkataraman said.
JBoss sells subscriptions to Enterprise Application Platform, which feature support. A Standard Subscription, featuring one year of 12-hours-by-five-days-a-week support, costs $4,500 for a four-CPU configuration.
Other packages planned for release by JBoss later this year include JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, featuring the Enterprise Application and JBoss Portal 2.6 and shipping this quarter, and SOA Platform, with Enterprise Application Platform plus JBoss ESB (enterprise service bus) JBoss jBPM (business process management) and JBoss Rules. The SOA package is due in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Posted by Paul Krill on July 9, 2007 02:07 PM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
OSGi technology upgraded for Java community
The OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) Alliance announced on Wednesday that it has released OSGi Service Platform Release 4 Core Specification 4.1, responding to requirements received from the Java community.
OSGi technology, providing a service-oriented, component-based environment for developers, serves as the basis for the Eclipse runtime and has been called the heart of everything at Eclipse.
With Wednesday's announcement, the alliance is responding to requirements received from the Java Community Process Java Specification Request (JSR) 291 Expert Group. JSR 291 provides a framework for packaging Java applications as independent modules with lifecycle management, to reduce development time and minimize down time.
The JSR brings the core OSGi framework of JSR 232 Mobile Operational Management to Java Standard Edition and Enterprise platforms. This provides a consistent programming model for Java modularity across Java Standard Edition and Mobile Edition platforms. A management environment is provided for installing, updating and removing Java and associated native components.
"Utilizing the well known OSGi Service Platform Specification, JSR 291 provides a mature, proven technology for constructing Java modules and installing, uninstalling, and updating them without restarting the JVM and disrupting service," said Stan Moyer, president of the OSGi Alliance and Telcordia Technologies executive director, in a statement released by OSGi. "Working cooperatively with the JCP JSR 291 Expert Group, we have revised and improved our core specification to better serve our joint constituencies."
OSGi technology serves as platform for universal middleware in server environments and embedded devices, OSGi said.
Posted by Paul Krill on May 30, 2007 08:35 AM
February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
BEA certifies Java EE 5 backing
BEA Systems has certified its upcoming WebLogic Server 10 Java application server as being compliant with the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) specification.
BEA said its application server is the first to achieve this milestone. The company has subjected the application server to a compatibility test suite provided by Sun Microsystems, which founded Java.
A highlight of Java EE 5 is support for Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 technology for simplified persistence of data to databases. Web services capabilities also have been enhanced to improve development of services.
WebLogic Server 10, available in a preview release here, features ease of development, Web services capabilities for SOA, high availability and tooling based on the open source Eclipse platform. General lease of verson 10 is planned for March.
BEA also has worked with Microsoft on interoperability with Microsoft's Weindows Communication Foundation technology for Web services.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 9, 2007 11:32 AM
November 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Interface21, makers of the Spring Framework for Java, on Thursday announced release of version 1.0 of Spring Web Flow.
With Spring Web flow, developers can build reusable, self-contained controller modules, called flows, to guide users through the completion of processes such as booking a trip or applying for a loan.
Spring Web Flow can be integrated into Web frameworks such as Struts, Spring MVC or JavaServer Faces across standard Java EE Servlet and Java Portlet settings.
Spring Web Flow is billed as the next-generation Web application framework by Interface 21.
"Spring Web Flow is an important addition to the Spring family of products," said Rod Johnson, CEO of Interface21 and founder of the Spring Framework, in a statement released by Interface21. "It provides an elegant, intuitive solution to the challenges of authoring sophisticated Web applications, and makes Web developers more productive. Naturally, it integrates perfectly with Spring-managed middle tiers, and offers the POJO-based programming model users expect from Spring."
Key features of Spring Web Flow 1.0 include:
* The ability to define controller logic for an end user task.
* Enforcement of user interface navigation rules.
* The ability to invoke Spring-managed business services directly from flow definitions.
* Automatic cleanup of memory when a flow ends, to boost performance.
* Seamless browser back button support.
* Changing of flow definitions without a container restart.
Spring Web Flow 1.0 is available here.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 2, 2006 12:22 PM
October 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Developers at Sun Microsystems have released JRuby 0.9.1, which will serve as a predecessor to the planned 1.0 release of the programming language.
JRuby is Java implementation of Ruby. Highlights of the 0.9.1 release include a 50- to 60-percent performance boost, a new interpreter design and refactoring improvments. Also featured are enhanced parser performance and a new syntax for including Java classes into Ruby.
Sun has Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, the chief maintainers of JRuby, working on the project. They joined Sun as full-time employees five weeks ago.
Posted by Paul Krill on October 23, 2006 02:15 PM
October 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Responding to a rumor started on Microsoft Watch that Java doesn't get along well with Vista, Sun Java Client Group Architect Chet Haase declared quite firmly in his own blog that Java runs quite well on Redmond's next-born.
In a Sept. 29 blog posting, Microsoft Watch cited eWeek Lab tests running various Java-based apps on Vista. "In each case, Aero Glass [the Vista UI] wasn't just disabled for the (apparently) offending application, but for our test machine as a whole--until we closed the Java app."
The entry dispenses the following advice to Sun: "Sun Microsystems would do well to give a ring to one of the interop contacts at Microsoft that came out of the firms' historic make-nice agreement back in 2004, and figure out how to make Java apps first-class Vista citizens."
That final bit particularly irked Haase, who responded in a recent entry in his blog.
"[O]lder versions of Java do have problems on Vista, and that's what the original report was about; someone tried running some older version of Java on Vista and noted some problems. But that's like saying that your favorite XBox game, Bloody Mess X, doesn't work on XBox360. Of course it doesn't; the original game was written for a completely different system."
Haase goes into great detail to explain just how hard Sun has worked to adapt Java to the ever-evolving Vista.
"... [It] has been an ongoing process of learning, testing, debugging, submitting bugs against Microsoft, fixing our bugs, re-testing. ... And since Vista has been a moving platform during the Java SE 6 development process, we've been in this development cycle continually with every new drop of Vista (they are still releasing weekly builds for us to test; we just found a bug in RC1 that has since been fixed in the latest release we got yesterday)."
(Application developers in particular may want to read his post; it's quite detailed, technical, and blissfully devoid of marketing.)
Java SE 6, by the way, "is the best solution for Vista," Haase writes. "That release has received most of our focus during the Vista beta release timeframe, and it is where most of the fixes to the known problems currently reside."
As for other flavors of Java: "J2SE 1.5 should work fine, but there may be some nuances that may not be as perfect... . Some additional Vista-specific fixes (such as component animation) may not be back-ported, so the fidelity may not be as close as that in Java SE 6... . But the full gamut of Vista work that we feel is necessary for J2SE 1.5 should be available in update 11, which we hope to release around January of 2007."
Moreover, J2SE 1.4.2 will basically work, according to Haase. "We see 1.4.2 as being functional, usable, and perfect for situations where a customer is absolutely locked into that particular release for now. But we encourage developers and customers to migrate to a more full-feature Vista release soon."
Stay tuned to InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Vista for the latest news and reviews.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 10, 2006 09:41 PM
August 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
JOnAS, an open source Java application server, is being updated with clustering enhancements, said a developer working on the project at Groupe Bull in France.
A release candidate of JOnAS 4.8.1 was made available this week as a prelude to a general release planned for late-September or October. "The main functionality [improvement] is cluster monitoring," for functions such as starting and stopping of servers, said Florent Benoit, a lead developer at Groupe Bull.
Also planned in the new release are Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) replication framework enhancments, in which the SFSB (Stateful Session Beans) replication framework ensures transaction and global consistency in clusters. A remote deploy/start improvement allows for deploying of the same application on several nodes.
JOnAS is available via a Lesser GPL open source license. The project is hosted on ObjectWeb.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 11, 2006 09:01 AM
May 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Azul and Mainsoft deliver scalability, performance to .Net apps
Mainsoft's Visual MainWin for J2EE development tool is now interoperable with Azul Systems' Compute Appliances.
The companies announced a partnership on Monday to enable large datacenters with a mixed Microsoft and Java environment to reduce administration complexity and cut costs while continuing to leverage their .Net investments.
Mainsoft enables organizations to quickly port .Net Web and server applications to J2EE without rewriting the .Net applications. Multiplatform enterprises can now derive cost and scalability benefits by running their .Net applications via the Java platform powered by Azul's network attached processing technology.
When attached to a network, Azul claims its Compute Appliances enable Java-based transaction processing applications to process up to 300 percent more transactions. The companies say that same boost can now be brought to .Net applications by using Mainsoft.
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 8, 2006 06:56 AM
April 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun adds new versions of Java SE
Sun Microsystems has expanded its offerings for the embedded development market with two new editions of Java SE.
The new offerings include a reduced footprint version of the Java SE platform that uses only 23MB of storage space, and a version of the Java SE platform designed specifically for the PowerPC processor.
In addition, the company unveiled the JVM Tuning and Benchmarking Service, which evaluates Java code running on customers' hardware and recommends improvements to application performance through optimizing the JVM to customers' specific situations.
Sun also will be demonstrating an early release of its Sun Java Real-Time System 2.0 at the Embedded Systems Conference this week.
More information on Java SE for embedded development can be found at http://java.sun.com/j2se/embedded.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 5, 2006 08:01 AM