Viewpoints

How Terms Have Changed Over Time

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 01:15:00 EDT

Meanings and terms often change or get adjusted over time, especially with Information Technology. While never walking 5 miles to school in two-feet of snow, I did live during an era of TV’s without remotes and vinyl record players. I tend to include many ‘remember when…’ type stories in my blogs so just chalk (or chuck) this one in the nostalgia pile. A few are a stretch and most still hold their old definition but come along for the ride anyway.

David Skok Authors Startup and VC Blog on Ulitzer

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:15:00 EST

When I saw David Skok's name on recent Ulitzer authors page I was pleasantly surprised. David is one of the key figures in the technology space for the past two decades, including his venture capital activities. Throughout his long career, he successfully launched a number of companies. He is a general partner at Matrix partners since 2001. Last time I mentioned his name in one of my blog entries was here in 2004. I had an email exchange with David in October 2007 when we started architecting our revolutionary Ulitzer new media platform. David introduced me to Christian, a trusted enterprise developer who had invaluable input while we were making critical decisions in the selection of our development platform for Ulitzer.

WaveMaker's Community Grows and Grows

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:25:00 EST

Open source companies live or die by the health of their communities. WaveMaker's proudest achievement last year was creating a passionate and rapidly growing community.

Thinking back, probably our most important decision affecting community health was made early in the year, when we decided to dump our AGPL license in favor of Apache.

Although we had never gotten direct feedback that the community didn't like AGPL, we had more forum posts than we thought was healthy that asked pointed questions about our licensing. This let us know that people were confused, and if there was any doubt in our minds, the licensing debacle at Ext js convinced us that Keep-It-Simple-Stupid is the only way to go here.

Once community developers felt confident that they could do what they wanted to do with our Community edition without somehow triggering a commercial fee down the road, the community literally exploded. Together, here is what we accomplished in 2009:

Stunning community growth: 18 months after our product launch, the number of registered developers for WaveMaker (15,00) is about one third the size of the Spring community (49,000)!
Profitability: WaveMaker closed 2009 as a profitable company and saw revenue growth of 53% in our last 3 months!
Gartner recognition: WaveMaker was featured in 9 different Gartner reports last year, including one which identified WaveMaker as the only open source platform for cloud development!

Why the tidal wave of support for WaveMaker? That's easy - WaveMaker makes it ridiculously easy to build great-looking, standards-based Java applications.

Web 2.0 enabler: at companies like Macy's, National City Bank and Pioneer Energy, WaveMaker enables non-Java developers to create Java apps with minimal training.
Productivity multipier: at ISVs and systems integrators, WaveMaker reduces development costs for Java and Web 2.0 applications by over 75%.

Commentary: Sun’s Oracle Merger

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST

With only the ‘you may now kiss the bride’ custom to follow, the ORACLE/SUN marriage (or dare I say SUN/ORACLE) is now finally complete. After months of legal wrangling which has caused nothing but embarrassment and dwindled SUN’s stature within the market sphere, reports also came out that half of Sun's 27,000 staff will be made redundant. Thus initial indications are clear that Oracle, known for its past agnosticism to open source has an eye for the merger being based on maximizing profit.

AJAX Tag Events and Listeners

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:08:00 EDT

Today we're going to talk about two features of JSF 2.0's f:ajax tag: the event attribute and the listener attribute.

The use of both of these is really, really simple - so I'll just briefly cover the basics, and then launch directly into the sample code.

The "event" attribute of the ajax tag indicates which event to use to trigger the ajax request. There are any number of possible events allowed: You can use the standard browser DOM events (like click, change, keyup, etc. You can also use two special event values - action and valueChange. These two special values correspond to the same events that happen on the server side in JSF. On the client side, action is typically mapped to click, while valueChange is mapped to change or click, depending on the component.

The "listener" attribute of an ajax tag is a method that is called on the server side every time the ajax function happens on the client side. For instance, you could use this attribute to specify a server side function to call every time the user pressed a key - Handy, eh?

Anyhow, without further ado, let's see how this works in a page. We're going to detect every time the user lifts a key (the keyup event) - when that happens, we'll run an ajax command which updates a counter, and refreshes an output field.

Here's the using page:

   1 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> 
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
   4       xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
   5       xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
   6 
   7     <h:head><title>Ajax Tag Event and Listener Demo</title></h:head>
   8     <h:body>
   9         <h:form id="form">
  10             <br/>
  11             Echo test: <h:outputText id="out" value="#{listenBean.hello}"/>
  12             <br/>
  13             String Length: <h:outputText id="count" value="#{listenBean.length}"/>
  14             <br/>
  15             <h:inputText id="in" value="#{listenBean.hello}" autocomplete="off">
  16                 <f:ajax event="keyup" render="out count eventcount" listener="#{listenBean.update}"/>
  17             </h:inputText>
  18             <br/>
  19             Event count: <h:outputText id="eventcount" value="#{listenBean.eventCount}"/>
  20         </h:form>
  21 
  22     </h:body>
  23 </html>

As I said, we tag the inputText (line 15) with an ajax tag (line 16). That ajax tag listens for the keyup event - when such an event occurs, we send an ajax request to the server. That ajax request will run a listener method (listenBean.update), apply the new string value from the inputText (listenBean.hello), and then render out (line 11), count (line 13), and eventcount (line 19).

The bean itself is nothing special: here's the example below:

   1 import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;
   2 import javax.faces.bean.ViewScoped;
   3 import javax.faces.event.AjaxBehaviorEvent;
   4 
   5 @ManagedBean(name="listenBean")
   6 @ViewScoped
   7 public class ListenBean {
   8 
   9     private String hello = "Hello";
  10 
  11     private int length = hello.length();
  12 
  13     private int eventCount = 0;
  14 
  15     public String getHello() {
  16         return hello;
  17     }
  18 
  19     public void setHello(String hello) {
  20         this.hello = hello;
  21     }
  22 
  23     public int getLength() {
  24         return length;
  25     }
  26 
  27     public int getEventCount() {
  28         return eventCount;
  29     }
  30 
  31     public void update(AjaxBehaviorEvent event) {
  32         length = hello.length();
  33         eventCount++;
  34     }
  35 }

So - questions? Ask below.

Sun Was Too Arrogant To Survive

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:45:00 EDT

Sure, now that the deed is done and the board has approved the acquisition, there’s lots of Monday morning quarterbacks. However, in this case, I’m not one of them. Indeed, I point to the release of my 9/1997 report that I wrote for NC.Focus entitled “State of Java Report: IBM” and the subsequent press release where I assert that IBM is leading in deploying Java in the Enterprise. The story goes somewhat like this. On the day I released the report, I subsequently released the press release through PR Newswire, but it was also available on the IBM website. Within hours of posting the press release, IBM was contacted by Sun and told to remove the link to the press release on their website. Ultimately, Sun did not like the fact that I presented that IBM was doing a better job of monetizing Java in the Enterprise than Sun was, but that was the truth.

How to Get a Professional Corporate Blogging Job

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:00:00 EDT

The Secrets of Corporate Blogging. I would like to begin with defining what corporate blogging is. There are actually four types of blogs that can be considered corporate blogs; I will list these definitions later. For now, suffice to say that I am most interested in corporate blogging as “professional blogging on behalf of a company”. So first I have to explain: what is professional blogging? And to do that, I first have to explain: what is blogging?

Examining Cloud Computing Mergers & Acquisitions

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:00:00 EDT

One topic that keeps reoccurring in my various conversations is the sudden interest in cloud centric M&A activities thanks in part to the recent IBM / Sun rumors. Being that I continuously find myself in the midst of a lot of the back room, off the record type conversations I thought I'd share some of my recent insights into cloud m&a.

Initial Thoughts on IBM Acquisition of Sun Microsystems

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:15:00 EDT

Sun has been in a holding pattern since the dot com implosion. And, while Sun positioned themselves as "the dot in the dot com", that was the last innovation we have seen come from Sun. Sun, while it once had very competitive hardware, had no idea how to productize and implement effective software products. Sun works on the assumption that all software must lead to Sun server sales - definitely a flawed idea that was proven wrong numerous times. Sun also was never able to quite grasp the idea of high volume and low margin sales. Sun continued on in its technology efforts like it was 1988.

Opinion: What if IBM Buys Sun For Real?

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EDT

When Wall Street Journal writes, they have their reasons. A couple of days ago they wrote that IBM wants to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5B. To me, this is sad news. People will be laid off and some software will cease to exist.

Flex Is Strong Because of Java

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 06:00:00 EDT

I received an email stating that AOL finally abandoned the ugly Java applet that was used in the ICQ2Go, the Web version of the hugely popular (about 30M users) instant messaging system. The person who sent me this email also wrote, 'IMO this was the last popular Java applet. Now the king is dead.'

Additions to My Computer Book Shelf

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:15:00 EDT

Many young programmers don't read books anymore. They google. They argue, 'When I need to find a solution it's just a click away. Why bother purchasing books that are outdated by the time of printing? Real programmers learn by doing - trial and errors'. I do not agree with this.

Ten Years Ago This Month, Java Was 1000 Days Old

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Ten years ago this month, Java was 1000 days old. Here we bring an article by the then Vice President of Marketing for Sun's Software Products and Platforms, George Paolini. Ten years on, we thought it might make interesting reading, since even back then Sun's community-focused position was clear: 'The Java platform was grown and evolved by a global community of developers on the World Wide Web,' wrote Paolini.

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:45:00 EST

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning: 'Because they can only give you answers.' Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that, readers can themselves infer: where is AJAX headed next?

JavaOne Bookshelf

Wed, 09 May 2007 22:30:00 EDT

JavaOne starts next week, and most of the Java developers will be watching closely what's new and exciting will be announced in the tried, true and aging Java. But my today's column is about books that will be sold at JavaOne. Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex & Java. We spent a year writing this advanced book, and I'm pretty pleased with the result this is not one of these shallow books that repeat API descriptions of vendors manuals. In this book we are sharing how to design and build rich Internet enterprise applications in an object-oriented way with such great and complimentary technologies as Flex and J2EE. You can get this book at the booth of SYS-CON Media.

Is Blogging Just the Tip of the Co-Technology Iceberg?

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:00:00 EDT

Gartner says that the total number of bloggers will peak during the first half of this year at around 100 million, causing John R. Patrick to ask rhetorically whether spring 2007 truly is The Peak of Blogging?

How AJAX Works

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:30:00 EST

When I was learning how to work with AJAX, I went through a number of 101-type articles. The biggest problem with these tutorials is that the authors are trying to explain several things at once, which is confusing. I'll try to offer you a very simple example of an Ajax application.

Web 2.0 'Goes Mainstream'

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:30:00 EDT

For those who think that one weakness of the Newsweek piece is its title, MSNBC has come to the rescue by repurposing it under the - in my view, far sharper- title 'The New Wisdom of the Web.' This is a much more powerful rallying cry and I, for one, should have much preferred to see it used as Newsweek's front-cover headline, but such is the way of the world. Maybe the editors at MSNBC 'get it' better than those at Newsweek.

Is There Life Beyond Google?

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:15:00 EDT

In one of my (several) former professional lives, I used to publish books about the future, including, for example, the world's first full-length book about groupware. Unless we can first capture and thereafter harvest - asynchronously, as and when it is most needed and most relevant - the collective wisdom of our time, how can it be deemed 'wisdom'? None of us has time any longer to attend all the conferences we'd like to, or to join all the societies or support all the causes that appeal to us for attention, time, and money. What we need above all is to be able to act co-intelligently. While co-intelligence is what we need, our actual opportunities for meaningfully interacting with our peers are in some respects growing in inverse proportion to the variety of ways in which we can execute the interaction.

Why Is Agile Development Hard?

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 13:00:00 EDT

I bet you thought agile development was supposed to be easier than a traditional, prescriptive process! That I would wax evangelical that agile development is the answer to everything, and it simplifies your life. Yeah, just like UML and model-driven architecture and XML and SOA and Web services are silver bullets. Uh-huh, r-i-g-h-t.

Google's Bosworth Wields His Invisible Hand; Scott McNealy's Final Top 10 List?

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 10:15:00 EDT

Ever since Google realized that 12% of the population would consult Google prior to seeing a doctor, which was followed by a British Medical Journal editorial suggesting that one of the natural next steps for Google would be some kind of medical database for personal use, rumors have been circulating that 'Google Health' would be the next addition to the Google stable. Last week the rumors were proven to be true.

Does i-Technology Matter?

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:45:00 EDT

When Nicholas Carr posed the question 'Does IT Matter?' in his now-famous Harvard Business Review essay, he clearly knew that it would provoke discussion. He probably didn't know, on the other hand, that it would eventually cause the world's richest man - whose wealth is derived 100% from IT - to call the essay, during a dinner party at his home, 'the dumbest thing I've ever read.'

Marc Fleury's Viewpoint: Enterprise Java Made Easy

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:00:00 EDT

Simplicity is the key driving force behind the success of Java. When Dr. Gosling invented the Java language in 1995, the goal was to make life easier for software developers. Java's elegant language design, simple API, and vendor-independence have made it the platform of choice for many developers. However, as Java evolves to address enterprise needs for scalability and flexibility, developer friendliness has taken a back seat. The complex programming model in EJB 2.1 and J2EE 1.4 has hindered Java's adoption, and it's the root cause for many slow-performing and error-prone Java applications.

Are 'Paternity' Suits the Latest Phenomenon in i-Technology?

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:00:00 EST

Almost anyone who writes about Internet technologies, or i-Technology in shorthand, runs into a problem area from time to time concerning the issue of what in the i-Technology world was invented by whom?

As Oracle Recommits to Java, Sun Sweeps 2005 RCAs

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:45:00 EST

Every year for the past 10 years, SYS-CON Media's 'Readers' Choice Awards' have given the multiple constituencies we serve - developers, architects, IT managers, vendors - a chance to exercise their democratic rights, not just through the ballot box but also through the nomination process. The products, tools, and services voted on in any particular set of awards are also nominated from within the community. If there are sins, either of omission or commission, then it is accordingly to the community itself that one needs to look, not to JDJ or SOA Web Services Journal or LinuxWorld Magazine or any of the other SYS-CON publications that hold RCAs each year.

Java, .NET, SOA, Web Services, Linux, XML, Open Source and AJAX Predictions for 2006

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:15:00 EST

This is traditionally the time of year for SYS-CON Media's roundup of i-Technology predictions from around the Web and the year's harvest of thoughts and viewpoints. According to our worldwide network of software development activists, evangelists, and executives, 2006 promises to be a vintage year for software development...

Oracle-Sun Announcement: Sun's Schwartz Sets the Record Straight

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 02:45:00 EST

'Please don't read [anything] in to my not being at Sun's recent announcement with Oracle,' wrote Sun's president and COO Jonathan Schwartz the weekend after Sun (represented not by Jonathan but by Scott McNealy) and Oracle (represented by Larry Ellison) announced a broad-based reinvigoration of their collaboration. Schwartz's intention? To quash idle press speculation that his absence from the Sun-Oracle 'Town Hall Meeting' somehow betokened something mysterious. It didn't, Schwartz insists.

Accelerating Uphill: Gravity-Defying Businesses Will Win the Race to be Great

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 03:30:00 EST

Sometimes people ask me what it takes to run a successful business and I, who know only the media business, am always hesitant to reply. What could someone who has 'merely' spent the past 25 years exclusively in publishing and broadcasting via radio, TV, print and, most recently, online possibly tell anyone about the wider world of business - the hurly-burly of globalization, the brouhaha surrounding offshoring, the cut and thrust of M&As, hostile takeovers, poison pills, and platinum parachutes?

"Open Source is the Future," Declares Jonathan Schwartz In Bold Bid to Make Sun Software's Rock Star

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:15:00 EST

'Sun is making the Java Enterprise System, Sun N1 Management software and Sun developer tools available at no cost for both development and deployment,' said the company in an announcement yesterday. The announcement added that Sun is also 'reaffirming its commitment to open source this software.'

Companies Who Dare to "Disturb the Lexicon" Win

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:30:00 EST

If successful trade expos are a good barometer of the market place (and they are), then things are going very well indeed with the homegrown category of apps named by Macromedia (soon to become Adobe), namely 'RIAs.' Which started me thinking: to what extent are the winners in the game of personal and enterprise software those who first and foremost win The Name Game?

i-Technology Viewpoint: "Pessimism Leads to Weakness, Optimism to Power"

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 06:15:00 EDT

Sun and Google are going to be teaming up to take on Microsoft in its holiest of holy markets, the desktop. Could such an alliance have been dreamed of just one year ago? The answer, of course, is 'Yes!' 'Game-changing' is what a disruptive company like Google does best, and Sun for its part isn't a slouch when it comes to innovation, especially not since the arrival of Jonathan Schwartz.

Java Developers: 'Just Do It!'

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:00:00 EDT

September is here and since the name comes from the Latin septem, for 'seven' - September having been until 153 BCE not the ninth but the seventh month of the Roman calendar - I have no hesitation in saying that it's an appropriate month to pluck just seven items from the wealth of information and insight in this issue and say just a little about each of them, to help you to decide what to read first in this issue of JDJ.

It's Official: Welcome to the 'Technology Bounce Back'

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:00:00 EDT

All the myriad commentators who monitor Internet technologies and the i-Technology companies on the NASDAQ doubtless have their own private cluster of indicators that they use to take a weather-check on the overall state of the industry. For some, it's as simple as looking at the NASDAQ index level. This (wholly understandable) approach is the one adopted by SYS-CON's own Roger Strukhoff, who wrote recently

Sun Did It in 1986; Microsoft Took Longer

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:30:00 EDT

Who do you suppose registered their corporate Internet domain name first: Microsoft, Oracle, or Sun? The answer is Sun; it did so in 1986. When in the early 1980s Dr. David Mills, John Postel, Zaw-Sing Su, and Dr. Paul Mockapetris were all involved in the development of the Domain Name System, known ever since by its initials DNS, their aim was to allow organizations to have meaningful names for paths to their systems, since by then computers had begun connecting to each other over wide area networks. However, it was unlikely that at the time any of those fine professionals ever had an inkling of what kind of unprecedented 'land-grab' the system was destined to spawn.

How To Pick A Programming Language: Back To Two Tiers and Plain JSP

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:00:00 EDT

There comes a time, for many Web sites, when the transition from static HTML to dynamic HTML has to be made. Whether it's a static company Web site that needs to become a dynamic online store, or a simple collection of family pictures that's become too large to manage with HTML alone, a decision has to be made to move to an environment that makes it easier to build and maintain the site. Deciding to use server-side programming to create your site on-the-fly can become the only option, but what language you decide to use can be a difficult and important decision.

From JavaOne to JavaTen

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:15:00 EDT

Technology birthdays come and go, but Internet technologies, by their very nature, aren't old enough to allow yet for centenaries, or even diamond anniversaries. So it is fascinating to see how people are reacting to the fact that popular technologies like Java, ColdFusion, and Flash have now finally reached - or are about to reach - the ripe old age of 10.

Another Brick in the Wall

Sat, 28 May 2005 16:45:00 EDT

Do you feel that being a Java guru sets you apart and makes you indispensable in your company? Or are you an entry-level person scared of being laid off given all these outsourcing trends? What are your career choices in the corporate world? Put on your headphones, turn on Pink Floyd's album The Wall, and let's talk...

i-Technology Blogging Begins at Home

Tue, 17 May 2005 20:45:00 EDT

When we opened up the JDJ domain to bloggers everywhere, we knew the take-up would be good. But one thing we couldn't be certain about in advance was whether the blogs themselves would be any good. We needn't have worried. As many of you will already have found out, the editors of JDJ all blog regularly, and naturally RSS feeds are available too - so if in between issues of the magazine you want to read something by, say, Ajit Sagar, all you need to do now is scoot over.

"Mergermania" Isn't Just Back - It's Back With a Vengeance

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EDT

When in October of last year I asked the rhetorical question 'Is Mergermania Back?' (JDJ, Vol. 9, issue 10), there wasn't much doubt that it already was, but it took until last month to truly demonstrate just to what extent. It's not just back; in March we saw it's back with a vengeance.

XP: eXtremely Provocative?

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST

In a world bristling with TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms), it's interesting that one acronym that has often caused an upset in the world of software development should be one containing just two letters: XP. (No, not *that* XP. What we're talking about here is XP as in eXtreme Programming.)