I'm not sure if I answer your question: try OpenESB or Mule

---

From: Joselito D. Moreno <joenmoreno@...>
To: pinoyjug@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, November 11, 2009 9:21:51 AM
Subject: [pinoyjug] Web Service Frameworks

 

Hello,

Can you guys share your experiences with different Java-based web
services frameworks? We are in the process of evaluating which one to
go with. Can you share which ones you have evaluated and why you
chose what you ended up with?

Thanks a bunch.

Joen

 

It just the same as theory that the Java is a replacement of Cobol but it is just a theory because there are still plenty of Fortune 500 company still using the mainframe COBOL CICS.

---

From: Giancarlo Angulo <igan.long@...>
To: pinoyjug@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, Novemberl 11, 2009 3:01:15 AM
Subject: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

Don't get me wrong - I've written tons of Java over the last decade or so & think its been a great evolutionary step from C++ and Smalltalk (lots of other languages have helped too like JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, Python etc). However I've long wanted a long term replacement to javac. I even created a language to scratch this itch.

Java is a surprisingly complex language (the spec is 600 pages and does anyone really grok generics in Java?), with its autoboxing (and lovely NPE's hiding in there), primitive types, icky arrays which are not collections & general lack of polymorphism across strings/text/ buffers/collecti ons/arrays along with extremely verbose syntax for working with any kind of data structure & bean properties and still no closures (even in JDK7) which leads to tons of icky try/catch/finally crapola unless you use frameworks with new custom APIs & yet more complexity. Java even has type inference, it just refuses to use it to let us save any typing/reading.

This issue becomes even more pressing with there being no Java7 (which is even more relevant after Snorcle - I wonder if javac is gonna be replaced with jdkc? :). So I guess javac has kinda reached its pinacle; closures look unlikely as does any kind of simplification or progression.

So whats gonna be the long term replacement for javac? Certainly the dynamic languages like Ruby, Groovy, Python, JavaScript have been getting very popular the last few years - lots of folks like them.

Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy.

So why Scala? Scala is statically typed and compiles down to the same fast bytecode as Java so its usually about as fast as Java (sometimes a little faster sometimes a little slower). e.g. compare how well Scala does in some benchmarks with groovy or jruby. Or this. Note speed isn't everything - there are times when you might want to trade code thats 10x slower for more productivity and conciseness; but for a long term replacement for javac speed is important.

Yet Scala has type inference - so its typically as concise as Ruby/Groovy but that everything has static types. This is a good thing; it makes code comprehension, navigation & documentation much simpler. Any token/method/ symbol you can click on to navigate to the actual implementation code & documentation. No wacky monkey patching involved, or doubting of who added a method, when and how - which is great for large projects with lots of folks working on the same code over long periods of time. Scala seems to hit the perfect sweet spot between the consise feel of a dynamic language, while actually being completely statically typed. So I never have to remember the magic methods that are available - or run a script in a shell then inspect the object to see what it really looks like - the IDE/compiler just knows while you edit.

Scala has high order functions and closure support along with sequence comprehensions so you can write beautifully concise code. Scala also unifies functional and OO paradigms beautifully together into a language thats considerably simpler than Java (though the type system is of a similar order to truly understand than generics - but then thats usually an issue for framework creators rather than application code developers). It also lets folks gradually migrate from a traiditional OO/Java way of coding to a more functional way - which is particularly relevant for folks writing concurrent or asynchronous code (which due to the GHz of chips no longer going up but instead we're getting more cores is becoming more necessary). You can start the OO way and migrate to using immutable state if/when you need its benefits. Increasingly functional programming is becoming more and more important as we try and make things more concise and higher level (e.g. closures, higher order functions, pattern matching, monads etc) as well as dealing with concurrency and asynchrony via immutable state etc.

Scala also has proper mixins (traits) so you don't have to muck about with AOP wackiness to get nice modular code. There's even structural types in case you really do need some duck typing.

The thing which most impresses me is the core language syntax is pretty small and simple (the spec is about a quarter the size of Java's); but its way more powerful and flexible and is very easy to extend in libraries to add new semantics and features. For example see the Scala Actors. So its ideal for creating either embedded DSLs or external DSLs. There's really no need to have Java , XPath, XSLT, XQuery, JSP, JSTL, EL and SQL - you can just use Scala with some DSLs here and there (examples of this later...).

Scala does take a little bit of getting used to - I confess the first few times I looked at Scala it wasn't that pleasing on the eye - with Java you're kinda used to dumb verbose code which doesn't do very much - it can be quite a shock to see quite a few symbols at first. (It took me a while to get over the use of _ in scala which is the 'wildcard' symbol since * is an identifier/method) .

If you've been doing lots of Java then Scala does feel quite different at first - (e.g. the order of types & identifiers in method/variable/ parameter declarations - though the reason for that is to make it easy to miss out redundant type information) .

e.g. in Java

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>()

in Scala

val list = new List[String]

or if you want to specify exact typing

val list : List[String] = new List[String]

However if you keep at it, the beauty of Scala soon becomes apparent; its simplified so many of the gremlins in the Java language, allows you to write very concise code describing the intent behind the code rather than the implementation cruft - together with providing a nice migration path to elegant functional programming which is awesome for building concurrent or distributed software.

I highly recommend you take a look at Scala - with an open mind - and see if (once you're brain adjusts) you can see its beauty too.

Some scala links and online presentations

• I can highly recommend the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners - its a great read and describes the features of Scala and design choices very well. Its a big book - but you can skip chunks and come back to it later.
• I've only skim read it a little so far but the O'Reilly Scala book looks great too
  
• the Tour of Scala is a good read if you're short on time and want a quick look at its syntax; though it can take a little while to truly appreciate why things are different to Java
  
• Martin Odersky's Scala talk at JavaOne 2008
  
• Jonas Bonér's presentation on Real-World Scala
• Gert's presentation on how he created the Apache Camel DSL for Scala
• speaking of internal cool DSLs try this blog post on program like you mean it with links to some other great internal DSLs for Scala
• a scala version of LINQ for type safe querying of JDBC also check out dbc
• a great presentation on using Scala and OSGi with DSLs
  
• how to work with Scala and XML (kinda embedded XML, XPath, XSLT, XQuery in neat syntax in the language :) more here
• Scala by example
  
• Scala cheat sheet
• an example showing how to create bean style properties (or C# style getters)
  
• creating a chat demo using Lift or more on the Lift site
  

If you have a spare hour or so these video talks are great to watch

• The Feel of Scala by Bill Venners
  
• Scala: Bringing Future Languages to the JVM by Lex Spoon

Handy Scala frameworks and libraries

• liftweb the rails of scala
• specs and ScalaTest for BDD and more literate testing showing how a typesafe DSL can help you write more consise and expressive code that is very IDE friendly
  
• scalaz a handy library of utilities
  
• dispatch for working with HTTP/JSON services

BTW for those like me who love JAXRS you can now use lift templates with Jersey via the new jersey-lift module.

As an example of this in action you can check out RestMQ which is an open source project I've been working on lately to provide a RESTful API and web console to message orientated middleware which is built on JAXRS (Jersey), Scala and Lift.

From a tooling perspective there's Ant/Maven plugins, an interactive Scala console (REPL) and IDE plugins for IDEA, Eclipse, NetBeans along with the usual editors (TextMate/Emacs etc). The IDE plugins are not yet up to the Java grade, but they are very useful with good code navigation & completion.

I've tried the plugins for NetBeans, Eclipse and IDEA they all have strengths and weaknesses; it seems Scala folks are split between them all. For code navigation and completion along with maven support I've found IDEA to be quite good. When you open a Maven pom.xml it seems to grok the code nicely, finding the scala source so you can navigate through any type/method to see its documentation/ source etc. (You do typically have to manually add the Scala facet to run/debug stuff). Though IDEA is not always the best at highlighting syntax errors as you type. They could all use some work to bring them up to line with their Java counterparts though - try them out and see which you prefer.

Scala nits
With any language there's gonna be bits you love and bits you're not so keen on. Early impressions of Scala do seem like there's a bit of an attempt to use a few too many symbols :-; but you don't have to use them all - you can stick to the Java-ish OO side of the fence if you like. But then I guess longer term its probably better to use symbols for the 'special stuff' to avoid clashing with identifiers etc.

I'm not a massive fan of the nested import statement, using _root_.java. util.List to differentiate a 'global' import from a relative import.. I'd have preferred a child prefix. e.g. if you have imported com.acme.cheese. model.Foo then to import model.impl.FooImpl i'd prefer an explicit relative prefix, say: import _.impl.FooImpl which would simplify things a little and more in keeping with Scala's attempt at simplifying things and removing cruft (being polymorphic to import java.util._) .

However compared to all the massive hairy warts in Java, these downsides of Scala are tiny compared to the beauty, simplicity and power of Scala.

Conclusion
Given that MrJava, MrJRuby and MrGroovy are all tipping Scala as javac's long term replacement, there might be something in it. So what are you waiting for; get the Programming in Scala book or the O'Reilly Scala book and start having fun :)

=====
angol
=====
-----|-^_^X@ ^_^, =====|+^_^X+ +~_~,@--- --
"The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one"
Magbasa bago Mamuna. Mag-isip bago mambatikos
Without Truth there is no Justice, Without Justice, there is Tyranny
Semper fi
Proof of Desire is Pursuit
www.onthe8spot. com
http://www.facebook .com/giancarlo. angulo
http://twitter. com/Neoryder
09173822367

 

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Arche Type <type.arche@...> wrote:
> I experienced that also before. Are you using 64 or 32 bit?

JDK is 64-bit Java 6 - I think there's no 32-bit Java 6 on Mac (or at
least on Leopard)
OS is Leopard, which I think is 32-bit.

I went back to Cocoa, and it seems to be fine again, without me doing anything.

 

Hello,

Can you guys share your experiences with different Java-based web
services frameworks? We are in the process of evaluating which one to
go with. Can you share which ones you have evaluated and why you
chose what you ended up with?

Thanks a bunch.

Joen

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Arche Type <type.arche@...> wrote:
> I experienced that also before. Are you using 64 or 32 bit?

JDK is 64-bit Java 6 - I think there's no 32-bit Java 6 on Mac (or at
least on Leopard)
OS is Leopard, which I think is 32-bit.

I went back to Cocoa, and it seems to be fine again, without me doing anything.

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pinoyjug/

<*> Your email settings:
   Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pinoyjug/join
   (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
   pinoyjug-digest@yahoogroups.com
   pinoyjug-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   pinoyjug-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
   http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

 

Hi,

Is there anybody experienced developing a community-based interaction web app, with cool drag and drop configurable widgets.

Do you of any UI framewokr used?

I only know of Zapatec.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks

-NOEL BRANZUELA

 

We've been using CXF for a while now and, few problems aside, does an ok job for us. Should be pretty straight forward to use, but just steer clear from possible classpath clashes with libraries that is built-in to the jvm (xerces, etc).

Although if I were you, I'd stay away from WS-deathstar altogether and go for more lightweight solutions (REST, Burlap/Hessian/HTTPInvoker, etc)

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Joselito D. Moreno <joenmoreno@...> wrote:

 

Hello,

Can you guys share your experiences with different Java-based web
services frameworks? We are in the process of evaluating which one to
go with. Can you share which ones you have evaluated and why you
chose what you ended up with?

Thanks a bunch.

Joen

 

If twitter is not a killer app, what's a killer app then? Scala also has Lift web framework which is more or less can be compared to Rails or Grails. And yes, Scala is still more of an academic/hobbyist language and probably won't be the "next Java". But we are slowly seeing an emerging era of polygot programming where there's always a diverse and better tool/solution for a particular domain.

---

From: Michael Mallete <mrmallete@...>
To: pinoyjug@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:48:31
Subject: Re: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

aren't we tired of hearing "java is dead" and "java is the new cobol?" :-P

for one, fact remains that without that killer app like what rails did for ruby, scala is still a theoretical silver bullet that no one uses. and yes, twitter is still not that killer app. i don't think there isn't any jvm-bound language at the moment with the same traction java had that could push it to the critical mass. do hope to be proven wrong though

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Arche Type <type.arche@yahoo. com> wrote:

 

It just the same as theory that the Java is a replacement of Cobol but it is just a theory because there are still plenty of Fortune 500 company still using the mainframe COBOL CICS.

---

From: Giancarlo Angulo <igan.long@gmail. com>

To: pinoyjug@yahoogroup s.com

Sent: Wed, Novemberl 11, 2009 3:01:15 AM
Subject: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

Don't get me wrong - I've written tons of Java over the last decade or so & think its been a great evolutionary step from C++ and Smalltalk (lots of other languages have helped too like JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, Python etc). However I've long wanted a long term replacement to javac. I even created a language to scratch this itch.

Java is a surprisingly complex language (the spec is 600 pages and does anyone really grok generics in Java?), with its autoboxing (and lovely NPE's hiding in there), primitive types, icky arrays which are not collections & general lack of polymorphism across strings/text/ buffers/collecti ons/arrays along with extremely verbose syntax for working with any kind of data structure & bean properties and still no closures (even in JDK7) which leads to tons of icky try/catch/finally crapola unless you use frameworks with new custom APIs & yet more complexity. Java even has type inference, it just refuses to use it to let us save any typing/reading.

This issue becomes even more pressing with there being no Java7 (which is even more relevant after Snorcle - I wonder if javac is gonna be replaced with jdkc? :). So I guess javac has kinda reached its pinacle; closures look unlikely as does any kind of simplification or progression.

So whats gonna be the long term replacement for javac? Certainly the dynamic languages like Ruby, Groovy, Python, JavaScript have been getting very popular the last few years - lots of folks like them.

Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy.

So why Scala? Scala is statically typed and compiles down to the same fast bytecode as Java so its usually about as fast as Java (sometimes a little faster sometimes a little slower). e.g. compare how well Scala does in some benchmarks with groovy or jruby. Or this. Note speed isn't everything - there are times when you might want to trade code thats 10x slower for more productivity and conciseness; but for a long term replacement for javac speed is important.

Yet Scala has type inference - so its typically as concise as Ruby/Groovy but that everything has static types. This is a good thing; it makes code comprehension, navigation & documentation much simpler. Any token/method/ symbol you can click on to navigate to the actual implementation code & documentation. No wacky monkey patching involved, or doubting of who added a method, when and how - which is great for large projects with lots of folks working on the same code over long periods of time. Scala seems to hit the perfect sweet spot between the consise feel of a dynamic language, while actually being completely statically typed. So I never have to remember the magic methods that are available - or run a script in a shell then inspect the object to see what it really looks like - the IDE/compiler just knows while you edit.

Scala has high order functions and closure support along with sequence comprehensions so you can write beautifully concise code. Scala also unifies functional and OO paradigms beautifully together into a language thats considerably simpler than Java (though the type system is of a similar order to truly understand than generics - but then thats usually an issue for framework creators rather than application code developers). It also lets folks gradually migrate from a traiditional OO/Java way of coding to a more functional way - which is particularly relevant for folks writing concurrent or asynchronous code (which due to the GHz of chips no longer going up but instead we're getting more cores is becoming more necessary). You can start the OO way and migrate to using immutable state if/when you need its benefits. Increasingly functional programming is becoming more and more important as we try and make things more concise and higher level (e.g. closures, higher order functions, pattern matching, monads etc) as well as dealing with concurrency and asynchrony via immutable state etc.

Scala also has proper mixins (traits) so you don't have to muck about with AOP wackiness to get nice modular code. There's even structural types in case you really do need some duck typing.

The thing which most impresses me is the core language syntax is pretty small and simple (the spec is about a quarter the size of Java's); but its way more powerful and flexible and is very easy to extend in libraries to add new semantics and features. For example see the Scala Actors. So its ideal for creating either embedded DSLs or external DSLs. There's really no need to have Java , XPath, XSLT, XQuery, JSP, JSTL, EL and SQL - you can just use Scala with some DSLs here and there (examples of this later...).

Scala does take a little bit of getting used to - I confess the first few times I looked at Scala it wasn't that pleasing on the eye - with Java you're kinda used to dumb verbose code which doesn't do very much - it can be quite a shock to see quite a few symbols at first. (It took me a while to get over the use of _ in scala which is the 'wildcard' symbol since * is an identifier/method) .

If you've been doing lots of Java then Scala does feel quite different at first - (e.g. the order of types & identifiers in method/variable/ parameter declarations - though the reason for that is to make it easy to miss out redundant type information) .

e.g. in Java

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>()

in Scala

val list = new List[String]

or if you want to specify exact typing

val list : List[String] = new List[String]

However if you keep at it, the beauty of Scala soon becomes apparent; its simplified so many of the gremlins in the Java language, allows you to write very concise code describing the intent behind the code rather than the implementation cruft - together with providing a nice migration path to elegant functional programming which is awesome for building concurrent or distributed software.

I highly recommend you take a look at Scala - with an open mind - and see if (once you're brain adjusts) you can see its beauty too.

Some scala links and online presentations

• I can highly recommend the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners - its a great read and describes the features of Scala and design choices very well. Its a big book - but you can skip chunks and come back to it later.
• I've only skim read it a little so far but the O'Reilly Scala book looks great too
  
• the Tour of Scala is a good read if you're short on time and want a quick look at its syntax; though it can take a little while to truly appreciate why things are different to Java
  
• Martin Odersky's Scala talk at JavaOne 2008
  
• Jonas Bonér's presentation on Real-World Scala
• Gert's presentation on how he created the Apache Camel DSL for Scala
• speaking of internal cool DSLs try this blog post on program like you mean it with links to some other great internal DSLs for Scala
• a scala version of LINQ for type safe querying of JDBC also check out dbc
• a great presentation on using Scala and OSGi with DSLs
  
• how to work with Scala and XML (kinda embedded XML, XPath, XSLT, XQuery in neat syntax in the language :) more here
• Scala by example
  
• Scala cheat sheet
• an example showing how to create bean style properties (or C# style getters)
  
• creating a chat demo using Lift or more on the Lift site
  

If you have a spare hour or so these video talks are great to watch

• The Feel of Scala by Bill Venners
  
• Scala: Bringing Future Languages to the JVM by Lex Spoon

Handy Scala frameworks and libraries

• liftweb the rails of scala
• specs and ScalaTest for BDD and more literate testing showing how a typesafe DSL can help you write more consise and expressive code that is very IDE friendly
  
• scalaz a handy library of utilities
  
• dispatch for working with HTTP/JSON services

BTW for those like me who love JAXRS you can now use lift templates with Jersey via the new jersey-lift module.

As an example of this in action you can check out RestMQ which is an open source project I've been working on lately to provide a RESTful API and web console to message orientated middleware which is built on JAXRS (Jersey), Scala and Lift.

From a tooling perspective there's Ant/Maven plugins, an interactive Scala console (REPL) and IDE plugins for IDEA, Eclipse, NetBeans along with the usual editors (TextMate/Emacs etc). The IDE plugins are not yet up to the Java grade, but they are very useful with good code navigation & completion.

I've tried the plugins for NetBeans, Eclipse and IDEA they all have strengths and weaknesses; it seems Scala folks are split between them all. For code navigation and completion along with maven support I've found IDEA to be quite good. When you open a Maven pom.xml it seems to grok the code nicely, finding the scala source so you can navigate through any type/method to see its documentation/ source etc. (You do typically have to manually add the Scala facet to run/debug stuff). Though IDEA is not always the best at highlighting syntax errors as you type. They could all use some work to bring them up to line with their Java counterparts though - try them out and see which you prefer.

Scala nits
With any language there's gonna be bits you love and bits you're not so keen on. Early impressions of Scala do seem like there's a bit of an attempt to use a few too many symbols :-; but you don't have to use them all - you can stick to the Java-ish OO side of the fence if you like. But then I guess longer term its probably better to use symbols for the 'special stuff' to avoid clashing with identifiers etc.

I'm not a massive fan of the nested import statement, using _root_.java. util.List to differentiate a 'global' import from a relative import.. I'd have preferred a child prefix. e.g. if you have imported com.acme.cheese. model.Foo then to import model.impl.FooImpl i'd prefer an explicit relative prefix, say: import _.impl.FooImpl which would simplify things a little and more in keeping with Scala's attempt at simplifying things and removing cruft (being polymorphic to import java.util._) .

However compared to all the massive hairy warts in Java, these downsides of Scala are tiny compared to the beauty, simplicity and power of Scala.

Conclusion
Given that MrJava, MrJRuby and MrGroovy are all tipping Scala as javac's long term replacement, there might be something in it. So what are you waiting for; get the Programming in Scala book or the O'Reilly Scala book and start having fun :)

=====
angol
=====
-----|-^_^X@ ^_^, =====|+^_^X+ +~_~,@--- --
"The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one"
Magbasa bago Mamuna. Mag-isip bago mambatikos
Without Truth there is no Justice, Without Justice, there is Tyranny
Semper fi
Proof of Desire is Pursuit
www.onthe8spot. com
http://www.facebook .com/giancarlo. angulo
http://twitter. com/Neoryder
09173822367

---

Have a new Yahoo! Mail account?
Kick start your journey by importing all your contacts!

 

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Michael Mallete <mrmallete@...> wrote:

> for one, fact remains that without that killer app like what rails did for ruby, scala is still a theoretical
> silver bullet that no one uses. and yes, twitter is still not that killer app.

From my perspective, there'll be no more killer apps that'll propel a
language or platform to stardom. Yup.

Instead, and what I'm seeing, is systems, platforms, applications and
the languages their built on are all diverging to the point that no
one language or platform is the 'best fit' for all problem domains.

We're already well into polyglot software engineering. Consider a Web
app with CSS, Javascript, HTML generated by the ERB of a JRuby on
Rails app running with Java EJBs in the back-end querying databases
using JPQL + SQL. All assembled, deployed and configured using XML.

Maybe Google's Go is better for systems programming. Maybe concurrent,
message-queue type problems can be better solved using a program in
Erlang.

Maybe Groovy+Grails or (J)Ruby+Rails are best fit for AJAX-y Web apps.
Maybe Scala is better than Java for the overall back-end, Scheme may
be best for rule-based systems, and Flex may be better than CSS 3 +
HTML 5 + Javascript 2.0 for RIA.

Whatever the case, we'll be using the language best fit for the
specific problem domain. Or, we'll keep coming up with new languages
tailored for particular problems.

- a
--
http://alistairisrael.wordpress.com

 

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the tips.  I sure do hope we have the option to stay away from the WS-* altogether. 

Anyway, was there any reason why you chose CXF over Axis2 or Metro for example?  If so, care to share the evaluation process and the results that finally led to CXF?

Joen

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Michael Mallete <mrmallete@...> wrote:

 

We've been using CXF for a while now and, few problems aside, does an ok job for us. Should be pretty straight forward to use, but just steer clear from possible classpath clashes with libraries that is built-in to the jvm (xerces, etc).

Although if I were you, I'd stay away from WS-deathstar altogether and go for more lightweight solutions (REST, Burlap/Hessian/HTTPInvoker, etc)

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Joselito D. Moreno <joenmoreno@...> wrote:

 

Hello,

Can you guys share your experiences with different Java-based web
services frameworks? We are in the process of evaluating which one to
go with. Can you share which ones you have evaluated and why you
chose what you ended up with?

Thanks a bunch.

Joen

 

aren't we tired of hearing "java is dead" and "java is the new cobol?" :-P

for one, fact remains that without that killer app like what rails did for ruby, scala is still a theoretical silver bullet that no one uses. and yes, twitter is still not that killer app. i don't think there isn't any jvm-bound language at the moment with the same traction java had that could push it to the critical mass. do hope to be proven wrong though

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Arche Type <type.arche@...> wrote:

 

It just the same as theory that the Java is a replacement of Cobol but it is just a theory because there are still plenty of Fortune 500 company still using the mainframe COBOL CICS.

---

From: Giancarlo Angulo <igan.long@...>
To: pinoyjug@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, Novemberl 11, 2009 3:01:15 AM
Subject: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

Don't get me wrong - I've written tons of Java over the last decade or so & think its been a great evolutionary step from C++ and Smalltalk (lots of other languages have helped too like JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, Python etc). However I've long wanted a long term replacement to javac. I even created a language to scratch this itch.

Java is a surprisingly complex language (the spec is 600 pages and does anyone really grok generics in Java?), with its autoboxing (and lovely NPE's hiding in there), primitive types, icky arrays which are not collections & general lack of polymorphism across strings/text/ buffers/collecti ons/arrays along with extremely verbose syntax for working with any kind of data structure & bean properties and still no closures (even in JDK7) which leads to tons of icky try/catch/finally crapola unless you use frameworks with new custom APIs & yet more complexity. Java even has type inference, it just refuses to use it to let us save any typing/reading.

This issue becomes even more pressing with there being no Java7 (which is even more relevant after Snorcle - I wonder if javac is gonna be replaced with jdkc? :). So I guess javac has kinda reached its pinacle; closures look unlikely as does any kind of simplification or progression.

So whats gonna be the long term replacement for javac? Certainly the dynamic languages like Ruby, Groovy, Python, JavaScript have been getting very popular the last few years - lots of folks like them.

Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy.

So why Scala? Scala is statically typed and compiles down to the same fast bytecode as Java so its usually about as fast as Java (sometimes a little faster sometimes a little slower). e.g. compare how well Scala does in some benchmarks with groovy or jruby. Or this. Note speed isn't everything - there are times when you might want to trade code thats 10x slower for more productivity and conciseness; but for a long term replacement for javac speed is important.

Yet Scala has type inference - so its typically as concise as Ruby/Groovy but that everything has static types. This is a good thing; it makes code comprehension, navigation & documentation much simpler. Any token/method/ symbol you can click on to navigate to the actual implementation code & documentation. No wacky monkey patching involved, or doubting of who added a method, when and how - which is great for large projects with lots of folks working on the same code over long periods of time. Scala seems to hit the perfect sweet spot between the consise feel of a dynamic language, while actually being completely statically typed. So I never have to remember the magic methods that are available - or run a script in a shell then inspect the object to see what it really looks like - the IDE/compiler just knows while you edit.

Scala has high order functions and closure support along with sequence comprehensions so you can write beautifully concise code. Scala also unifies functional and OO paradigms beautifully together into a language thats considerably simpler than Java (though the type system is of a similar order to truly understand than generics - but then thats usually an issue for framework creators rather than application code developers). It also lets folks gradually migrate from a traiditional OO/Java way of coding to a more functional way - which is particularly relevant for folks writing concurrent or asynchronous code (which due to the GHz of chips no longer going up but instead we're getting more cores is becoming more necessary). You can start the OO way and migrate to using immutable state if/when you need its benefits. Increasingly functional programming is becoming more and more important as we try and make things more concise and higher level (e.g. closures, higher order functions, pattern matching, monads etc) as well as dealing with concurrency and asynchrony via immutable state etc.

Scala also has proper mixins (traits) so you don't have to muck about with AOP wackiness to get nice modular code. There's even structural types in case you really do need some duck typing.

The thing which most impresses me is the core language syntax is pretty small and simple (the spec is about a quarter the size of Java's); but its way more powerful and flexible and is very easy to extend in libraries to add new semantics and features. For example see the Scala Actors. So its ideal for creating either embedded DSLs or external DSLs. There's really no need to have Java , XPath, XSLT, XQuery, JSP, JSTL, EL and SQL - you can just use Scala with some DSLs here and there (examples of this later...).

Scala does take a little bit of getting used to - I confess the first few times I looked at Scala it wasn't that pleasing on the eye - with Java you're kinda used to dumb verbose code which doesn't do very much - it can be quite a shock to see quite a few symbols at first. (It took me a while to get over the use of _ in scala which is the 'wildcard' symbol since * is an identifier/method) .

If you've been doing lots of Java then Scala does feel quite different at first - (e.g. the order of types & identifiers in method/variable/ parameter declarations - though the reason for that is to make it easy to miss out redundant type information) .

e.g. in Java

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>()

in Scala

val list = new List[String]

or if you want to specify exact typing

val list : List[String] = new List[String]

However if you keep at it, the beauty of Scala soon becomes apparent; its simplified so many of the gremlins in the Java language, allows you to write very concise code describing the intent behind the code rather than the implementation cruft - together with providing a nice migration path to elegant functional programming which is awesome for building concurrent or distributed software.

I highly recommend you take a look at Scala - with an open mind - and see if (once you're brain adjusts) you can see its beauty too.

Some scala links and online presentations

• I can highly recommend the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners - its a great read and describes the features of Scala and design choices very well. Its a big book - but you can skip chunks and come back to it later.
• I've only skim read it a little so far but the O'Reilly Scala book looks great too
  
• the Tour of Scala is a good read if you're short on time and want a quick look at its syntax; though it can take a little while to truly appreciate why things are different to Java
  
• Martin Odersky's Scala talk at JavaOne 2008
  
• Jonas Bonér's presentation on Real-World Scala
• Gert's presentation on how he created the Apache Camel DSL for Scala
• speaking of internal cool DSLs try this blog post on program like you mean it with links to some other great internal DSLs for Scala
• a scala version of LINQ for type safe querying of JDBC also check out dbc
• a great presentation on using Scala and OSGi with DSLs
  
• how to work with Scala and XML (kinda embedded XML, XPath, XSLT, XQuery in neat syntax in the language :) more here
• Scala by example
  
• Scala cheat sheet
• an example showing how to create bean style properties (or C# style getters)
  
• creating a chat demo using Lift or more on the Lift site
  

If you have a spare hour or so these video talks are great to watch

• The Feel of Scala by Bill Venners
  
• Scala: Bringing Future Languages to the JVM by Lex Spoon

Handy Scala frameworks and libraries

• liftweb the rails of scala
• specs and ScalaTest for BDD and more literate testing showing how a typesafe DSL can help you write more consise and expressive code that is very IDE friendly
  
• scalaz a handy library of utilities
  
• dispatch for working with HTTP/JSON services

BTW for those like me who love JAXRS you can now use lift templates with Jersey via the new jersey-lift module.

As an example of this in action you can check out RestMQ which is an open source project I've been working on lately to provide a RESTful API and web console to message orientated middleware which is built on JAXRS (Jersey), Scala and Lift.

From a tooling perspective there's Ant/Maven plugins, an interactive Scala console (REPL) and IDE plugins for IDEA, Eclipse, NetBeans along with the usual editors (TextMate/Emacs etc). The IDE plugins are not yet up to the Java grade, but they are very useful with good code navigation & completion.

I've tried the plugins for NetBeans, Eclipse and IDEA they all have strengths and weaknesses; it seems Scala folks are split between them all. For code navigation and completion along with maven support I've found IDEA to be quite good. When you open a Maven pom.xml it seems to grok the code nicely, finding the scala source so you can navigate through any type/method to see its documentation/ source etc. (You do typically have to manually add the Scala facet to run/debug stuff). Though IDEA is not always the best at highlighting syntax errors as you type. They could all use some work to bring them up to line with their Java counterparts though - try them out and see which you prefer.

Scala nits
With any language there's gonna be bits you love and bits you're not so keen on. Early impressions of Scala do seem like there's a bit of an attempt to use a few too many symbols :-; but you don't have to use them all - you can stick to the Java-ish OO side of the fence if you like. But then I guess longer term its probably better to use symbols for the 'special stuff' to avoid clashing with identifiers etc.

I'm not a massive fan of the nested import statement, using _root_.java. util.List to differentiate a 'global' import from a relative import.. I'd have preferred a child prefix. e.g. if you have imported com.acme.cheese. model.Foo then to import model.impl.FooImpl i'd prefer an explicit relative prefix, say: import _.impl.FooImpl which would simplify things a little and more in keeping with Scala's attempt at simplifying things and removing cruft (being polymorphic to import java.util._) .

However compared to all the massive hairy warts in Java, these downsides of Scala are tiny compared to the beauty, simplicity and power of Scala.

Conclusion
Given that MrJava, MrJRuby and MrGroovy are all tipping Scala as javac's long term replacement, there might be something in it. So what are you waiting for; get the Programming in Scala book or the O'Reilly Scala book and start having fun :)

=====
angol
=====
-----|-^_^X@ ^_^, =====|+^_^X+ +~_~,@--- --
"The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one"
Magbasa bago Mamuna. Mag-isip bago mambatikos
Without Truth there is no Justice, Without Justice, there is Tyranny
Semper fi
Proof of Desire is Pursuit
www.onthe8spot. com
http://www.facebook .com/giancarlo. angulo
http://twitter. com/Neoryder
09173822367

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 1:25 AM, Jeff Gutierrez <jeff@...> wrote:

> I actually gave up trying to get my MacBook setup for Java development. I tried a few times but ended up falling short on a number of things -- JDK version, Eclipse, tools, VPN, etc. Now I have Ubuntu/Jaunty on my MacBook, and have found myself to be more productive.
>
> The tough part was convincing myself to dump MacOS X. But once I got Eclipse and my dev environment all setup, I got over the fact that I could have bought a laptop that was 1/2 the price of my MacBook. :)

I'm using Ubuntu on my personal machine at home; the Mac is my work
machine. Looks like swapping this for a "PC" laptop is a good idea. (I
don't like the idea of running other OS on the Mac, seems like a
waste.)

But not so long ago... the Mac was supposed to be a great environment
for Java dev. What happened??

 

My reply might not be too helpful :)

It's been a while, as far as I remember, at the time we were evaluating web services, Axis2 and Metro were still in development mode. CXF on the other hand was the most mature of the pack then, including better tools support and better documentation everywhere. Axis 1 as I recall was painful to work with then. Maybe different now with Axis 2.

So we went ahead and used CXF and upgrading at major version releases as much as we can.

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Joselito D. Moreno <joenmoreno@...> wrote:

 

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the tips.  I sure do hope we have the option to stay away from the WS-* altogether. 

Anyway, was there any reason why you chose CXF over Axis2 or Metro for example?  If so, care to share the evaluation process and the results that finally led to CXF?

Joen

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Michael Mallete <mrmallete@...> wrote:

 

We've been using CXF for a while now and, few problems aside, does an ok job for us. Should be pretty straight forward to use, but just steer clear from possible classpath clashes with libraries that is built-in to the jvm (xerces, etc).

Although if I were you, I'd stay away from WS-deathstar altogether and go for more lightweight solutions (REST, Burlap/Hessian/HTTPInvoker, etc)

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Joselito D. Moreno <joenmoreno@...> wrote:

 

Hello,

Can you guys share your experiences with different Java-based web
services frameworks? We are in the process of evaluating which one to
go with. Can you share which ones you have evaluated and why you
chose what you ended up with?

Thanks a bunch.

Joen

 

I think you are talking about "killer technology" on the programmer's perspective. IMHO, killer app is an application that is widely used by people that changed their daily life and it doesn't have anything to do with programming language. For me, killer app is something that was created around a unique idea not a programming language or technology (although there are some exceptions to it).

---

From: Michael Mallete <mrmallete@...>
To: pinoyjug@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Fri, November 20, 2009 9:21:46 AM

Subject: Re: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

killer app is something that propels a certain language, OS, etc to wider adoption. twitter didn't really help scala gaining new users. twitter is a huge success, but a killer app in this definition, nup

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 5:43 AM, bien bien <bienbenigno@ yahoo.com. ph> wrote:

 

If twitter is not a killer app, what's a killer app then? Scala also has Lift web framework which is more or less can be compared to Rails or Grails. And yes, Scala is still more of an academic/hobbyist language and probably won't be the "next Java". But we are slowly seeing an emerging era of polygot programming where there's always a diverse and better tool/solution for a particular domain.

---

From: Michael Mallete <mrmallete@gmail. com>

To: pinoyjug@yahoogroup s.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:48:31
Subject: Re: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

aren't we tired of hearing "java is dead" and "java is the new cobol?" :-P

for one, fact remains that without that killer app like what rails did for ruby, scala is still a theoretical silver bullet that no one uses. and yes, twitter is still not that killer app. i don't think there isn't any jvm-bound language at the moment with the same traction java had that could push it to the critical mass. do hope to be proven wrong though

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Arche Type <type.arche@yahoo. com> wrote:

 

It just the same as theory that the Java is a replacement of Cobol but it is just a theory because there are still plenty of Fortune 500 company still using the mainframe COBOL CICS.

---

From: Giancarlo Angulo <igan.long@gmail. com>

To: pinoyjug@yahoogroup s.com

Sent: Wed, Novemberl 11, 2009 3:01:15 AM
Subject: [pinoyjug] Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

 

Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

Don't get me wrong - I've written tons of Java over the last decade or so & think its been a great evolutionary step from C++ and Smalltalk (lots of other languages have helped too like JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, Python etc). However I've long wanted a long term replacement to javac. I even created a language to scratch this itch.

Java is a surprisingly complex language (the spec is 600 pages and does anyone really grok generics in Java?), with its autoboxing (and lovely NPE's hiding in there), primitive types, icky arrays which are not collections & general lack of polymorphism across strings/text/ buffers/collecti ons/arrays along with extremely verbose syntax for working with any kind of data structure & bean properties and still no closures (even in JDK7) which leads to tons of icky try/catch/finally crapola unless you use frameworks with new custom APIs & yet more complexity. Java even has type inference, it just refuses to use it to let us save any typing/reading.

This issue becomes even more pressing with there being no Java7 (which is even more relevant after Snorcle - I wonder if javac is gonna be replaced with jdkc? :). So I guess javac has kinda reached its pinacle; closures look unlikely as does any kind of simplification or progression.

So whats gonna be the long term replacement for javac? Certainly the dynamic languages like Ruby, Groovy, Python, JavaScript have been getting very popular the last few years - lots of folks like them.

Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy.

So why Scala? Scala is statically typed and compiles down to the same fast bytecode as Java so its usually about as fast as Java (sometimes a little faster sometimes a little slower). e.g. compare how well Scala does in some benchmarks with groovy or jruby. Or this. Note speed isn't everything - there are times when you might want to trade code thats 10x slower for more productivity and conciseness; but for a long term replacement for javac speed is important.

Yet Scala has type inference - so its typically as concise as Ruby/Groovy but that everything has static types. This is a good thing; it makes code comprehension, navigation & documentation much simpler. Any token/method/ symbol you can click on to navigate to the actual implementation code & documentation. No wacky monkey patching involved, or doubting of who added a method, when and how - which is great for large projects with lots of folks working on the same code over long periods of time. Scala seems to hit the perfect sweet spot between the consise feel of a dynamic language, while actually being completely statically typed. So I never have to remember the magic methods that are available - or run a script in a shell then inspect the object to see what it really looks like - the IDE/compiler just knows while you edit.

Scala has high order functions and closure support along with sequence comprehensions so you can write beautifully concise code. Scala also unifies functional and OO paradigms beautifully together into a language thats considerably simpler than Java (though the type system is of a similar order to truly understand than generics - but then thats usually an issue for framework creators rather than application code developers). It also lets folks gradually migrate from a traiditional OO/Java way of coding to a more functional way - which is particularly relevant for folks writing concurrent or asynchronous code (which due to the GHz of chips no longer going up but instead we're getting more cores is becoming more necessary). You can start the OO way and migrate to using immutable state if/when you need its benefits. Increasingly functional programming is becoming more and more important as we try and make things more concise and higher level (e.g. closures, higher order functions, pattern matching, monads etc) as well as dealing with concurrency and asynchrony via immutable state etc.

Scala also has proper mixins (traits) so you don't have to muck about with AOP wackiness to get nice modular code. There's even structural types in case you really do need some duck typing.

The thing which most impresses me is the core language syntax is pretty small and simple (the spec is about a quarter the size of Java's); but its way more powerful and flexible and is very easy to extend in libraries to add new semantics and features. For example see the Scala Actors. So its ideal for creating either embedded DSLs or external DSLs. There's really no need to have Java , XPath, XSLT, XQuery, JSP, JSTL, EL and SQL - you can just use Scala with some DSLs here and there (examples of this later...).

Scala does take a little bit of getting used to - I confess the first few times I looked at Scala it wasn't that pleasing on the eye - with Java you're kinda used to dumb verbose code which doesn't do very much - it can be quite a shock to see quite a few symbols at first. (It took me a while to get over the use of _ in scala which is the 'wildcard' symbol since * is an identifier/method) .

If you've been doing lots of Java then Scala does feel quite different at first - (e.g. the order of types & identifiers in method/variable/ parameter declarations - though the reason for that is to make it easy to miss out redundant type information) .

e.g. in Java

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>()

in Scala

val list = new List[String]

or if you want to specify exact typing

val list : List[String] = new List[String]

However if you keep at it, the beauty of Scala soon becomes apparent; its simplified so many of the gremlins in the Java language, allows you to write very concise code describing the intent behind the code rather than the implementation cruft - together with providing a nice migration path to elegant functional programming which is awesome for building concurrent or distributed software.

I highly recommend you take a look at Scala - with an open mind - and see if (once you're brain adjusts) you can see its beauty too.

Some scala links and online presentations

• I can highly recommend the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners - its a great read and describes the features of Scala and design choices very well. Its a big book - but you can skip chunks and come back to it later.
• I've only skim read it a little so far but the O'Reilly Scala book looks great too
  
• the Tour of Scala is a good read if you're short on time and want a quick look at its syntax; though it can take a little while to truly appreciate why things are different to Java
  
• Martin Odersky's Scala talk at JavaOne 2008
  
• Jonas Bonér's presentation on Real-World Scala
• Gert's presentation on how he created the Apache Camel DSL for Scala
• speaking of internal cool DSLs try this blog post on program like you mean it with links to some other great internal DSLs for Scala
• a scala version of LINQ for type safe querying of JDBC also check out dbc
• a great presentation on using Scala and OSGi with DSLs
  
• how to work with Scala and XML (kinda embedded XML, XPath, XSLT, XQuery in neat syntax in the language :) more here
• Scala by example
  
• Scala cheat sheet
• an example showing how to create bean style properties (or C# style getters)
  
• creating a chat demo using Lift or more on the Lift site
  

If you have a spare hour or so these video talks are great to watch

• The Feel of Scala by Bill Venners
  
• Scala: Bringing Future Languages to the JVM by Lex Spoon

Handy Scala frameworks and libraries

• liftweb the rails of scala
• specs and ScalaTest for BDD and more literate testing showing how a typesafe DSL can help you write more consise and expressive code that is very IDE friendly
  
• scalaz a handy library of utilities
  
• dispatch for working with HTTP/JSON services

BTW for those like me who love JAXRS you can now use lift templates with Jersey via the new jersey-lift module.

As an example of this in action you can check out RestMQ which is an open source project I've been working on lately to provide a RESTful API and web console to message orientated middleware which is built on JAXRS (Jersey), Scala and Lift.

From a tooling perspective there's Ant/Maven plugins, an interactive Scala console (REPL) and IDE plugins for IDEA, Eclipse, NetBeans along with the usual editors (TextMate/Emacs etc). The IDE plugins are not yet up to the Java grade, but they are very useful with good code navigation & completion.

I've tried the plugins for NetBeans, Eclipse and IDEA they all have strengths and weaknesses; it seems Scala folks are split between them all. For code navigation and completion along with maven support I've found IDEA to be quite good. When you open a Maven pom.xml it seems to grok the code nicely, finding the scala source so you can navigate through any type/method to see its documentation/ source etc. (You do typically have to manually add the Scala facet to run/debug stuff). Though IDEA is not always the best at highlighting syntax errors as you type. They could all use some work to bring them up to line with their Java counterparts though - try them out and see which you prefer.

Scala nits
With any language there's gonna be bits you love and bits you're not so keen on. Early impressions of Scala do seem like there's a bit of an attempt to use a few too many symbols :-; but you don't have to use them all - you can stick to the Java-ish OO side of the fence if you like. But then I guess longer term its probably better to use symbols for the 'special stuff' to avoid clashing with identifiers etc.

I'm not a massive fan of the nested import statement, using _root_.java. util.List to differentiate a 'global' import from a relative import.. I'd have preferred a child prefix. e.g. if you have imported com.acme.cheese. model.Foo then to import model.impl.FooImpl i'd prefer an explicit relative prefix, say: import _.impl.FooImpl which would simplify things a little and more in keeping with Scala's attempt at simplifying things and removing cruft (being polymorphic to import java.util._) .

However compared to all the massive hairy warts in Java, these downsides of Scala are tiny compared to the beauty, simplicity and power of Scala.

Conclusion
Given that MrJava, MrJRuby and MrGroovy are all tipping Scala as javac's long term replacement, there might be something in it. So what are you waiting for; get the Programming in Scala book or the O'Reilly Scala book and start having fun :)

=====
angol
=====
-----|-^_^X@ ^_^, =====|+^_^X+ +~_~,@--- --
"The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one"
Magbasa bago Mamuna. Mag-isip bago mambatikos
Without Truth there is no Justice, Without Justice, there is Tyranny
Semper fi
Proof of Desire is Pursuit
www.onthe8spot. com
http://www.facebook .com/giancarlo. angulo
http://twitter. com/Neoryder
09173822367

---

Have a new Yahoo! Mail account?
Kick start your journey by importing all your contacts!