- Andrew Kos
- Bill Burlein
- Bryan Williams
- Christian Vozar
- Jeff Brown
- John Kraus
- Joseph Mak
- Mark Daugherty
- Matt Van Bergen
- Melissa Geoffrion
- Michael Kang
- Michael Chan
- Michael Hodgdon
- Mike Motherway
- Molly McDaniel
- Nadia Maciulis
- Pat McLoughlin
- Paul Michelotti
- Puru Hemnani
- Rohit Srinath
- Ryan Lunka
- Tom Kelly
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CITYTECH Blogroll:
Archive for 2009
Exadel Flamingo and Seam
December 15, 2009 1:57 PM
Earlier this year, I spent some time working on an application that provided CRM functionality to a client that provides teleconferencing services. This was a straight forward, data driven application implemented with JBoss Seam. You can read more in this case study.
JavaFX at the Chicago Java Users Group
December 12, 2009 1:30 PM
I’ll be giving a talk on JavaFX this upcoming Tuesday, December 15th at the Chicago Java Users Group. The talk is titled “JavaFX for Java Developers”, and is meant to be a survey of JavaFX from the perspective of someone already familiar with Java.
Three Reasons I Chose JBoss Application Server for the CL Tracker
December 2, 2009 3:19 PM
I recently completed the Cutaneous Lymphoma (CL) Tracker (See press release here). To summarize, the CL Tracker is a small medical application, built on an open source stack consisting of the Apache Wicket Framework, JPA, Hibernate, Jasper Reports, Spring and MySQL. For deployment, I had plenty of options for open source containers and application servers available, but JBoss set it self apart for the following reasons:
I Heart Joel on Software
December 2, 2009 1:25 PM
Let me make one thing perfectly clear before you embark on this journey with me: I very much love reading anything Joel Spolsky writes. I am a Joel on Software fan-boy. I am also aware that, due to his ubiquitously strong opinions, he is frequently cited/criticized on other tech blogs, and that doing so is derivative and shallow, even though that’s what I’m about to do here.
LUNCH and LEARN
November 14, 2009 11:07 AM
We .Net guys @ CITYTECH are always occupied with our work that we hardly get time to meet all together at a time. So when we are talking to each other we came up with an idea to do the lunch together. And what’s the benefit of lunch without some take away, so we decided one of us will talk about a topic very informally and we can discuss things around it and of course discuss on what’s going on with each other. WOW what an idea, LUNCH and LEARN.
More on the Sun/Oracle Saga
November 13, 2009 12:39 PM
The EU officially opposed Oracle’s acquisition of Sun earlier this week, and it looks like a fight is going to break out. Will there be anything left of Sun before the dust settles?
All I Really Need to Know About Programming I Learned in Kindergarten
November 12, 2009 9:44 PM
On the days that I pick up my daughter from Kindergarten, she’s always bursting with excitement over what she has learned that day. It often makes me wistful for my own Kindergarten days, almost 30 years ago. As I listen to my daughter talk about her day, I reflect on my own time in kindergarten, and how, trite as it might seem, that year spent in school at age six, really gave me all the tools and life lessons I needed to be a professional programmer.
Music Explorer FX v1.1: Now with “Fame” Control
November 11, 2009 1:56 PM
Version 1.1 of the JavaFX-based music discovery application, Music Explorer FX has been released. You can try it here: This version is mostly about performance and stability improvements and it’s also the first version to be released under JavaFX 1.2. Additionally, it sports a new feature: the “Fame” knob:
Jeff Atwood on whitespace
November 10, 2009 2:25 PM
This one had me laughing out loud. If you are a programmer of any kind (which you most likely are if you are reading my blog) then you should have Jeff Atwood in your RSS Reader, not just for his wit, but also for his insight.
End of an Era
November 9, 2009 11:47 AM
An Event that happened this week marked the end of an era for me: I lost the lid to my stainless steel thermal coffee tumbler (rendering it useless for on-the-go coffee) that I got at what some say could be the last JavaOne ever.
Three Ways Web Content Management Improves Marketing
November 4, 2009 10:53 AM
I’ve written before about how using a quality Web Content Management (WCM) system can be a big help to marketers. After last week’s Day Ignite Customer Summit in Chicago, I am more convinced of that than ever.
Search is not Discovery
October 30, 2009 6:26 PM
Paul Lamere over at Music Machinery has a great write-up about Google’s new music search feature. To give you a sense of where he stands, he ends the post with a memorable mantra: “Search is not discovery”.
The Framework That Helped Me Enjoy Web UI Programming
October 30, 2009 2:47 PM
I hate web UI programming. I despise web UI programming. You have all that tag soup. Tag libraries and HTML and javascript and CSS hacks and business logic, oh my! No matter how much you fight to keep it all separated, it seems to run together.
The Awkward Relationship Between Swing and JavaFX
October 27, 2009 2:37 PM
Here’s a recent awkward interaction between a Starbucks Barista and me: Me: I’ll take a Grande Coffee (note, I don’t actually order “just a coffee”, but I’m too embarrassed to write out the actual drink. Being forced to write “Grande” instead of “medium” is embarrassment enough — I already conceded “barista” over “employee”).
Deadliest Cache?
October 26, 2009 12:54 AM
I recently looked into third-party caching solutions for use in a CMS application. For a few previous projects, I’d written a simple map-backed cache to hold objects such as search results and expensive lookups. This was simple enough to implement, but once I started eating up hours adding timeouts, changing map implementations, and adding multiple caches, I decided I should stop trying to reinvent the wheel and instead go with the time-honored tradition of using someone else’s.
Auto-Connecting to a Network Share on a Mac – Round 2
October 23, 2009 2:02 PM
The guys over at TUAW were at it again today with automating network shares. Check it out: Question: In a windows network (client/server or peer to peer) a user can map a network drive to any node on the network. That mapped drive can then be fond under the user’s “my computer icon” or “my network places” without the user having to re-establish connection.
Update Documentation in Xcode
October 23, 2009 10:55 AM
TUAW had a article last night on how to update the api documentation in Xcode. Now you’ll find your documentation sets in the Xcode Preferences window (Xcode > Preferences… or Command-, and then choose the Documentation tab). Also, if checked, Xcode will automatically update your documentation when you launch it.
Hurrayyyyyyyyy!!! WINDOWS 7 is here………
October 22, 2009 6:44 PM
Good News is after a long wait; finally Windows 7 is on the shelf today. Need to see how it’s going to impact software industry at large and how it will spur IT spending by companies. Windows 7 has most compelling features, Performance improvements, Windows Media Center, faster search, draws less power, and has Windows Touch and ReadyBoost. Windows 7 is less memory hungry than Windows Vista. It has many Safety and Security features like BitLocker, Parental Controls, and like Vista comes with User Account Control, Windows Defender and Firewall, with improved features. Even old timers like Calculator, Paint and Wordpad have been given new touch.
Happy Windows 7 Day!
October 22, 2009 3:28 PM
It is upon us, Windows 7 is here. Being a Mac guy, I try to avoid having to use Windows, but it is inevitable. I have two Windows computers at home and I use Windows VMs on my Mac at work. Having been a major hater of Vista (I switched back to XP after trying it), I was curious to give Windows 7 a spin and see if it would be better than XP.
RSS Reader for iPhone
October 21, 2009 3:00 PM
I am still in the dark ages of the internet and use an RSS reader to get my news instead of Twitter. On my Mac, I use and love NetNewsWire. Recently NetNewWire switched from syncing with NewsGator to syncing with Google Reader, it didn’t bother me as I rarely use the web interface. I was, however, excited about the improvements that were coming to NetNewsWire for iPhone.
Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition
October 20, 2009 3:34 PM
Earlier in the year, I wrote a music discovery desktop application in JavaFX called Music Explorer FX. Since JavaFX also has a Mobile SDK, it made sense to write a version of MEFX for JavaFX enabled mobile devices.
Risk Management
October 19, 2009 10:39 PM
When we work on a new project, should I say “unknown territory?” We start thinking of many things, do we know the technology? Are the requirements clear? Is it going to change? Are we capable of doing?, Is it untested technology for which we have to do some POC? Do we have resources? Do we have adequate experience about the hardware, is software available? In Software Engineering words it’s a RISK.
Auto-Connecting to a Network Share in Mac OS X
October 14, 2009 1:23 PM
One thing I have been wondering how to do for a while on my Mac is have network shares connect automatically at login. Turns out is easy (as one would expect on Mac OS X). The solution appeared in today’s edition of Ask TUAW. They say:
JBoss DNA, Revisited
October 14, 2009 11:01 AM
I decided to take another look at JBoss DNA the other day, and it turned out to be quite a surprise. It seems that the focus has been refined, and the vision clarified. The first time I looked at it, DNA was not a repository. Rather it was something that could federate multiple content stores (e.g. – repository/database/file system). I just wasn’t sure what that something was. I believe that is what led me to question how practical it was.
Sir, your build is finished…
October 13, 2009 1:22 PM
Here’s a quick tip. I have to do a maven command line build of one of our EARs on my current project. We can’t deploy with eclipse due to an unfortunate deficiency in maven not actually supporting skinny war files inside an ear. I don’t like staring at the build, but I also don’t like have to remember to check back every 30 seconds to see if it has finished yet, so here’s a little to get my mac to tell me when it is done.
Test with Visual Studio Team System
October 12, 2009 10:29 PM
Visual Studio Team System embraces the entire software development team, architects, programmers and testers. Test is available with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition. It provides a comprehensive suite of testing tools for Web applications and services that are integrated into the Visual Studio environment. These testing tools enable testers to author, execute and manage tests and related work items—all from within Visual Studio.
Database Engine Tuning Advisor
October 6, 2009 10:48 PM
Database Tuning has always been the DBA’s task. But with the SQL Server 2005 Database Engine Tuning Advisor, any one can work towards increasing the database performance and tuning it. SQL Server 2005 – Database Engine Tuning Advisor replaces the SQL Server 2000 – Index Tuning Wizard, which was definitely not bad, but the new version comes with many new features and improvements.
Good Developers Don’t Need a Translator
October 1, 2009 2:58 PM
I was inspired this week by a great article by Allison Mooney in Ad Age on why ad agencies need to think like software companies. She states, “Agencies need to recognize that this digital and mobile literacy is essential to their survival,” and I couldn’t agree with her more.
Microsoft Gives Anti-Virus Another Try…
September 30, 2009 9:59 PM
One thing which was missing from Microsoft line of product was ANTIVIRUS. They have all the software utilities with the Operating System, be is notepad, paint, media player, image viewer etc. Now with the Microsoft Security Essentials the line is longer and better. This new member in Microsoft’s family is not new, there was Microsoft Live One Care, which was a disaster and was not free.
How I learned to say ‘No’ to SQL
September 30, 2009 10:23 AM
This is the story of how I learned to say ‘No’ to SQL and to cope with my wife’s addiction to Coach bags. The answer is support groups. I kid. No, I don’t. There are a number of alternatives to relational databases. However, for the purposes of this post, I am focusing on persistent, distributed key/value stores.
The Nonzero-Sumness of RIA Platforms
September 8, 2009 10:47 PM
In an industry that seems to thrive on competition, it’s natural to think that the three major RIA platforms are incompatible, directly competing technologies, and that an application that uses one, will preclude the use of the other two. After all, an application written in Silverlight is one less application that could potentially be written in JavaFX.
JBoss World – The First full day
September 3, 2009 8:55 AM
Just wrapped up the first full day of JBoss World here in Chicago and wanted to share some of my thoughts. To start, this is my first time attending the event so I did not really know what to expect. Attendance seems to be very good and probably more than I had expected given the economy. However, it is hard to judge who is there on the RHEL track versus JBoss given it is a shared event. In fact, that seems to be the leading question in small talk at lunch and in the pavilion! “So…., you here for RHEL or JBoss?”
SQL Prompt - The Must-Have Productivity Tool for SQL Developers
August 31, 2009 7:45 PM
I am always wondering why Microsoft has not introduced intelligent editor for SQL Server. SQL Server has come a long way and with the enhancements in SQL Server Management Studio, it is anybody’s guess why it has not been incorporated. But I am using SQL Prompt for that missing functionality and it is definitely a cool tool, which gives the same feel as if we are working with Visual Studio for SQL. I hope Microsoft will include some of its features in next versions of SQL Server so that we don’t have to buy licenses of Red Gate.
Resharper - The Must-Have Productivity Tool for .NET Developers
August 30, 2009 7:43 PM
Resharper - The Must-Have Productivity Tool for .NET Developers I have been using Resharper since a year and am very impressed with it. Microsoft development environments have always been very developer friendly, right since early Visual Studio days. This tool [Resharper] sits on top of Visual Studio and helps developers in finding errors on the fly, helps in code refactoring, navigating, code reformatting, clean up and yes in automatic code generation. It makes developer’s life easier, helps in producing high quality code and adds values. It has support for C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, XML, XAML.
iPhone Development - Stay on Target
August 27, 2009 11:33 PM
It’s no good, I can’t maneuver! Stay on target. We’re too close! Stay on target! My wife will probably call me a geek for quoting Star Wars in my post, but I feel like our lunch time iPhone development adventure is closely mirroring Luke’s quest to destroy the Death Star.
iTeam - CMIS Alpha Demo
August 27, 2009 11:25 PM
A quick peek at the iTeam’s latest CMIS development efforts:
JBoss HornetQ
August 27, 2009 1:53 PM
One of the things that I love about JBoss is that they have some really cool technology. It is my impression that the power of their technology often gets lost in the shuffle as they try to position themselves to compete against Weblogic, Websphere, Glassfish, etc. One recent example is HornetQ, formally know as JBoss Messaging 2.0. They have a blog post about the shear speed they are getting from the message persistence on HornetQ, and it is pretty awesome. Stuff like this is what makes JBoss products a pleasure to work with as a Software Engineer.
CITYTECH is Excited for JBoss World
August 25, 2009 5:15 PM
CITYTECH is busy gearing up for next week’s JBoss World 2009 here in Chicago. There’s a lot for us to be excited about! We’re looking forward to having JBoss World right in our backyard this year. It should be a great event and a chance to connect with old friends and meet some new ones. We’re ready to show the city off! If anyone coming from out of town wants advice on things to see, places to eat or what to do at night, let me know!
Creating a Bordered Panel in JavaFX
August 22, 2009 10:10 PM
Recently I was looking for an easy, relatively general way to visually separate arbitrary groups of components with a border. Behold the BorderPanel: BorderPanel is simply a CustomNode that wraps any number of nodes in a Panel (which is a custom layout Container), and sticks a border around it.
An Animated Chart in JavaFX
August 18, 2009 4:50 PM
For an upcoming demo I had some data in chart format, which would be changing frequently, so I wanted the charts to smoothly animate the value transitions rather than abruptly change to the new dataset.
Music Explorer FX Source Code Available
August 8, 2009 11:49 PM
Music Explorer FX has been open sourced and is available for download on the JFXtras community site (it’s about halfway down the page). Thanks to Stephen Chin for encouraging me to release it under open source.
Content Management Systems (CMS) from a Marketer’s Point of View
August 4, 2009 4:37 PM
I’ve been writing web content for a number of years now and I’ve tried out a fair share of content management systems. In terms of usability, most have ranged from being a pain in the butt to being decent at best. Without exception, however, I’ve always had to rely heavily on IT staff and designers to make the final page look like I envisioned it. This was before I started using Day CQ content management system, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Book Review: Pro JavaFX Platform
August 4, 2009 1:13 AM
Early adopters of new technology platforms seem to have a masochistic side in that they must put up with the pain of unimplemented features, poor or non-existent documentation, and incomplete APIs. Their reward for all of this hard effort and needless suffering once a new version of the platform is released is often hopelessly broken code and a relearning/unlearning of all that has changed.
The Evolution of Music Explorer FX
July 31, 2009 1:24 PM
In the process of getting Music Explorer FX ready to be open sourced (which hopefully will happen any day now), I couldn’t help but take a trip down memory lane with some of the early iterations, which I thought I’d share here.
Migration Life Cycle
July 25, 2009 5:37 PM
Migration Lifecycle – An overview One of the popular work in Software Projects are MIGRATIONS. In todays world it is much more important as everyday new technology emerges and we port existing application to new platforms to leverage its benefits. I have been lucky to work on some Migration Projects. Lets see what it is and what are the main stages and advantages with it.
Concatenating Row Values
July 25, 2009 5:11 PM
Concatenating Row Values Concatenating rows, when the value of one column is identical. Eg Data – Table1 ID Col1 1 Val1 2 Val2 3 Val3 3 Val4 Required Results ID Col1 1 Val1 2 Val2 3 Val3, Val4 If we are working with SQL Server 2005, we have a very quick SQL to accomplish it. We will use the query
Why Music Explorer FX Won the JavaFX Coding Challenge
July 17, 2009 11:24 AM
I’m a pretty big music fan, as anyone who follows my tweets (@chibridge) may have noticed, so I was excited to start playing around with Sten Anderson’s Music Explorer FX. As an admirer of both music and CityTech consultants, I was thrilled to hear that I wasn’t the only one who thought Music Explorer FX was great – so did Sun Microsystems, which named Music Explorer FX its first-place winner in the JavaFX Coding Challenge.
AppRelativeUrlReferrerExecutionFilePath
July 16, 2009 5:52 PM
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }
Congrats to Sten Anderson, JavaFX Coding Challenge Winner
July 13, 2009 4:43 PM
Our consultants' passion for technology and commitment to innovation is amazing. I received a call from Sten Anderson last Friday evening informing me that he won the worldwide JavaFX Coding Challenge sponsored by Sun Microsystems with his Music Explorer FX rich internet application (RIA). I was thrilled to hear this news. Wow, first Music Explorer FX shows up on the Java App Store unveiling on stage at a JavaOne keynote, now it places first in a worldwide coding contest bringing $25,000 in prize money. Congratulations Sten!
Five Reasons that Show My Switch to Groovy is Complete
July 6, 2009 11:30 PM
I’ve said that I’m “working with Groovy” so much in front of my family and non-programmer friends that they’ve given up making jokes about the 60’s and getting high, and have returned to general nerd-based jokes.
How to make best use of Earned Value Management…
July 5, 2009 8:21 PM
What is Earned Value Management? It is a technique which can be used during the execution of any project in order to see if the project is progressing in a right direction. EVM will help reduce guesswork in Measuring Performance, Forecasting and also gets beyond misleading measures of progress.
My JavaFX 1.2 Blogging Contest Submission, by Sten Anderson
July 3, 2009 3:55 PM
The JavaFX team is running a contest for blogging about developer experience with the newly released 1.2 feature set. The top 10 posts each receive $500 USD. This blog post is my contest submission. —————-
User or Usability? (or, The Psychology of Software Support)
June 26, 2009 2:27 PM
Before going into Software Engineering, I took a job in PC support at the university from which I graduated where it was my job to answer the support questions of the professors and administrative staff. I quickly realized that my job had very little to do with any sort of proficiency with technology as it did with simply being a sink for raw human emotion.
Configuring and Running Classic ASP Applications on IIS 7
June 24, 2009 10:07 PM
Copy the asp files to inetpub\wwwroot folder, set up the Database, install the COM+ DLLs and run the application, Yes this would have worked if you are working on IIS 4, 5, 6 but not anymore. There are more steps to do when you are working with IIS 7. And most of them are tricky and can make seasoned developer run around for solutions.
Faking a Password Field in JavaFX 1.2
June 23, 2009 9:20 PM
I’ve been slowly attempting to migrate The Music Explorer from JavaFX 1.1 to 1.2. One area of the application that I was particularly looking forward to updating was the Twitter panel, which is the set of UI components that let you automatically Tweet your activity using the application.
JavaOne 2009… Good Times!
June 23, 2009 12:44 PM
So I went to this conference a few weeks ago called JavaOne, you might have heard of it. Yeah, that’s me drinking the Mountain Dew in the picture to the left. Actually this was my second trip to San Francisco for this conference however my experience this time around differed greatly, but in a good way. For one, I went with a group of 6 from CITYTECH Inc. including Bill Gloff, Jeff Palmer, Sten Anderson, Matt Campbell, and Matt Van Bergen. Last time it was just one other colleague and me back in 2006. There are definitely benefits from going with a group. For one, there could be a good session or BOF that you overlooked that another person might remind you of. For me, I almost missed the Script Bowl 2009. How would I forgive myself? Also, it’s fun to get together and share things you’ve learned while it’s still fresh in your mind. Actually a few of my colleagues wrote blogs on their experiences at JavaOne. Bill Gloff, Sten Anderson and Matt Van Bergen had many stories to tell which I will try not to repeat in this blog. Also, check out Matt Campbell of CITYTECH doing a lightning talk at the JavaOne pavilion.
Dumbing Down Our User Experience
June 21, 2009 7:28 PM
If a genie offered to give you some incredible super power, say the gift of flight, or invisibility, but in return would chop your IQ in half, would you do it? What if he said that, over time, you’ll recover most of your intelligence to a point, but you’ll never be quite as smart as you are right at this moment — would you do it now?
JavaFX Project Postmortem: In Which I’m Interviewed by a Five Year Old
June 14, 2009 9:44 PM
Developer magazines sometimes are able to interview key developers of high profile projects after they’ve been shipped (with questions such as “what went right?”, what went wrong?”, etc.). Since I officially kicked my first non-trivial JavaFX application, Music Explorer FX, out of the door last week, I figured that I would grant an interview of my own. Since my five year old daughter, Meredith, had refusal rights from her last interview (and also since she was the only one interested in talking to me), I happily granted her the honor.
Installing and Configuring SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
June 13, 2009 5:13 PM
Since past one month, couple of my friends asked me how to install and configure SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services on Vista. I had to recall what I had done few quarters ago. I also redirected them to this Microsoft KB.
iPhone: iDuped.
June 12, 2009 5:37 PM
Last night I gave up something dear to me…no not my kidney, my first gen iPhone. As I navigated my way through the winding passageways of AT&T’s completely non-frustrating website to the iPhone 3GS pre-order page, I noticed something.
Three Thoughts on My First Month at CITYTECH
June 11, 2009 2:33 PM
Well, today marks my one-month anniversary with CITYTECH. I came aboard as CITYTECH’s Marketing Communications Manager a few weeks ago and have already seen so many exciting things happening around here – a couple new, big clients, a few IT networking socials, and lots of things in the works. I thought now might be a good time to share some observations.
Music Explorer FX: A Tool for Music Discovery Written in JavaFX
June 11, 2009 12:35 AM
So as I mentioned last week, in my exploration of JavaFX I’ve written a music discovery tool called “Music Explorer FX” (or just MEFX for short). It’s been available for about a week now in the Java Store, but since that’s only available within the U.S. and requires registration, I’ve provided a link here. Just click on the “launch” button and you’ll be on your way.
iTeam: WWDC 2009 Day One
June 9, 2009 9:26 PM
Developer droves. They waited in a pilgrimage style caravan spanning six San Franciscan blocks around Moscone West, and when the dust cleared on the grounds Robostev… errr Phil Schiller took the stage as expected.
JavaOne, Day 3: In Which I Shamelessly Plug My App at the Pavilion
June 9, 2009 12:23 PM
And now, the thrilling conclusion to my untimely JavaOne coverage… The New World: JavaFX Technology-Based UI Controls Finally! This standout session on the new controls offered in JavaFX 1.2 is exactly what I was waiting for. Delivered by most of the same team as the previous day’s unfortunate Extreme GUI Makeover, they launched right into showing the new Look and Feel, Caspian, citing Nimbus as having a dated look.
A Groovy Time at JavaOne 2009
June 8, 2009 1:10 PM
Although there was a somewhat somber mood at JavaOne this year (thanks Oracle!), you couldn’t help but notice the awareness and general excitement for dynamic languages and in particular Groovy (here is some additional proof). And as my colleague Sten Anderson pointed out already, Groovy won the Script Bowl 2009 which was represented by the languages’ project manager Guillaume Laforge. Last year’s winner was JRuby due to a dazzling eye candy type of Demo, but of course, was a useless application for the real world like most demos are. I wouldn’t be suprised a bit to see Scala win it next year as it seems the momentum for it is growing.
iTeam: WWDC 2009
June 8, 2009 6:08 AM
With the web strewn with madness ranging from Robosteve to Rumor Bingo, and with an outset wrought by threats anew and uncertainties a many, the stakes are high at Apple’s WWDC 2009. The scene yesterday at Moscone West came complete with all the fixins necessary for an old fashioned technological hoedown: free goods, signage of the mass proportion type, lattes, and developers abound. The most notable part of the registration process was the inclusion of an iPhone App that contained an interactive session schedule, Moscone interactive schematics and more. Tasty. The lobby chatter buzzed with all the possibilities (via TGR), as the crowd continued to build throughout the day.
Minimizing JSP scriptlet usage in CQ5 components
June 8, 2009 12:42 AM
Still using scriptlets in your CQ5 JSPs? CQ5 components tend to rely heavily on JSP scriplet code, despite the availability of tag libraries to handle the logic associated with rendering a component. I wanted to provide a quick example of how to replace a block of scriptlet code in a JSP by using a Java bean class in conjunction with JSP tags.
JavaOne, Day 2: In Which the Tension Between JavaFX and Groovy Becomes Palpable
June 7, 2009 8:45 PM
Here’s the next post in my series of increasingly untimely coverage of JavaOne. Wednesday’s theme for me was all about user experience which started with… Extreme GUI Makeover Extreme GUI Makeover is a JavaOne favorite. I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s version, delivered by Ben Galbraith, which covered the case study of converting a Cobol application to a Swing Application (something I happened to be actually doing at the time).
JavaOne 2009
June 6, 2009 4:17 PM
I made the trip out to San Francisco this past week to visit a client and also attend JavaOne. It seemed like an interesting time to attend JavaOne with the looming Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems. I attended most of the key note sessions including the one which featured Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison on stage together. I thought their interaction on stage was forced and not very genuine, but would I have expected something different? No, I figured Scott McNealy would be sad and Larry Ellison not showing any feeling at all. This was the case. I was surprised that Oracle did not even have a key note slot this year. Perhaps, this was because of the pending (not yet finalized) acquisition?
JavaOne, Day 1: Sessions
June 6, 2009 12:29 AM
Here’s a breakdown of some of the sessions that I attended on the first day of the JavaOne conference. I meant to get this out in a more timely manner but it turns out that I’m no good at spontaneous posting.
BING – The BIG BANG………
June 5, 2009 8:16 PM
Did you hear the word “BING”? NO??? It’s time to know, BING is a new search engine from Microsoft. When I was reading this article in one of the popular Business Newspaper, BING caught my attention and I started trying it out and exploring more about the BING and its features. Now if I have to search anything I open two tabs [of IE 8 of course] and search in GOOGLE and BING. Want to know the verdict, try it out…
JavaOne, Day 1: Keynote — A Labor of Love
June 3, 2009 12:25 PM
I’ve already mentioned in a previous post what I found most exciting, from a personal standpoint, about the JavaOne Keynote. Indeed, the announcement about the Java App Store itself is cause for celebration. A central point of distribution would be a potentially great injection of vitality into an aging Java community.
JavaOne, Day 1: Hey, That’s My App on Stage!
June 2, 2009 7:01 PM
The culminating point in this morning’s JavaOne key note was the announcement of the Java App store, accessible at store.java.com. The intention of the Java App Store is to give Java developers a central, standardized way to distribute their Java applications to the potentially billions of users of Java devices around the world.
JavaOne 2009, Prelude: Nerd Migration
May 27, 2009 10:18 PM
It’s that time of year again. Java nerds the world over are packing an extra inhaler and their well-worn copy of “Java Puzzlers”, preparing for the annual trek to California. In a few short days, I myself will confront my fear of flying and leave the muggy Midwest for the cool, crisp ocean air and azure skies of San Francisco — home of JavaOne.
Testing Life Cycle Methodology
May 27, 2009 9:39 PM
In the last blogs I have described about the different methodologies of a development life cycle . This time lets discuss about methodology called “Testing Life Cycle” which is unlike from the other methodologies.
A Text Adventure DSL in Groovy
May 21, 2009 10:14 PM
Reading Peter Bell’s write-up on Guillaume LaForge’s talk on creating DSLs with Groovy has inspired me to chime in with my own experience with Groovy DSLs. The following is a transcription of sorts of the first part of a talk I’ve given a few times titled “Building DSLs with Grooy: A Real-World Case Study” (slides available here). This section of the talk introduces the idea of DSLs, and how Groovy is well-suited to creating them, by building a small adventure game interpreter. Enjoy.
iPhone Preferences - Easy as 1-2-3
May 21, 2009 7:53 PM
Today, I started my first task for the CityTech iPhone application - the preferences pane. Surprisingly, this was a very easy. Here are the first few steps: 1) Open your project in Xcode
Some Great Gr8 Conference Follow-up
May 21, 2009 12:22 PM
There have been some great blog posts over at groovyblogs reporting on the sessions at this week’s Gr8 Conference, the Groovy/Grails/Griffon conference held in Denmark. Among the standouts are an excellent write-up on what’s new in Groovy 1.6 and a summary of a session titled “Groovy Usage Patterns“, both by Peter Bell (the write-ups, not the sessions).
Social Networking - Old School
May 21, 2009 10:46 AM
Over thirty years ago, Kay took a class in hotel / motel management. There she met Barb and they developed an instant friendship. Although Kay left that career path in favor of an MBA, the friendship between Kay and Barb flourished and they continued to regularly socialize.
iPhone Development - Interface Builder
May 19, 2009 8:57 PM
Last week the iTeam was back in action. One iTeam member, code name George, created the project and setup our screens in Interface Builder(IB). IB is one of the tools included in xCode. IB lets you lay out your screens, navigation and digital assets. When complete, you can then run the app in an iPhone emulator. IB is very useful when writing business applications, because when done, you just generate the stubs, and then plug in your business logic / navigation. Hopefully the rest of the application will be as straight forward as IB.
iPhone Development - Build Environment
May 19, 2009 8:51 PM
As enterprise Java engineers, the iTeam is accustomed to using a continous integration (CI) server, and writing extensive unit tests. In my current project all code written has to have a corresponding unit test that has 100% code coverage for the unit - anything less will fail the build! The iTeam members do not have experience with Apple application development and, as such, we spent a fair amount of time talking about what kind of build environment we should setup. Since the build environment for iPhone applications requires a Mac, we are limited. All of the iTeam developers are equipped with Mac Book Pros. However, CityTech doesn’t have any extra macs laying around ready to be re-purposed. It’s too bad Apple doesn’t let you run Mac OSX in a virtualized enviroment - that would really help. A group decision was made that a CI server will not be required at this time.
The George Thorogood of Software Development
May 14, 2009 11:32 PM
Acting as the fiber of Software Construction’s diet, it would seem that good collaboration skills are necessary to produce anything useful. Indeed, if you go to any tech conference chances are that interspersed between the sessions about actual technology will be sessions devoted to, in some way, collaboration with others. Whether its focusing on getting the most out of SCRUM, or new techniques for Pair Programming, “playing well with others” is a perpetual hot topic.
Groovy Map Quiz Redux
May 11, 2009 7:08 PM
What will the following code fragment print? If, like me, you answered “true”, then you may want to read the rest of this post to be spared from spending more time than I care to admit figuring out why, in fact, it prints “false”.
V - Lifecycle Methodology
May 10, 2009 9:08 PM
In the last blog we have discussed about the Staged life cycle methodology. Now let’s discuss about a different methodology called as V- Life Cycle and also how different it is compared to other methodologies.
IE improves with IE8…
May 9, 2009 10:16 PM
All my life I have only used IE to browse web and have not even attempted to explore any other browser. Be it Netscape, Firefox , opera, safari or the latest chrome…but yes have used sometimes to test my web applications and believe me it’s a pain to get the applications working correctly on all the browsers…so unless you are developing something for the users of entire world don’t even try to test in all browsers.
Property Access with Groovy Maps
May 8, 2009 9:53 AM
Here’s a quick Groovy quiz. What will the following code fragment print? If you guessed that it will print “val”, then welcome to the Tripped Up By Groovy Map Property Access Club, members: you and me.
COM+ Automation
May 4, 2009 9:34 PM
I know the heading might sound somewhat strange these days, but currently I am working on it and its still holds good for today and still many companies have systems which relay on it. YES, I am working on COM+ again.
iTeam - Gaining Momentum
April 29, 2009 9:04 PM
After work commitments prevented us from meeting last week, the iTeam was back in action today. Today we designed the front-end navigation of our iPhone application. We have three screens: Home screen - where most of the navigation will happen.
Staged Life Cycle Methodology
April 25, 2009 8:17 PM
It is important and necessary to follow a strategy and frame work during the implementation of a project in order to fulfill the client needs, to adhere the timelines, and to get a quality product. There are different types of methodologies that can be followed during the implementation of a project according to the project type, needs, size and timelines of the project we need to select the appropriate methodology.
Configuration Management
April 20, 2009 9:10 PM
Last week I was discussing with Matt over the lunch and he told me that in one of the client’s place, he visited, had a team of 50 developers and they were not following any Configuration Management Process and were using network drives to maintain code base. He then started telling me about how they were all ignorant about the Configuration Management Processes and Collabaration Tools available and how he proposed them various options and how it was implemented and how they benefited from it.
Upcoming Day/Alfresco Events with CITYTECH
April 17, 2009 12:08 AM
It is turning out to be quite a busy month. I am going to be speaking at 3 events over the next couple weeks. Day CQ5 Product Tour CITYTECH will be supporting the midwest leg. 4/21 - Minneapolis 4/22 - Chicago
What makes a great developer?
April 16, 2009 11:00 AM
Simplicity This is what it all comes down to. A lot of developers tend to write complex code. I think it is a result of the ad-hoc nature of programming. The truth is that it is much more difficult to write simple code. I think there are two facets to writing simple code. One is experience, and the other is patience. Experienced developers are better prepared to write simple code from the start. However, simplicity is ultimately achieved by continuously refactoring the code.
iPhone - A New Beginning
April 15, 2009 7:49 PM
Today marks the official first day of my iPhone development journey. A small group of CityTech developers, and I have commited to publishing an iPhone/iPod Touch application in the AppStore. We have creatively named this group, the iTeam. At least once a week, the iTeam will meet to forge ahead with our grande plans.
Part 2 – Alfresco Integration with JBoss Portal
April 14, 2009 5:30 PM
This blog is an addendum to last week’s blog found here. I had not planned to do a follow-up or second part to that blog, but after working to display the CMIS objects in a tree structure, I wanted to share what I had learned.
I purchased a cloud. Did you? Wait. What is a cloud?
April 14, 2009 10:39 AM
Reality Television Shows Buzzwords are a lot like reality television shows. Every time one is canceled, two more take its place. You know what else they have in common? They lack originality. They are just putting on a new face.
Alfresco Integration with JBoss Portal
April 8, 2009 2:26 PM
A common use case we see is clients wishing to integrate Alfresco ECM with or within their existing portal products. In the past, the most common way to do this was to place the entire Alfresco WAR within a portal container and deploy the product as a portlet. Although this approach works, it is not useful in many cases as you are limited in the customization of the look and feel with the rest of the portal. Plus, the repository itself is now tied directly to the portal container in terms of scalability.
JFXStudio Contest Champion
April 4, 2009 4:33 PM
I was notified today that my submission to the JFXStudio “Orange” contest was one of three winners (…and one of three submissions). My submission, the Orangalyzer, is a helpful application for writers and poets trying to find words that rhyme with “orange”. Simply enter a word and after some analyzing, the application will report whether or not the word rhymes with “orange”.
Wireless Mighty Mouse in Windows
April 1, 2009 10:06 PM
I’ve seen quite a few posts about not being able to use Apple’s Bluetooth wireless Mighty Mouse with Windows. I just got mine working nicely with the Thinkpad T60 (running Vista Business 32-bit) I’m using while my MacBook Pro is in the shop. The trick was to using the passkey 0000 when prompted by the Windows Bluetooth utility. Wireless mouse goodness to keep away the trackpad blues. The only problem I am having is that after I restart the machine, I can’t get the mouse to reconnect without removing it and then re-adding it.
Echo Nest Goodness
April 1, 2009 2:24 PM
It looks like the guys over at the Echo Nest have added a new metric, called Goodness, to their developer API. On a zero to one point scale, it’s nice to see that Hungry Fathers rates a whopping 0.75 (compared to Joe Satriani’s paltry 0.05).
Toggling Fullscreen with JavaFX
March 31, 2009 6:47 PM
JavaFX supports full screen mode via the Stage class, and it works well provided you don’t want to switch back and forth between full screen and windowed mode. If you want the ability to toggle, then a little more work is necessary.
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