Archive for September 2008

The Last Java Puzzler

September 30, 2008 10:49 PM

The Java Posse recorded their latest podcast from the JVM Language Summit. One of the surprising pieces of news, not at all related to the summit, was that Java Heavyweight, Neal Gafter, in what has become in some ways, the ultimate Java Puzzler, has left Google to work for Microsoft.

posted by Sten Anderson

Alfresco Surf: I like it.

September 29, 2008 10:36 PM

Alfresco Surf I spent a couple days last week evaluating the Alfresco Surf framework. It is one part web framework, and one part site construction framework. I think that there is a difference here. I think that web frameworks such as Wicket and Stripes are more about page rendering and not so much about site construction. Typically, site construction is a feature provided by web content management (WCM) systems such as Day Communique (CQ). What Alfresco was able to do was abstract the site construction framework away from the WCM system itself. As a result it can be used to build applications outside of Alfresco. As a side note, Alfresco’s next generation WCM system is built on top of the Surf framework.

posted by Shane Johnson

Content Management Interopability Services (CMIS)

September 28, 2008 3:22 PM

OverviewIf your passion is Enterprise Content Management (ECM), you probably have heard Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) will soon be released to OASIS as a standard content service interface. I am happy to see such a standard emerge from some of the largest players of the ECM market including Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText, Oracle, SAP and both of our partners, Alfresco and Microsoft.

posted by Matt Van Bergen

Hungry Fathers Block Party

September 25, 2008 10:14 PM

If you’re like me than you enjoy listening to the up and coming Folk-Rock band Hungry Fathers. If you are me, then you play Lead Guitar for Hungry Fathers! Either way, you might be interested to know that Hungry Fathers is playing at the North Park University Homecoming Block Party this Saturday, September 27th. The block party is at the corner of Kedzie and Carmen, and we go on at noon. Over 4,000 people are expected, and you too could contribute to that statistic.

posted by Sten Anderson

ISMIR 2008

September 23, 2008 9:25 PM

Music Information Retrieval Research Pioneer and Honorary CityTech Friend, Paul Lamere, has been at ISMIR (The International Conferences on Music Information Retrieval and Related Activities) this past week and is aiming to set the record for most blog posts in the shortest amount of time.

posted by Sten Anderson

WindyCity Rails Conference

September 22, 2008 12:21 PM

Attended the WindyCity Rails Conference this past weekend (September 20th). Overall a decent meeting. One highlight of the meeting was the QA session with David Heinemeir Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails. It was an open forum where the participants of the conference were allowed to ask David whatever questions they wanted. Some interesting questions were asked and it was great to hear David’s responses to all of them. One question that I found particularly interesting was in regards to performance in Rails. According to David, developers should focus on optimizing HTTP before all else (even code). He recommended using the YSlow Firefox plugin tool to do this.

posted by Jeff Palmer

JCR Search: SQL or XPath?

September 16, 2008 5:28 PM

So, I’ve been working on a RESTful application to expose content in CRX added by authors in CQ to other applications. I’ve been using the SQL syntax. I suppose this is because my background includes data architecture and modeling. Yes, I have a black belt SQL Kung Fu. Now we are considering using the XPath syntax instead. I noticed that the JCR specification suggests that database backed repositories are limited in the number of efficient XPath queries they can support. The key word there for me was ‘efficient’. It also notes that, for database backed repositories, XPath queries are translated to SQL queries. So that got me thinking. Should I continue to use the SQL syntax and database backed repositories, or not? Actually, for maintenance purposes, I’ve already suggested that we move to the Tar persistence manager. I suppose I’ll switch to the XPath syntax then.

posted by Shane Johnson

Grails / Rails Development

September 12, 2008 11:27 AM

I had the opportunity to write a Grails application for the City of Chicago recently (it’s actually going live tonight) and boy, to quote the Grails catchphrase “Develop with pleasure”, what a pleasure it was. From creating custom taglibs to utilizing some of the great plugins available to Grails, it really made working on the project, dare I say, fun! And fast. Although it’s impossible to compare how long the app would have taken had I written it in another framework, I’d hazard to guess that I saved about 25% by going the Grails route. It almost felt like the framework was working with me, as opposed to recent development I did using Struts 2, where it often felt like the framework was not always on my side.

posted by Jeff Palmer

Critique: CQ, CRX, & the JCR API

September 10, 2008 1:50 PM

I’ve been working with CQ for the last few years. I’ve been working directly with JCR API for the last several months. Finally, I decided to read the JCR specification. I was surprised (well maybe not too much) to see that CQ discards quite a few JCR features in favor of implementing them within the application logic. Personally, I’m not too happy about that. If a feature is supported by the repository, why reinvent the wheel in your application?

posted by Shane Johnson

The iPhone Platform for a Java Developer?

September 5, 2008 11:11 AM

I am a Java developer. I’ve been a Java developer since before the 1.0 release of the SDK back in 1995. I used NetBeans since it was called Forte for Java and have been dedicated to Eclipse since the 3.0 release. Java is the primary reason that, since 2000, I’ve been able to spend 90% of my time in a Linux environment.From a phone perspective, I’ve been a Verizon customer since 1997. I started using the Kyocera 7135 smartphone in 2002. I then upgraded to the Treo 650 in 2004, and most recently to the Treo 700w in 2006. All of those phones have fantastic features, and also significant short-comings. None of them fit all of my needs for a smartphone.You know the story of the iPhone. It’s elegant. The UI is in a class of its own. The MultiTouch interface is revolutionary. High-speed Internet, 2MB camera, a video iPod, PDA features, and now a GPS unit make the iPhone - “The phone to have.” It does have it’s drawbacks, mainly the lack of cut-and-paste and the poor notes support detailed here.Could a phone be worth taking such a big leap of faith? The requirements to develop for the iPhone start with an Intel based Macintosh running Leopard. Since you can’t run Leopard in a VM, there is a substantial start-up cost - a minimum of $500 for a Mac Mini. Additionally, iPhone development is done with Objective C. Lastly, in order to use an iPhone, you need to be on AT&T. I have nothing against AT&T, Macs nor learning Objective C, but that is a lot to invest just for the priviledge to get started.The most important piece of the puzzle is the AppStore. The AppStore is a blessing and a curse as detailed here. But with six million original iPhones and six million iPhone 3Gs, there are twelve million potential users. This doesn’t include the iPod touches that also can use the AppStore. Software can be deployed without the AppStore using an AdHoc method. This would allow a developer to control the deployment of the software, which would be perfect for business looking to develop in-house applications for the iPhone.The deciding factor for me was thinking in terms of ones and zeroes. In the AppStore, all software is given an equal opportunity. If a piece of software is sold on the AppStore to 1% of the iPhone users at $5.00, after Apple takes their 30%, the developer would take home $420,000. That’s a good reason to take the leap of faith!On July 11th, after five hours of waiting in line, I walked out with two 16GB iPhone 3Gs. I love the phone - my wife hates it, but that’s a story for another post. About a week later, I ran off to Best Buy, picked up a MacBook, and then signed up for the Apple iPhone Developer Program. I’m ready to begin my journey of transforming from a Linux / Java world to a Macintosh / iPhone - Objective C world! Over the course of my posts I’ll discuss the challenges of learning the Mac, Objective C and iPhone development. I’ll also address the differences between Objective C and Java, the differences between the iPhone and the other smartphones I’ve used, and the differences between the Mac and Linux. Lastly, I will compare the functionality offered by the OpenSDK to the functionality available in the official iPhone SDK. All of this will be done while trying to answer my ultimate question: Can the iPhone fit all of my needs?

posted by Jeff Schwartz

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