Back in January I was about to embark on a new Java enterprise project. For the past few years I’ve mainly been doing Glassfish-based projects, but being frustrated with some of its features I decided to look into the JBoss Application Server. Prior to JavaEE 5 I used JBoss (4.0) and was very happy with it. Its ability to configure every aspect of the application server using XML files is fantastic when exercising continuous integration/deployment. Anyway, I changed to Glassfish due to its support for JavaEE5. So to catch up on the latest development in JBoss I decided to get “JBoss AS 5 Development” by Francesco Marchioni from Packt Publishing. Wow, was I surprised. The book was really excellent. The book starts with instructions on how to setup JBoss and get started. This was followed with a chapter on the new features of JBoss 5. The remaining of the book focuses on developing JavaEE5 components and configuring JBoss to get the most out of your applications. One of the things I really liked about this book was how many of the advice could easily be applied to other application servers. The main reason why I think this book is awesome is because it is great for developers who want to tweak and understand their application server. Many developers are use to having other people setup their application in production environments, but with this book you’ll gain the confidence to configure your application and server for a production environment.

Every application server should have a book like this!

You can check out a free chapter of the book here

• Attributes are now sortable by clicking the column headings
• Possible to give each LDAP server connection a label
• Fixed NamingException when having more than one server connection / window open
• Added connection timeout setting to LDAP server connection
• More friendly attribute names
• Support for Lotus Notes object classes
• Silently accepts self-signed SSL certificates
• Basic filtering

For the next release the UI will be changed slightly to accommodate query building and displaying of search results.

Note: From version 0.3 an update center was automatically created upon installation. To upgrade simply go to Tools – Plugins – Updates and click “Reload Catalog” followed by selecting the new version and clicking “Upgrade”

You can find the project site on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/nb-ldap-explorer/

This evening I released the third version of LDAP Explorer. The changes include:

• Scrolling in the LDAP tree (could only view very small trees in 0.2 due to missing scrollers)
• Replaced Swing-code with NetBeans classes (mainly replacing JTree with NetBeans nodes)
• Nicer-looking icons + different icons depending on the type of LDAP entry
• Includes an update center for ease of upgrading to future versions

You can grab a copy of the new version from the Google Code project page or the NetBeans Plugin Portal

NetBeans Doxia Support

In August 2009 I started a “NetBeans Goodies” project at Kenai.com where I intended to collect a bunch of NetBeans modules. The first Goodie would be support for APT files (Maven Doxia). If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I got the basic code hacked together but then ran into some problems with defining the APT language in JavaCC. Anyway, This week I got prompted to continue the development of Doxia support by a keen user. I’ve therefore transfer the code from Kenai to Google Code and intent to pick up the coding in the upcoming weeks. You can find the project at Google Code. I haven’t released any versions of Doxia support yet, so if you want to give it a go you’ll have to check out the code from the Mercurial repository.

Previous blog entries about Doxia support:

• Doxia APT Rendered View Now Working
• Doxia APT Support Coming Closer
• Doxia APT Language Support

Over a nice glass of red wine I finished the second release of LDAP Explorer for NetBeans. New in this version:

• Support for NetBeans 6.7
• Possible to create LDAP connection profiles in the Services window
• Cleaner browser window with the option to see attributes in table- or LDIF view.

You can download the new release from the Google Code Project Page or on the NetBeans Plugin Portal.

If you find any bugs or would like to see your favourite features in the module, please go ahead add it to the project page or as comments to this post.

Enjoy!

Next, I want to clean up the Explorer window (no need to display the connection details there anymore), followed by implementing an interface for conducting custom queries and executing LDIF commands.

If you got some feature requests or comments you are welcome to submit them at the Google Code project site or on the NetBeans Plugin Portal. Thanks.

a) No examination of RESTful client APIs such as the Jersey Client API. The author may not have felt that it was necessary since RESTful clients can be implemented using a plain Java HttpURLConnection or the Commons HTTP Clients API (Used in the book).

b) Security aspects are only mentioned in the passing. It would have been very helpful to the reader if there were a few actual examples of protecting a RESTful service using security realms and SSL, followed by examples on how to access protected services.

c) Lastly integration with EJBs is not discussed. It is simply mentioned that they can be integrated. I was shocked to find that in the reference implementation of Java Enterprise 6 there is no dependency injection of EJBs into a restful service using the @EJB annotation. Instead one would have to manually connect to the EJB using JNDI, or implement the RESTful service as an EJB (this problem is not the authors fault!! but it would have saved me a few hours if this short coming was explained in the book).

Overall I’m very pleased with the book, it is great and easy to read. It has given me (a RESTful noob) confidence in using and implementing RESTful services in a production setup.

3.5 of 5 stars!

In my next post I will try to uncover some of the shortcomings of the books with examples for JavaEE 6 (GlassFish).

As a “glad to be back” gesture here is a reviewed of Packt Publishing’s JBoss RichFaces 3.3 by Demetrio Filocamo, which I was involved in (as a reviewer) earlier this year.

I’ve always loved JavaServer Faces. I believe it is the closest you get to writing real object-oriented web-based solutions. Don’t get me wrong, I use and like many web frameworks, but JSF has to be my favourite. However, one of the big problems with JSF is that it is pretty basic out-of-the-box. This is completely intended as JSF is supposed to solve the low-level issues in developing web-based solutions, and leave the sophisticated user interface components to component developers, much like Swing. What makes JSF really powerful are component libraries like JBoss RichFaces, ICEFaces, and PrimeFaces. There has been a ton of books focusing on the core of JavaServer Faces (my personal favourite is JSF in Action by Kito Mann) but they all seem to stop when it is getting interesting; using component libraries to enhance your applications. It was therefore a pleasure to read and review this book about RichFaces 3.3.

The book is a good 273 pages well-suited for JSF beginners and experts alike. The book assumes that you are already familiar with JSF, so if you don’t already grasp the topics of managed beans, page navigation, validators and converters, you might want to start somewhere else. It starts out explaining how RichFaces fits in the JSF world and how to set up your own environment for developing RichFaces applications. Once you’ve gotten started Demetrio takes the reader through a “Contact manager” case study, spanning eight chapters, touching on all the essential areas of RichFaces. One of the great things about this book is that Demetrio carefully explains each step and technique used so that the reader doesn’t get confused or left wondering. All too often you read books where you have to consult Google before getting it, but this is not one of those books. My two favourite chapters are Chapter 9 and 11, which explains how to create a new skin for your RichFaces applications and how to develop custom components respectively. Both these areas are overlooked by many developers who end up writing twice as much code to style their components or provide frequently used composite components. In my opinion the only drawback is that many of the code examples is based on JBoss Seam rather than plain JSF.

I can strongly recommend this book to any JSF developer who wants to take their application to the next level with RichFaces. Four and a half stars out of five!