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http://jackcess.sourceforge.net/

http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/

From what I recall, it saves a memory dump to a file. That would include app state, undo, and other information that didn't need to survive, and it shoves it into semi-permanent storage.

Actually it's a "compound document" and is structured somewhat like a filesystem containing other subdocuments (more info)

yep,

EO/WO was the stuff back in the late 90's. .. shame apple dragged their feet on it.

fortunately, these folks have taken the design principles and brought it all hurtling into modern java:

http://objectstyle.org/cayenne

its recently become an apache incubator project:

http://incubator.apache.org/projects/cayenne

forget hibernate, i had the serious displeasure recently of listening to the self aggrandiosment of gavin king, and the way he prattles on you'd be forgiven for thinking the sun really did shine out his ass, and that the only way to do it was his way.

try cayenne, especially if you have a little WebObjects background. ( and even more so if you think hibernate is it and a bit )

anyway, back OT, +1 on the lashings with wet bamboo canes above please.

Bullshit. They were announcing subscriber numbers every four months or so up until Chains of Promathia shipped, while they were at the top of SirBruce's chart. Then WoW comes out. And they completely stopped posting figures.

From the census itself:

There are over 500,000 players logging in to FINAL FANTASY XI from all over the world, with the main player base located in Japan, North America, and Europe.

Square-Enix is a company. They want to make their games look popular to sell more accounts. FFXI has settled into a decent subscriber number, but it's unlikely to grow from there unless they actually do something to enhance the game for the next-gen consoles and PCs and bring it past the PS2 era. I like FFXI's world and backstory far better than WoW's, but the PC client is just painful to use - a good two and a half years after the US PC release.

I'm glad to see that they're finally doing something to develop a community by releasing the Linkshell Community website (ooo, Struts!), but Square-Enix almost completely nonresponsive to their player community.

FFXI remains a game that seems to have so much potential, only to have Square-Enix just not quite achieve it. It annoys me. It has the potential to be so much better, and it just isn't. (Which isn't to say it's a bad game, just that it could be better.)

Honestly, when I first started playing WoW, I couldn't help but think "wow, I hope Square-Enix learns some lessons from this about the fun parts and moves them into a new Final Fantasy MMORPG." I quit WoW ages ago, but I still subscribe to FFXI...

I have used JMeter a couple of times to detect bottlenecks and synchronization problems with web apps. Very simple to set up and run just using a GUI. Apart from http/https it can appearently call java methods, EJBs etc too, but I haven't tried that. I think this tool is easier to use for stress testing rather than going through a whole use case. Also, when running against a web server of course it just tells you that something is slow, not what.

At Java One I talked to some fellow Swedes who were a bit disappointed with JProbe, they claimed it was a bit of a resource hog and that they had found a better more light weight open source library to use instead. I've looked through my notes, but it seems I didn't write down the name of the one they recommended. Darn.

Symantec had an app that seemed pretty impressive, though I don't know how much they charge for it. I think it was this one. I remember them because unlike most who just had a lottery for prizes, you actually had to run the demo to be able to answer their quiz. Pretty clever, made people remember and gave you a better chance of winning because most people wouldn't bother. I won a PSP. :-)

Also at Java One this year Sun had loads of labs and talks on profiling tools and frameworks that come with the JDK itself these days - JMX (especially in combination with DTrace if you run on Solaris), jconsole, jmap, jhat.

And then of course there is this whole site...

Actually there are fewer Source packages {consisting of a .tar.gz = author's tarball, a .diff = Debian/Ubuntu patches and a .dsc = Debian/Ubuntu metadata} than there are binary packages. This is because each source package builds at least two binary packages, main and -dev, and possibly a library package as well. Some programs, such as httpd, have options that are only meaningful at compile-time and hence result in there being several binary packages according to the compile-time options chosen. So from one source package foo you might build binary packages foo.deb, foo-dev.deb and libfoo1.deb. Or if bar is something with extensive compile-time options, you might build bar-common.deb, bar-threaded.deb, bar-nonthreaded.deb, bar-nonthreaded-smp.deb and bar-dev.deb from the same source package.

However, Free Software, and Open Source software for that matter, would have died long ago if Stallman had not been defending it

Right, because projects like these would have never been developed were it not for RMS.

Stallman may have done some things to advance Free Software and Open Source, but to claim he is solely responsible is ludicrous.

Meet Embperl

you wrote complex svg drawings in a simple xml editor? got a screen shot of this masterpiece?

Nope. I wrote simple svg in an xml editor and previewed it in Batik while writing. Why? Because Inkscape produced rather odd and bloated code that made it hard to understand just by reading the xml. Maybe this new version has better output, I havn't used it for a few months. I'm not expecting perfection, but for simple stuff it's reasonable to expect Inkscape (or anything else) to produce readable output.

you link to an MS app that can't output to SVG in an article about an application that is for greating SVG graphics?
I've been on slashdot for 8 years, and I never truely believed in astroturfing until your post.

I mention a alternative I found better for vector graphics, and even caveated that it doesn't support SVG and that is what sucks about it. It's called "discussion". Feel free to bring your own alternatives and experiences to the table. But because I mention a Microsoft product in good light I must be trolling, right? FYI, Expression was a Creature House product. MS only recently acquired it.

Also check:
http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AvoidingFpsFor Senders
http://www.senderbase.org/
http://www.truste.org/
http://www.bondedsender.org/

RFC3546, section 3.1 specifies server name indication. mod_gnutls has supported it since April of 2005. mod_ssl (bug) is waiting on OpenSSL to make support possible. Opera has supported SNI since 8.0. IE7 has since beta 2. Mozilla/NSS/Firefox is ready to go with NSS 3.1.1/Gecko 1.8.1/Firefox 2.0. Konqueror will support it in 4.0 (bug). Safari is the only major browser without support (fresh bug).

Compare IIS to Apache. I guarantee there are thousands and thousands of config options in Apache while IIS must be configured using a GUI and if there isn't an option with a checkbox or text edit field or radio button or other GUI object then you can't do it.

Just because you don't know where to look doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I count roughly 500 IIS metabase settings - most of which can be set with the IIS Manager GUI, all of which can be scripted via WMI or ADSI, and that even come with supplied and supported scripts to modify them. Oh, and they're also XML, so fire up vi and edit away if you like.

There's also about 50 IIS registry settings that, while stored in the registry, are easy to get to for any Windows admin - both with a GUI and via script.

Oh, and for the record, Apache 2.2 looks to have 375 configuration directives.

Of course - MySQL doesn't do the things you expect them all the time, but it is really good at what it does. I have tried PostgreSQL and wasn't very satisfied with it - performance like a slug or something compared to what you can get out of MySQL. The command-line UI wasn't that easy to work with either.

And still - the major issue that is causing problems doing maintenance of a web site - that is the core code that actually does the whole thing. It doesn't depend on that it's written under Linux, that you are using Apache or MySQL, but the last letter - PHP/Perl/JSP/whatever. The best way around it is to don't use a scripting language at all but a compiling language and do Java Servlets utilizing Apache ECS or whatever your favourite language is.

Downside is that still ECS is lacking some features that I would like to see, but it helps on the way anyway. By also checking the result with the HTML Validator you will get the best result. (but maybe not the flashiest)

By using a compiling language you will ensure that end-users doesn't get nasty surprises if a change is done to a file that was included by a zillion of other files. Of course - you will still have a few problems left, but that is more of a documentation issue.

Non-Karma Whoring link post for those who don't know :

The OP is referring to Jakarta Struts by the Apache Group, http://struts.apache.org/

Its optimizer is not the smartest in the world, but we use Derby and if you get your indexes right, you can usually get very good performance on very large datasets.

Java is already fragmented. The result of open sourcing Java will actually be consolidation, i.e. killing of competing VMs. And a huge open source test suite will greatly benefit all surviving JVMs, which is a good thing.

How can you not see this?

Javas problem is not that it might get fragmented, the problem is that it IS fragmented. Do something about it! Let Java free!

See for example the opinion of IBM's counsel at

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal -discuss/200505.mbox/%3COF76586EEB.32A8F63F-ON0425 6FFC.004F25E4-04256FFC.00507B90 us.ibm.com%3E

about the residual rights clause of the JRL:

"Notice that the residuals clause does not extend to copyrights. You can
study Sun's source code under the JRL and then turn around and write your
own implementation relying solely on what you remember, and you're covered
for any potential trade secrets that Sun might have had. However, if your
code turns out to be "substantially similar" (an intentionally vague legal
standard), then Sun might have a copyright claim that it can assert. You
need to make sure that your code is not substantially similiar. How one
does that without constantly referring to the code that you're trying not
to copy without looking like you're trying to copy without getting caught
is an interesting question.

Sun probably didn't intend this result. What they probably meant was that
as long as you aren't making literal copies of material portions of their
source code, you're covered by the residuals clause. If that's the case,
I think their desire for brevity got in the way of clarity. They would
need to expand that section a bit to make it clear that the residuals
license covered copyright issues as well as long as you didn't literally
copy large amounts of code."

cheers,
dalibor topic

Remember, Windows is the prevalant desktop operating system.

Examine the options in the tools available to you, pick what works for you.

I've tried MySQL and PHP and mod-perl and CGI and python, but my current favorites are PostgreSQL and Tomcat hosting Java Servlets. No books required, their included documentation is quite good.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many OSS developers go out of their way to avoid documenting their projects on the hope that it will become popular (regardless), thus securing for themselves lucrative consulting fees.

I'm looking at you, Mr. Howard Lewis Ship, Independent Consultant.

A breathtaking piece of Argumentum Ad Novitatem, congratulations.

Two years ago people trying to be trendy and teach frameworks would have been teaching Struts. Then Struts 1.0 was put in maintenance mode, and Struts Ti (2.0) was to be merged with Open Symphony. Then Struts 2.0 was forgotten in favor of Shale and JSF.

That's the trouble with trying to be "modern" and "keep with the times"--by the time you've finished teaching the class, the stuff you were teaching is probably abandoned, deprecated or obsolete. Better to teach the fundamentals, and let people pick a web framework when they actually have a need for one.

Assuming that the students already have a somewhat firm knowledge of Java, then all they need to be taught is how to set up a Tomcat server and how a tomcat server works (paths and such). Then simply refer them to the HttpServlet class. I think learning how the server runs and how it handles files is a lot more difficult than writing the actual code.

Ah, just checked the homepage, local college = Georgia Tech. Not exactly a community college. Still, continuing education is more focused on the trade, not the fundamentals I would think. I'd still recommend JSF w/ Facelets.

There is usually some resistance to learn Tapestry from experienced JSP programmers, but if you're doing research and the programmers haven't been using too much JSP because they're still students, then it's a good opportunity to look into something better, even if it's very different from the standard.

I mean building the XML in the first place. If you've got a 20,000 line document, DOM can get pretty slow.

We use Slide for our repository and DASL+Lucene to query it (we clearly like apache a lot). In the past, due to limitations in Slide, DASL or Lucene, we tended to just grab everything that fit our search query and port-process in XSL, but our resident Slide expert pointed out that it would be much faster on all sides if we limited the number of results. So he added some extra functionality to Slide, so we can get exactly the 10 results that we actually need and don't need any additonal processing in XSLs or anything.

Complex searches are much faster now.

I mean building the XML in the first place. If you've got a 20,000 line document, DOM can get pretty slow.

We use Slide for our repository and DASL+Lucene to query it (we clearly like apache a lot). In the past, due to limitations in Slide, DASL or Lucene, we tended to just grab everything that fit our search query and port-process in XSL, but our resident Slide expert pointed out that it would be much faster on all sides if we limited the number of results. So he added some extra functionality to Slide, so we can get exactly the 10 results that we actually need and don't need any additonal processing in XSLs or anything.

Complex searches are much faster now.

1) XSLTs are harder to write than JSP/PHP/Perl.

2) If you don't want your program to be slow, you have to generate your XML serially. This is harder than dumping data into variables and maps and referencing them from the content renderer.

I need more information to offer much more advice than this but one of the many things that Java is pretty good at is calling native code. So if I were you I would start by writing a bunch of wrappers onto your existing C++ libraries and start doing new development in Java. As you need to add/modify functions you can port that portion of your library to Java and so on. Its a nice language and pretty easy to pick up from a C++ background. Get hold of a copy of Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel as a starter tutorial and look out for a new addition of Effective Java by Josh Bloch.

The big plus point you'll get from Java whatever you are doing are:

    1) Decent refactoring support in all the major IDE's makes it a lot easier to avoid your current problem in future. Check out Jetbrasins IDEA for a start.
    2) Garbage Collection easy memory management.
    3) Threads a real joy when writing multithreading apps. The implementation is minimal and elegant. The simple way that methods can be protected from concurrent update, the equally simple semaphore and critical cod mechanisms, the very easy way of creating a rendezvous between two threads, all combine to make this a good language feature.
    4) Exception Handling. Main thing here is the finally block in Java. Every try block can have a 'finally' clause. Any time such a block is exited, regardless of the reason for that exit (e.g. execution could proceed out of the block, or an exception could pass through it) the code in the finally clause is executed. Checked exceptions are more controversial but I like them and think they tend to lead to more robust code. At least they force you to consider error handling as you go.
    5) Amazing collections of open source libraries Jakarta common is a good place to start.
    6) Huge vendor support.
    7) Seriously cross platform. All my Java code is developed on Windows machines but runs on Linux, AIX, Z/OS etc. I haven't had a problem moving from one to the other in years.

Having said all of this no tool is ever going to fix poor practice so you might want to think about why your code base ended up being (by the sounds of it) such a mess in the first place.

I wish all these Java libraries worked like the way CPAN does.

Do you mean you wish Java libraries worked like CPAN, in the way Maven and its automatic library repository works or in the way the JPackage repository works?

Yeah, that's why things like lucene are possible. You don't know how to program effectively in Java. Get over it.

From the Apache docs:

Name-Based Virtual Hosting is a very popular method of identifying different virtual hosts. It allows you to use the same IP address and the same port number for many different sites. When people move on to SSL, it seems natural to assume that the same method can be used to have lots of different SSL virtual hosts on the same server.

It comes as rather a shock to learn that it is impossible.

The reason is that the SSL protocol is a separate layer which encapsulates the HTTP protocol. So the SSL session is a separate transaction, that takes place before the HTTP session has begun. The server receives an SSL request on IP address X and port Y (usually 443). Since the SSL request does not contain any Host: field, the server has no way to decide which SSL virtual host to use. Usually, it will just use the first one it finds, which matches the port and IP address specified.

http://www.analog.cx/docs/logfmt.html

Look for %u in defining a custom log format for analog, which can be used with the user report capability to give you session ID information (easily paired with Apache's mod_usertrack http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_usertrack .html).

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3 504311 is a good read on the module as well.

You have to get your log formats set right, but I believe this is what you're looking for (I don't use awstats, but it's most likely possible in a similar fashion).

Not quite anybody. If you've ever seen Sun's source code (or even worse, like me, worked on it) then you can't for instance contribute to Harmony. (See here for details on the restrictions). There's a lot of paranoia around about IP contamination from exposure to Sun's code.

Since we're on the topic of commercial distributions of SpamAssassin:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialWind ows

...and I know you're looking for easy-to-click distributions, but on the off-chance you (or somebody else reading this article) is looking for information on simply running SpamAssassin on Windows:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/UsingOnWindows

Since we're on the topic of commercial distributions of SpamAssassin:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialWind ows

...and I know you're looking for easy-to-click distributions, but on the off-chance you (or somebody else reading this article) is looking for information on simply running SpamAssassin on Windows:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/UsingOnWindows

IBM and a passel of other organizations who have based their application strategies on Java would put together an open source consortium that would support and guide Java. Something along the lines of the Eclipse or Apache foundations.

So then if I install some software it becomes part of the "Microsoft Windows as presented by Dell and tweaked by 2Short" operating system?

It depends. Red Hat distributes the Fedora Core operating system subject to a license from Apache Software Foundation. Likewise, Dell and other major PC OEMs sign license agreements with Microsoft to customize the Windows operating system. If your agreement with Microsoft and Dell allows you to market your OS this way, then so be it. But until we see this rumored Apple product in action, we lack enough knowledge of how it works to call it part of the operating system or not under any definition, whether it be driven by technical or marketing requirements.

Didn't IBM just buy this opensource project: http://geronimo.apache.org/ and make it http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/websphere/? 1) Take open source software 2) Brand it 3) Profit?

I'd suggest checking out some of the fulltext search libraries if you want flexible, fast fulltext search. It may not be as easy as using the database's built-in support, but the extra effort may pay off in performance and extensibility. For starters, check out open source Apache Lucene, which has ports to several languages, including Python, C, and .NET (C# I believe), and the original in Java. It's easy to get up and running quickly, and designed well enough to be customizable later.

They can, and it's being worked on.

Open source Java? How about http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/.

you don't really have to buy jboss to get the results that you pointed out.

  an overbloated linux distro company buys an overbloated java application server. sounds logical, especially if redhat is going to get all the $$$ from the jboss support.

  jboss was a clever business idea, but this is probably the last line that we see of it as it is right now, the next releases will start to scare people off, hopefully towards the more open and free implementation of the same thing, the geronimo.

  i have to admit i never liked jbosses model, give the users a nice piece of [censored] without proper documentation and then charge for the books and support. the software itself was great when i had the look at it, but the fact that you had to hack around german forums to find out some nice tricks for free, wasn't so tempting.

  Choose http://geronimo.apache.org/ or any other implementation unless you're all for the red hats.

You think a $100 laptop project -- working with $29 million dollars donated by some tech companies -- has surpassed the Gates Foundation's $10 billion in donations to nonprofits (particularly to solve health issues in Third World countries)?

A quaint, but disingenious way of attacking the parent. You do realise that the point of a NPO is to help people, not to clothe them in arbitrary amounts of cash, right? Or do you think that because The Apache Software Foundation brought in less than $25 000 in 2005, and IIS brought in over $17 billion, that IIS is 708 000 times better than Apache?

The whole POINT of Negroponte's $100 laptop project is that it is inexpensive. In case it's not plain yet, let me point out that you are attacking this project because of your apparent disapproval of its most laudable and impressive quality.

Try working in the international nonprofit sector for awhile, you'll start getting ticked at Negroponte too. These kids needs nutrition, vaccines, and education.

I'll happily get ticked at Negroponte the very moment it's shown that he is discouraging medical and nutritional aid to these impoverished nations.

A laptop might help with the latter, but good teachers, clinics, and/or radio networks would solve this problem MUCH MORE CHEAPLY.

And, as we all know, any given problem is only allowed to be solved in one single Dekortage-approved manner.

Negroponte is a visionary, and I like him a lot, but in this case he is using a chainsaw to hammer a nail.

That's one of the most pointless quotations I've ever heard. Are you from Texas or something? You know these things aren't funny unless you say them in a drawl, right?

>>Re:What the shit is with these new ads?
>>(Score:2)
>>by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Tuesday April 04, @12:26PM (#15058893)
>>
>>If you block them, they don't register as being viewed and you keep seeing them every time you try to view your new messages/user panel. Guess those are off limits for me now!
>
>Re:What the shit is with these new ads?
>(Score:2)
>by Richard Steiner (1585) on Tuesday April 04, @12:29PM (#15058929)
>(http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner | Last Journal: Wednesday March 29, @06:44PM)
>
>Wow... That Xerox ad is about the most obnoxious thing I've ever seen. It gets in the way of damn near everything!!

It's worse than that -- if you're using Opera, the Xerox flash ad code jumps the page forward to an empty page containing just the ad ... so Slashdot is unreadable with Opera if one of these ads is up -- just an empty page with one ad on it.

ObOn-Topic: I wonder how much market value Apache Harmony may take away from other companies that make JVM's ... is it still even possible to use IBM's JVM for free?

...and if nobody noticed, the recent equitable way the people who settled the issues over copyrighted code in Apache Harmony's JCHEVM relating to the Sable VM should serve as a model to folks working out code disputes. :)

Some Java programmers might be offended when you mention ant, but I guess they just didn't have a good experience with it after all. :P

Look at this explanation of version number from the Apache project. Here is a wikipedia article on versions.

As a developer, I can tell you that version number really do not have anything to with the amount of features. It has everything to do with compatibility. If you release product that you expect to be used by other software/plugins, you are expected to preserve a high level of backwards compatibility in the API you expose as long as you keep the same version number. Point releases can add to existing API calls and add new API functions as long as the old calling format is preserved and patches to point releases cannot make any changes to the API at all and only fix internal bugs.

The generally accepted convention is as follows:

- 1.x.x releases are patches to fix internal bugs.
- 1.x releases maintain API backwards compatibility with full source compatibility and high level binary compatibility while providing new API functions and completely new APIs along side depreciated API calls.
- x.0 releases make no guarantees of binary or source compatibility with previous versions and usually have completely re-factored API or new API from scratch. Each of those "point releases" of OS X have new version numbers for their kernel which signals that kernel extensions from a previous release is not guaranteed to be compatible.

I really do not understand where this idea that version numbers are tied the amount of features came from. It must have been perpetuated by marketing literature. To put it bluntly, your idea about version numbers is completely wrong.

PS. API in this case refers to Application Programmer Interface.
PPS. Ultimately published version numbers are chosen at the discretion of the developer. Some developers choose to change major version numbers which each release even when it is not justified.

See the bottom of the main http://apache.org/ page, links right to the Inde website.

It isn't all java. Look at this list: http://projects.apache.org/indexes/languagecategor y.html/

As I said, they must be trying to get away from the "patchy" image, from the current site there are arguments against the name, and other places saying that it's a legend (see 1995).

However, they certainly used to say "a patchy" was where the name came from - and I believe that the new reason (respect for american indians) is a cover up =P

As I said, they must be trying to get away from the "patchy" image, from the current site there are arguments against the name, and other places saying that it's a legend (see 1995).

However, they certainly used to say "a patchy" was where the name came from - and I believe that the new reason (respect for american indians) is a cover up =P

AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word

Not if he doesn't learn a lot more about the DOM, and fast.

I was all ready to complement the AjaxWrite team on having finally delivered the first online wordprocessor with full font-sizing abilities. Then I realized something: There are only 7 font sizes. The same 7 that are supported by every rich text editor in existance. Why only seven? Because those seven are built into the rich text editing component that's included with Mozilla and IE. If you want to allow arbitray font sizes, you have to delve down into the DOM and start some complex tweaking.

All AjaxWrite has done is hide these facts by assigning standard font sizes. Anyone with the right info could replicate this "feat" pretty easily.

Sorry, nothing to see here.

The bright side is that his app supports the Microsoft DOC format. How well it supports it is an open question, but he probably is using a library like POI to do the heavy lifting. Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing ground-breaking. I imagine that many users will drop this tool as soon as they realize they can't properly match font sizes.

Let's check back next week and see if his next attempt is more interesting.