JavaGeek.org - J2EE category

WSAD doesn't suck so much after all

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:56:05 GMT

The last couple of weeks have been very interesting, as I was in the last stages of a project at work. I no longer hate WSAD (Websphere Studio Application Developer) so much. I still find a lot of missing features from the latest Eclipse releases (WSAD is based on Eclipse 2.x), but I found the integration with Websphere to be very nice, and developing EJBs is almost easy.

However, the more I use EJBs, the less I like them. After using Spring to create POJO-like services, EJBs feel too cumbersome, not to mention that we mostly do Stateless Session Beans and never even touch Entity Beans, as they impact performance too much. So, there's really not much sense in using EJBs.

One of the main things I don't like about EJBs is that they're not easy to test. With Spring, I could easilly do testing, and not only unit testing but also Integration testing, using Spring's AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests, which allows me to insert and update the database and rollback those changes afterwards, so the db isn't affected. With EJBs, so far I've only found Cactus, and I still feel a little vague on how to exactly use it, since EJBs are required to run inside an Appserver.

Anyway, I was able to finish the project, and WSAD helped.

You could win a PSP just by using J2EE

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:26:49 GMT

In case you haven't found out by now, Sun is having a contest where you can Play with J2EE 1.4 SDK and Win a Sony PSP. I think this is a very cool way to promote J2EE 1.4, too bad I don't qualify because I'm not in one of the countries where the contest is open. Good thing I already have my own PSP to play with.

The only thing that I found kind of sad (or nostalgic) about it, is that the PSP doesn't include a JVM, and as far as I know, there is no JVM being made for the PSP. With its wireless capabilities, IR, USB, etc., this would be a very cool environment for Java programs. Throw in a good 3D Java API, and you could be creating cool games for the PSP (which is good for Sony and for Sun).

Why I dislike Websphere

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:51:48 GMT

At work, I've been working on a project that uses Websphere Application Server (WAS) 5.1. Part of the development setup is to use Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) 5.1, because it is tightly integrated with WAS.

One of the problems this represents is that WSAD 5.1 is based on Eclipse 2.1.3. After working with Eclipse 3.x for so long, I find it really hard to use an older version, that doesn't provide many of the features I've come to expect, like showing a list of defined keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-L), or getting the latest plug-in for subversion (Subclipse).

Another problem is that Websphere uses its own JVM, made by IBM, which although it's supposed to be 100% compatible, I still think there are some 'hidden features'. And I've never seen eclipse (or other java programs running with Sun's JVM) give me this kind of error:

There's no stack trace, no reason given. It's almost as bad as a Microsoft product.