Tag: java

If you’ve been around for a while then you’ll remember seeing or hearing about the ‘Java Pet Store’ example application that Sun put together to illustrate how to build a Java EE technology (then J2EE) together with best practice patterns.

The latest version of the Java Pet Store is now available on the java.sun.com website. It has been redesigned and built using latest Java EE5 technologies, for example JSF and Java Persistence API, but also incorporates many ‘Web 2.0’ typical features. For example, the web app now features extensive use of AJAX, RSS feeds, and also integrates with Google Maps (apps integrating in this style with other websites are commonly called a ‘mash-up’).

This was discussed in the Gossip section on JavaPosse’s podcast number 103, but unfortunately it looks like the website for the links they referred to has been taken down and/or password protected.

The guys in the podcast quoted from the documents that were publicly avaialable on the site, which gave an insight into Microsoft’s original goals to build a competitor to Java (J++?) that would beat Java at it’s own game by ignoring the cross-platform benefits and leveraging native platform support on Windows. J++ never caught on but may have been one stepping stone towards the development of .NET, which again borrows Java concepts (the Common Language Runtime = the Java Virtual Machine), but yet again, still has not made significant impact in the IT industry.

Ted Neward recently interviewed Bill Venners, president of Artima, on the subject of the future of the Java language. One of the main discussion points was whether language features should be deprecated, or completely removed in future releases. This has become a hotly debated topic recently, especially since the JDK download is continuing to grow with every new release.

Check out the discussion summary here.

Java SE 6 has introduced a large number of desktop improvements including features to improve the look n feel and integration with the native platform when running on particular OS’es (System Tray integration, text anti-aliasing, native look n feel).

Check out part one and part two of this article for a detailed look at these improvements.