Java Archive

"Although the .NET vs. Java war is basically over for control of the Windows desktop, where .NET is sure to become the managed language of choice for new Windows desktop applications, there is a new battle brewing. That battle is for the Linux desktop. Now that Java has been open sourced under the GPL, even the most strict of the 'free software only' distributions can start bundling it and integrating it into their Linux distributions out of the box."

"Java 5 added a number of powerful language features: generics, enumerations, annotations, autoboxing, and the enhanced for loop. However, many shops are still tied to JDK 1.4 or earlier and may be for some time to come. But it's still be possible for those developers to take advantage of these powerful language features while continuing to deploy on earlier JVMs. Brian Goetz returns from his hiatus in this installment of Java theory and practice to demonstrate how."

"Simple Persistence for Java is an open source object-relational persistence library that uses a custom query language and built-in database support to simplify object persistence in Java applications. In this article, software architect Sami Salkosuo introduces the library and walks you through its zero-admin, zero-config approach to object persistence."

Thanks largely to the open sourcing of the JDK, 2007 promises to be the most exciting year in Java programming. With the developer community in the driver's seat, expect to see Java programming propelled forward, backward, and sideways, probably all at once. This article takes a look at what's ahead for Java in Open Source and predicts what is coming for the Java platform.

Version 1.0 of the LWJGL has been released. "The Lightweight Java Game Library is a solution aimed directly at professional and amateur Java programmers alike to enable commercial quality games to be written in Java. LWJGL provides developers access to high performance crossplatform libraries such as OpenGL and OpenAL allowing for state of the art 3D games and 3D sound. Additionally LWJGL provides access to controllers such as Gamepads, Steering wheel and Joysticks."

"I find Debian an outstanding distro for server needs with its latest version Etch nearly been released as of the day I'm writing this. Java 6 isn't available from its repositories and I doubt it would for Etch. So it's time to grab the situation into your hands and install it manually."

Maybe cats and dogs can live together, after all. Sources close to the matter revealed today that the Eclipse Foundation has joined the Java Community Process. A quick check of the JCP membership list reveals that the Foundation is listed as a member. The sources also said that Eclipse joined the JCP this week, and that the formal announcement is scheduled for next week.

Groovy 1.0 has been released and is available for download from the project homepage. "Groovy is a dynamic language for the JVM that integrates seamlessly with the Java platform. It offers a Java-like syntax, with language features inspired by Smalltalk, Python or Ruby, and lets your reuse all your Java libraries and protect the investment you made in Java skills, tools or application servers. Groovy can be used for various purposes, from ad-hoc shell scripting leveraging Java APIs, to full-blown web applications built on Spring and Hibernate through the Grails web framework. It can also be integrated very easily in your applications to externalize business logic, create Domain-Specific Languages, or to provide templating capabilities, and much more."

Performance testing is usually left for last in the application development cycle - not because it's unimportant, but because it's hard to test effectively with so many unknown variables. In this month's In pursuit of code quality, Andrew Glover makes a case for performance testing as part of the development cycle and shows you two easy ways to do it.

GNU Classpath 0.93 'Dreamland', a core class library for the Java programming language, has been released with lots of enhancements (free swing, html, corba, new i/o, graphics2d/cairo support). The release announcement also details pointers to supported applications and screenshots, the status and future of the 1.4 and 1.5 generics branches. An update on the Summer of Code student work. Plus some prelimenary ideas on cooperating with the Sun GPL OpenJDK Java project. And the GNU Classpath commitments to the Free Software community for the future of various projects around GNU Classpath, the users and GNU/Linux distros relying on GNU Classpath.

This morning Sun officially released Java 6 for download after over two years of development. The Java 6 development cycle has been the most open of any Java release with weekly builds available to the public and extensive collaboration between Sun and over 330 external developers. Sun has worked with over 160 companies to ensure backwards compatibility, stability and optimum performance of applications running on the JVM.

Our mobile-oriented sister site, Mobits, put together the third free service for you (first, second), a mobile web page that let's you access the 23 best J2ME phone applications created so far. Visit the mobile-optimized page with any browser at http://mobits.com/jad. There is space for two more J2ME apps in the page, so leave a comment if we forgot a deserving application out of the list (no games please). We hope that this page will prove helpful to users who just got a new cellphone or reseted their existing one and are in need of re-installing their Java apps as quickly as possible.

Add some sparkle to your Java applications with Quartz, an open source project that offers an extensive set of job scheduling features. This article introduces the Quartz API, starting with a general overview of the framework and concluding with a series of code examples.

There is a new scripting language in development called F3 from Sun, specifically designed for GUI programming. It allows designing Flash-like GUIs with ease and can call Java libraries directly. You can launch demos and get more information from the related blog.