Java Archive

This chapter provides a basic introduction to asynchronous integration. Asynchronous integration occurs when a number of processes integrate but do not lock for the time of the transaction on which they are integrated. Also, "Exception Handling and Fault Tolerance in Java: Defect Removal vs. Defect Survival" and "Java EJB 3.0: A Hibernate Clone?".

"The latest release of the Java platform includes a number of new system monitoring and management features. In this article, three developers from the IBM Java Technology Centre team up to get you started using this API. After a quick overview of the java.lang.management package, they guide you through a number of short practical scenarios to probe the performance of a running JVM."

John Smart provides a quick intro to Lucene, a powerful and elegant library for full-text indexing and searching in Java, with which you can add rich full-text search functionality to your Java web application.

One of the components of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is GCJ, the GNU Compiler for the Java programming language. GCJ is a compiler that can generate both native code and bytecode from Java source files. GCJ includes a runtime library (libgcj) that provides all runtime support, the core class libraries, a garbage collector, and a bytecode interpreter. Programs created by gcj can dynamically load and interpret class files or native shared libraries resulting in pure, or mixed native/interpreted apps.

A new version of Kaffe has been released. Kaffe is a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. The Kaffe virtual machine is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Some benchmarks are available too.

The first benchmark of Mustang (JDK1.6) versus Tiger (JDK1.5) shows that Java users are up for an agreeable surprise. According to this JavaLobby discussion the virtual machine raw speed has improved significantly (40-100%). Although, the core library implementation (e.g. collections) could also benefit from some rework/optimizations.

"The Java Native Interface lets developers mix Java code with C or C++ source code. It provides access to platform-specific features that Java does not provide, so that Java applications on Mac OS X can take advantage of the wide range of powerful Apple-only technologies to provide the best possible user experience. Using the JNI, your Java application can access a user's Address Book, make Spotlight queries, take advantage of Core Image and Core Video, and leverage many other rich features unique to Mac OS X. This step-by-step tutorial explains how to use the JNI to integrate Java and C code using a single Xcode project with multiple targets."

Jeff Langr's poker application has come a long way in the last few installments of this series. In this segment, he adds the first set of code for handling some of those specialized poker terms you've might recognize from TV: the flop, the turn, the river, and the blinds.

"Profiling is a technique for measuring where software programs consume resources, including CPU time and memory. In this article, software architect Andrew Wilcox explains the benefits of profiling and introduces some current profiling options and their shortcomings. He then shows you how to use the new Java 5 agent interface and simple aspect-oriented programming techniques to build your own profiler."

The beauty of Framework for Integrated Tests (FIT) is that it enables the customer or business side of an organization to get involved in the testing process early (i.e., during development). Whereas JUnit's strength lies in unit testing during the coding process. This article shows you how to combine the best of FIT and JUnit for better teamwork and effective end-to-end testing.

"Real Interfaces Visualizer technology is an easy-to-use GUI multi-platform system for Java programmers to assemble and manage complex, interaction-enabled, three-dimensional user interfaces. Version 1.1 includes addition of support for nested matrices along with the capability of cell spanning in all three directions."

"We recently received an email asking for a 'What Is Java' entry on the O'Reilly Network What Is site. Who could possibly not know what Java is in 2006? After ten years of books, websites, and conferences, doesn't everyone know what Java is? Apparently not. After all, things have changed. For every dusty definition that speaks of applets and Just-In-Time compilers, there are new directions and new realities that have settled in, understood by many, yet not always completely documented."

GNU Classpath 0.90 "A La Mort Subite" has been released. Some highlights of this release: JTables can be rearranged and resized. Free Swing text components support highlighting and clipboard. Much improved styled text. Fast event dispatching and lower memory consumption. Better support for mixing lightweight and heavyweight components in AWT containers. GNU Crypto and Jessie cryptographic algorithms have been added providing ssl3/tls1 and https support. Unicode 4.0.0 support. GIOP and RMI stub and tie source code tools. XML validaton support for RELAX NG and W3C XML schemas. New file backend for util.prefs. Updated gnu.regexp from POSIX to util.regex syntax.

"Why is there more than one Java GUI tool kit? The best answer is that one size does not fit all, nor is there a one-size-fits-all GUI tool kit to be invented soon. Each tool kit offers advantages and disadvantages that make selecting one more appropriate, given your needs and intended audience. Read descriptions of each tool kit's basic features, and the pros and cons of using each."