Archive for October, 2010

What Apple’s Announcement Really Means to Java Developers

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Hey Steve, keep the bean in the Apple!

The news from last week that grabbed the attention of many Java developers was Apple’s announcement of its intentions to deprecate Java in the latest OS X 10.6 update. One sentence stood out in particular, “Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X,” and raised the question: should Java developers (many of whom, like me, develop on Macs) freak out?

I don’t think so. (Though it prompted additional speculation and follow-on news stories.)

Let’s be realistic. Most applications run on the server side, on Unix/Linux and/or Windows Server – which has nothing to do with Apple or Mac OS X. And more and more applications are running on the cloud, where the language isn’t necessarily irrelevant, but certainly less important than the services that the application exposes. And I’m sure Java will have a big role in ‘development in the cloud,’ as we can already see with Google AppEngine and the VMWare/SpringSource effort.

I think the more interesting question to ask is “Why did Apple do this?”

I believe this is related Apple’s other big news last week: the new “Mac App Store,” which looks like an effort to have one single technology and language to develop “official” applications for Mac. In fact, for all Apple platforms running OS X and iOS, developers should use X Code and Objective C. That’s fine with me, as I enjoy developing small apps for my iPhone and iPad in my spare time, using these tools. But at eXo, many of our developers are using Java, often on Macs, to build our software.

We’re not talking about the same kind of applications. If, in the future, Java does not exist on Macs, it will not cause enterprise developers to abandon Java, but simply force them to move away from their Macs. Personally, I don’t want that to happen. I switched to Mac in 2001, and I’ve been a big fan of all Apple products ever since (most of my extended family are now also on Macs, and they couldn’t care less about Java).

As a Java developer, do I switch back to PC now? Unlikely. I am very confident (overconfident?) that Java will still be present on OS X. The difference is that Apple will simply stop caring about it — the same way that Microsoft doesn’t care now. I cannot believe that Apple will stop/block Java on their platform. So the future of Java in general, and now on Mac, is fully under the control of the Java community, driven by Oracle and OpenJDK. I am sure we will find many skilled “MacAddicts” to maintain and improve Java on OS X, to at least allow Java developers to run their favorite IDE and test their applications before deploying them on the servers — keeping the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” a reality (almost…). The only “bad” part is the fact that “Java Desktop” will not borrow any of the cool features of Apple Mac OS X. Not a big deal, since Java Desktop has never been that successful anyway.

So my advice to fellow Java developers is this: if you care, be vocal. Let’s make sure Apple lets the community drive the future of Java on Mac, since the future of the Java platform is still very exciting for many of us.

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eXo Training in Sao Paulo: 8-12 November

Friday, October 15th, 2010

To support the growing eXo developer community in Brazil, we will be hosting our first-ever training in Sao Paulo next month, 8-12 November.  Both eXo Admin and eXo Developer courses will be offered in an intensive weeklong curriculum.

Earlier this week, our friends at 4Linux, one of the leading open source organizations in Brazil, featured eXo as a guest in their “BotecoNet Download” webcast series.  Oualid Chaker, General Manager at eXo, spoke to developers and architects about the content of the upcoming training, and answered questions about the new eXo Platform 3.  The presentation is available for download as a podcast on the 4Linux site.

More details about both courses can be found here, or by contacting an eXo team member.

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eXo Webinar: eXo Platform 3, the User Experience Platform for Java

Monday, October 4th, 2010

eXo Platform 3, the User Experience Platform for Java, provides a solid enterprise-ready foundation for portal-based applications, with the collaboration, social and content features developers need to build modern, user-centric Java apps.

Join Tugdual Grall, SVP of Product Strategy & Development at eXo, as he gives a tour of some of the capabilities of eXo Platform 3, as well as an overview of the product architecture. Attendees will be introduced to several common use case scenarios:

  • Social Intranet: building a modern corporate intranet with activity streams, chat, group workspaces, calendars, and other collaboration spaces
  • Web 2.0 Websites: using eXo Platform 3′s powerful content management capabilities to develop portal-based websites
  • Application Development Platform: how to use the web-based IDE to build gadgets and mashups, and create custom APIs to extend eXo Platform 3

The presentation will also include live demonstrations of sample apps built with eXo Platform.

Webinar Details:

Title: eXo Platform 3, the User Experience Platform for Java
Speakers: Tugdual Grall, Senior VP of Product Strategy and Development
Language: English
Two Sessions:
- 1st Session: October 7th, at 6am Pacific Time / 9am Eastern Time / 3pm Paris – Register Here
- 2nd Session: October 7th, at 10am Pacific Time / 1pm Eastern Time / 7pm Paris – Register Here

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eXo at JUDCon Berlin: GateIn Presentation from Julien Viet

Friday, October 1st, 2010

For those of you who are attending the JBoss User & Developers Conference (JUDCon) in Berlin next week, be sure to check out Julien Viet’s session. Julien, who serves as the project manager (from the eXo side) for GateIn, will be giving a talk on Day 2 of the conference, 8 October, at 14:30 in the Workflow and BPM track. He’ll be introducing Chromattic, an open source project that provides GateIn with a JCR persistence layer for rapid development of content-based apps. Here’s the complete abstract:

Julien Viet – Advanced JCR Persistence in the GateIn Portal Framework

The GateIn Portal comes with a built in Java Content Repository server for managing pages, layouts and portlets. The Chromattic open source project was initiated to develop the GateIn object model persistence in a JCR server. Beyond natively powering the heart of GateIn, Chromattic can be used to rapidly develop rich and complex JCR based applications.

Chromattic is an object mapper framework that uses JCR as persistence layer. It provides a natural support for various JCR features, thanks to the usage of Java Annotations. Annotations declare which and how classes are mapped to nodes, turning any repository node into a Java object. It provides important features to JCR development such as type safety and object orientation which are lacking when the JCR native interfaces are used. Moderns IDE most used features like code completion and refactoring are de facto available when developing Chromattic applications.

The key concepts of Chromattic will be presented, through the development of a simple Chromattic application in real-time. This sample application will be made available to the attendees so they can use the sample code as a starting point. This advanced technical session will show:

  • How to integrate Chromattic with a modern IDE using a Maven-based build
  • How to deploy a Chromattic application in GateIn
  • How to connect to and manage a repository server

    • In addition, several advanced features of Chromattic will be highlighted, to demonstrate the power of the framework.

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