Search Results

Search found 8581 results on 344 pages for 'optional variables'.

Page 205/344 | < Previous Page | 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212  | Next Page >

• How to factorize code in Unreal Kismet (i.e. "Material Function"s for Kismet)

  - by Georges Dupéron

  In the Unreal Development Kit, when using the Material Editor, one can factorize frequently-used groups of nodes by creating a Material Function (content Browser ? right-click ? new matrial function, IIRC). When defining the behaviour of some actor in Kismet, one can easily have a dozen nodes involved. If I have many actors that share the same behaviour, then I'll copy-paste these nodes, and change the variables so they point to the other actors. This leads to inconsistencies (a modification in the behaviour of an actor isn't propagated in the copy-pasted nodes), complexity (you end up with hundreds of nodes), and generally useless effort. My question is : Can I create a "kismet function", just like a material function ? Note: I'd rather avoid using UnrealScript. I don't even know where to type UnrealScripts, don't know where the documentation is and more generally don't have enough time to invest in learning UnrealScript. This "kismet function" feature must be usable by graphists (with little programming knowledge). If a (simple) script suffices to add this feature in the Kismet editor, so that one can create several "functions" without using UnrealScript, then fine, but I don't really want to have to write a script each time I want to factorize a few nodes. Thanks for any information !

  Read the article

• Pure functional programming and game state

  - by Fu86

  Is there a common technique to handle state (in general) in a functional programming language? There are solutions in every (functional) programming language to handle global state, but I want to avoid this as far as I could. All state in a pure functional manner are function parameters. So I need to put the whole game state (a gigantic hashmap with the world, players, positions, score, assets, enemies, ...)) as a parameter to all functions which wants to manipulate the world on a given input or trigger. The function itself picks the relevant information from the gamestate blob, do something with it, manipulate the gamestate and return the gamestate. But this looks like a poor mans solution for the problem. If I put the whole gamestate into all functions, there is no benefit for me in contrast to global variables or the imperative approach. I could put just the relevant information into the functions and return the actions which will be taken for the given input. And one single function apply all the actions to the gamestate. But most functions need a lot of "relevant" information. move() need the object position, the velocity, the map for collision, position of all enemys, current health, ... So this approach does not seem to work either. So my question is how do I handle the massive amount of state in a functional programming language -- especially for game development?

  Read the article

• Do cross reference database tables have a place in domain driven design?

  - by Mike Cellini

  First some background. Let's say we have a system where a customer is placing an order in a web interface. The items that customer is ordering can priced in various ways. Sometimes including the cost of delivery and sometimes not at all. That pricing effectively depends on a variety of factors including the vendor's own pricing model, that vendor's individual contracts with customers as well as that vendor's contracts with its own suppliers. Let's assume that once a customer places an order for a particular item and chooses a contract if any, the method of delivery can be determined by variables on those contracts. Those delivery methods also live in their own table in the database and have various properties consumed downstream. It makes sense that a cross reference or lookup table would store that information. That table would be loaded into the domain and could then be used to apply the appropriate delivery method while processing the order. Does this make sense in the context of domain driven design? Or is my thinking too relational? Is this logic that should be built into it's own class/method (I mean beyond apply the cross reference table data)?

  Read the article

• Java game design question (graphical objects)

  - by vemalsar

  Hello Guys, I'm beginner in game development, in Java and here on this site too and I have a game design question. Please comment my idea: I have a main loop which call update and draw method. I want to use an ArrayList which store graphical objects, they have coordinate and image or text to draw and my game objects extends this class. In update, I can choose which objects should be put in the array and in draw method I'll display the elements of array on the screen. I'm using a buffer and draw first there, but it is not important now I guess...Here is a simple (not full) code, only the logic: public class GamePanel extends JPanel implements KeyListener { ArrayList<graphicalObjects> graphArray = new ArrayList<graphicalObjects>(); public void update() { //change the game scene, update the graphArray, process input etc. } public void draw() { //draws every element of graphArray to a JPanel } public static main(String[] args) { while(true) { update(); draw(); } } } My questions: Should have I use interface or abstract class for graphicalObjects? graphicalObjects class and the ArrayList really needs or there is some better solution? How to draw objects? They draw themself with their own method or in the draw method I have to draw manually based on graphicalObjects variables (x,y coordinates, image etc.)? If this conception is wrong, please suggest another one! All comments are welcome and sorry if this is dumb question, thanks!

  Read the article

• Reasons behind polymorphism related behaviour in java

  - by Shades88

  I read this code somewhere class Foo { public int a; public Foo() { a = 3; } public void addFive() { a += 5; } public int getA() { System.out.println("we are here in base class!"); return a; } } public class Polymorphism extends Foo{ public int a; public Poylmorphism() { a = 5; } public void addFive() { System.out.println("we are here !" + a); a += 5; } public int getA() { System.out.println("we are here in sub class!"); return a; } public static void main(String [] main) { Foo f = new Polymorphism(); f.addFive(); System.out.println(f.getA()); // SOP 1 System.out.println(f.a); // SOP 2 } } For SOP1 we get answer 10 and for SOP2 we get answer 3. Reason for this is that you can't override variables whereas you can do so for methods. This happens because type of the reference variable is checked when a variable is accessed and type of the object is checked when a method is accessed. But I am wondering, just why is it that way? Can anyone explain me what is the reason for this behaviour

  Read the article

• Need help: jBPM installation issue

  - by Kouky

  This is Ms Kahina, I’m getting started with jBPM & Java EE, I tried to install the jBPM 5.4 version by following all the steps stated in the iBPM user guide as below: 1- I’ve installed Java (JDK 1.7) and ant ( Apache-ant-1.9.4). 2- I’ve set both JAVA_HOME and ANT_HOME environement variables. 3- I’ve downloaded the jBPM 5.4 full installer and run the installation script “ant install.demo” and after that the start script “ant start.demo”. But unfortunately jBPM 5.4 is not working. When running the installation Script I’m getting successful message but with the following warnings : [copy] Warning: Could not find file C:\jbpm-installer\db\task-persistence.xml to copy. [copy] Warning: Could not find file C:\jbpm-installer\db\Taskorm.xml to copy. The start demo was successful. Actually when I try to open any tool provided with the jBPM such us the jBPM-console for example I’m getting the following messages: Address not found or sometimes the http status 404 occurred even if the Welcome page of jBoss AS was opened at http://localhost:8080/. Please need your assistance to sort out this issue in order to move forward in my project as I'm blocked in the installation stage since more than a week now, I don’t know if this is related to the jBoss AS7 or to any other thing that I didn’t find out. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks Kahina

  Read the article

• What language available on commodity web hosts would suit a C# developer? [closed]

  - by billpg

  Recognising its ubiquity on commodity web hosting services, I tried developing in PHP a few years ago. I really didn't like it, later deciding that life was too short for PHP. (In brief, having to put $ on variable names; mis-spelt variable names become new variables; converting non-numeric strings to integers without complaint; the need for an "and this time I mean it" comparison operator.) In my ideal world, commodity web hosts would all support C#/ASP.NET, my preferred web-development language and framework, but this is not my ideal world. Even Mono has barely made a dent on Linux based hosts. However, last time I moaned about PHP's ubiquity, someone followed up that this was no longer the case, and that many other languages are now commonly usable on web hosts too. What programming language; a. Would suit a developer who prefers C#. b. Is available to run on many web hosts.

  Read the article

• How to debug a fatal system crash - [graphical loop DOTA2]?

  - by Huw

  Whilst playing DOTA2, I occasionally and apparently randomly seem to be experiencing a fatal crash where the display freezes fixed and the audio loops over approx the last .5 of a second. Now, I'm interested in resolving this - but my trouble is I don't know where to start. The error appears non-reproducible (I've tried returning to games and deploying the same combination of events in hopes of pinning to to a certain shader etc), and I don't know which part of 'the stack' it might be coming from. Variables that occur to me: I custom build this system, did I do something wrong - is my PSU not providing enough power to the graphics card? I am running Steam and DOTA under Linux, could this new software have a bug Might it be something to do with my ATI Catalyst graphics drivers Is some other background process interfering I'm usually mid game when this occurs, so i quickly kill the power and reboot (when i'm lucky i can get back in with only 1-2 mins lost!). So my question here relates to logs. Where should I start to look or how might I set up logs to help me pin down a fatal crash of this kind by recording moments up to / before a crash and is this likely to be something I should push Steam to do, or is there something at a system level? Then perhaps I can return with a more specific question and perhaps even a bug report :) Many thanks in advance.

  Read the article

• What is causing this behavior with the movement of Pong Ball in 2D? [closed]

  - by thegermanpole

  //edit after running it through the debugger it turned out i had the display function set to x,x...TIL how to use a debugger I've been trying to teach myself C++ SDL with the lazyfoo tutorial and seem to have run into a roadblock. The code below is the movement function of my Dot class, which controls the ball. The ball seems to ignore yvel and moves with xvel to the bottom right. The code should be pretty readable, the rest of the relevant facts are: All variables are names Constants are in caps dotrad is the radius of my dot yvel and xvel are set to 5 in the constructor The dot is created at x and y equal to 100 When I comment out the x movement block it doesn't move, but if i comment out the y movement block, it keeps on going down to the right. void Dot::move() { if(((y+yvel+dotrad) <= SCREEN_HEIGHT) && (0 <= (y-dotrad+yvel))) { y+=yvel; } else { yvel = -1*yvel; } if(((x+xvel+dotrad) <= SCREEN_WIDTH) && (0 <= (x-dotrad+xvel))) { x +=xvel; } else { xvel = -1*xvel; } }

  Read the article

• 13.04 Temp Save, rt3290, Kernel downgrade

  - by user170534

  It's kind of a multiplying but I didn't wanted to open more than one topics. I'd have a fresh install of Ubuntu with tlp configured and using acpi_call to keep 7670M turned off. I was a short time arch user and with openbox and firefox it was about 60 to 70 degrees; wanted to turn to a stable release just for this reason. acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +50.0°C radeon-pci-0100 Adapter: PCI adapter temp1: -128.0°C coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +56.0°C (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) Core 0: +54.0°C (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) Core 1: +55.0°C (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) The temperature is not seriously high yet can be lower. Another issue is my wifi card, rt3290: The rt2800pci module is fine and all that but the download performance is pretty bad alongside of annoying signal range and the prop. driver gives a conf error about some specific rt2860 code and integrales in pci_dev file. If I blank off the error making variables, module loads but the driver is unused. Since the driver is old, I was thinking of downgrading the kernel of raring to 3.7 or may be 3.6. Should &-or can I?

  Read the article

• PHP Code (modules) included via MySQL database, good idea?

  - by ionFish

  The main script includes "modules" which add functionality to it. Each module is set up like this: <?php //data collection stuff //(...) approx 80 lines of code //end data collection $var1 = 'some data'; $var2 = 'more data'; $var3 = 'other data'; ?> Each module has the same exact variables, just the data collection is different. I was wondering if it's a reasonable idea to store the module data in MySQL like this: [database] |_modules |_name |_function (the raw PHP data from above) |_description |_author |_update-url |_version |_enabled ...and then include the PHP-data from the database and execute it? Something like, a tab-navigation system at the top of the page for each module name, then inside each of those tabs the page content would function by parsing the database-stored code of the module from the function section. The purpose would be to save code space (fewer lines), allow for easy updates, and include/exclude modules based on the enabled option. This is how many other web-apps work, some of my own too. But never had I thought about this so deeply. Are there any drawbacks or security risks to this?

  Read the article

• Simplifying data search using .NET

  - by Peter

  An example on the asp.net site has an example of using Linq to create a search feature on a Music album site using MVC. The code looks like this - public ActionResult Index(string movieGenre, string searchString) { var GenreLst = new List<string>(); var GenreQry = from d in db.Movies orderby d.Genre select d.Genre; GenreLst.AddRange(GenreQry.Distinct()); ViewBag.movieGenre = new SelectList(GenreLst); var movies = from m in db.Movies select m; if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString)) { movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString)); } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(movieGenre)) { movies = movies.Where(x => x.Genre == movieGenre); } return View(movies); } I have seen similar examples in other tutorials and I have tried them in a real-world business app that I develop/maintain. In practice this pattern doesn't seem to scale well because as the search criteria expands I keep adding more and more conditions which looks and feels unpleasant/repetitive. How can I refactor this pattern? One idea I have is to create a column in every table that is "searchable" which could be a computed column that concatenates all the data from the different columns (SQL Server 2008). So instead of having movie genre and title it would be something like. if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString)) { movies = movies.Where(s => s.SearchColumn.Contains(searchString)); } What are the performance/design/architecture implications of doing this? I have also tried using procedures that use dynamic queries but then I have just moved the ugliness to the database. E.g. CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[search_music] @title as varchar(50), @genre as varchar(50) AS -- set the variables to null if they are empty IF @title = '' SET @title = null IF @genre = '' SET @genre = null SELECT m.* FROM view_Music as m WHERE (title = @title OR @title IS NULL) AND (genre LIKE '%' + @genre + '%' OR @genre IS NULL) ORDER BY Id desc OPTION (RECOMPILE) Any suggestions? Tips?

  Read the article

• Trouble with collision detection in XNA?

  - by Lewis Wilcock

  I'm trying to loop through an list of enemies (enemyList) and then any that have intersected the rectangle belonging to the box object (Which doesn't move), declare there IsAlive bool as false. Then another part of the code removes any enemies that have the IsAlive bool as false. The problem im having is getting access to the variable that holds the Rectangle (named boundingBox) of the enemy. When this is in a foreach loop it works fine, as the enemy class is declared within the foreach. However, there are issues in using the foreach as it removes more than one of the enemies at once (Usually at positions 0 and 2, 1 and 3, etc...). I was wondering the best way to declare the enemy class, without it actually creating new instances of the class? Heres the code I currently have: if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Q) && oldKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Q)) { enemyList.Add(new enemy(textureList.ElementAt(randText), new Vector2(250, 250), graphics)); } //foreach (enemy enemy in enemyList) //{ for (int i = 0; i < enemyList.Count; i++) { if (***enemy.boundingBox***.Intersects(theDefence.boxRectangle)) { enemyList[i].IsDead = true; i++; } } //} for(int j = enemyList.Count - 1; j >= 0; j--) { if(enemyList[j].IsDead) enemyList.RemoveAt(j); } (The enemy.boundingBox is the variables I can't get access too). This is a complete copy of the code (Zipped) If it helps: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih52k4e21g98j3k/Collision%20tests.rar I managed to find the issue. Changed enemy.boundingBox to enemyList[i].boundingBox. Collision works now! Thanks for any help!

  Read the article

• multi-thread in mmorpg server

  - by jean

  For MMORPG, there is a tick function to update every object's state in a map. The function was triggered by a timer in fixed interval. So each map's update can be dispatch to different thread. At other side, server handle player incoming package have its own threads also: I/O threads. Generally, the handler of the corresponding incoming package run in I/O threads. So there is a problem: thread synchronization. I have consider two methods: Synchronize with mutex. I/O thread lock a mutex before execute handler function and map thread lock same mutex before it execute map's update. Execute all handler functions in map's thread, I/O thread only queue the incoming handler and let map thread to pop the queue then call handler function. These two have a disadvantage: delay. For method 1, if the map's tick function is running, then all clients' request need to waiting the lock release. For method 2, if map's tick function is running, all clients' request need to waiting for next tick to be handle. Of course, there is another method: add lock to functions that use data which will be accessed both in I/O thread & map thread. But this is hard to maintain and easy to goes incorrect. It needs carefully check all variables whether or not accessed by both two kinds thread. My problem is: is there better way to do this? Notice that I said map is logic concept means no interactions can happen between two map except transport. I/O thread means thread in 3rd part network lib which used to handle client request.

  Read the article

• Can you recommend a game server for a facebook board game?

  - by Yekmer Simsek

  I am seeking a game server that will scale well. All commercial and/or free software alternatives are welcome. Game will be a boardgame that is similar to poker. Some technical details are listed below. There will be a table which consists of 4 people, to send them message I need a channel manager. A table will be ready to play for at least 5 minutes. There should be a reliable channel manager. People will wait for some time(i.e.) and if they are not playing they will be kicked by server, so there will be a reliable timed task queue to execute some tasks. It should be quick enough to response and show the changes to all 4 people on that table simultaneously.To achive this server should have a powerfull I/O library. I think to use inmemory to have quick response times, but it comes with scalability problems. And some variables should be thread safe so a variable should be thread safe between multiple nodes. Flash(AS3) and Unity (.Net 2.0 C# mono) client API's should be available for socket connection. PS: I am using Reddwarf server, it lacks of documentation and multiple node.

  Read the article

• Best approach for tracking dependent state

  - by Pace

  Let's pretend I work on a project tracking application. The application is a database backed, server hosted, web application. In this application there are Projects which have many Activities which have many Tasks. A Task has two date fields an originalDueDate and a projectedDueDate. In addition, there are dynamic fields on the Activities and the Projects which indicate whether the Activity or Project is behind schedule based on the projected due dates of the child tasks and various other variables such as remaining buffer time, etc. There are a number of things that can cause the projectedDueDate to change. For example, an employee working on the project may (via a server request) enter in a shipping delay. Alternatively, a site may (via a server request) enter in an unexpected closure. When any of these things occur I need to not only update the projectedDueDate of the Task but also trigger the corresponding Project and Activity to update as well. What is the best way to do this? I've thought of the observer pattern but I don't keep a single copy of all these objects in memory. When a request comes in, I query the Task in from the database, at that point there is no associated Activity in memory that would be a listener. I could remove the ability to query for Tasks and force the application to query first by Project, then by Activity (in context of Project), then by task (in context of Activity) adding the observer relationships at each step but I'm not sure if that is the best way. I could setup a database event listening system so when a Task modified event is dispatched I have a handler which queries for the Activity at that point. I could simply setup a two-way relationship between Task and Activity so that the Task knows about the parent Activity and when the Task updates his state the Task grabs his parent and updates state. Right now I'm stuck considering all the options and am wondering if any single approach (doesn't have to be a listed approach) is jumping out at others as the best approach.

  Read the article

• Should sanity be a property of a programmer or a program?

  - by toplel32

  I design and implement languages, that can range from object notations to markup languages. In many cases I have considered restrictions in favor of sanity (common knowledge), like in the case of control characters in identifiers. There are two consequences to consider before doing this: It takes extra computation It narrows liberty I'm interested to learn how developers think of decisions like this. As you may know Microsoft C# is very open on the contrary. If you really want to prefix your integer as Long with 'l' instead of 'L' and so risk other developers of confusing '1' and 'l', no problem. If you want to name your variables in non-latin script so they will contrast with C#'s latin keywords, no problem. Or if you want to distribute a string over multiple lines and so break a series of indentation, no problem. It is cheap to ensure consistency with restrictions and this makes it tempting to implement. But in the case of disallowing non-latin characters (concerning the second example), it means a discredit to Unicode, because one would not take full advantage of its capacity.

  Read the article

• batch: comparing filenames and renaming [migrated]

  - by user2978770

  i'm new to both this platform and batch programming and i'm slowly but steadily driving crazy :-( I'm studying in Germany and just started on a bigger project that mainly consists of analyzing data and finding algorithms in order to maintain a certain function of a system. In order to get started i got a bunch of recorded data that, unfortunately, is not consistent when i comes to naming. Normally all files (all in one folder) should start with SPY.SPYNODE.SIDE and then go on with the specific names for each values or variables. However, the data logger messed it up a couple of times and gives weird names like SP0E1A~1.csv (all files are .csv-files). An that's when i figured in stead of renaming a couple of thousand files manually i could "easily" use a simple batch file to do that job for name. And that's exactly when I started to go crazy :-) So far i came up with the following: FOR /R %%i in (%CD%) DO ( set file1=%%i if not %file1%=="SPY.SPYNODE.SIDE" DO ( set /p "filename" < %file1% rename %file1% %filename% ) ) So what i want it to do is this (in pseudo) look through the whole folder and every file save the filename in variable file1 if file1 partially equals SPY.SPYNODE.SIDE open the file and save the first line (which contains the correct name of the file) in variable filename rename the file with the correct filename But so far it doesn't really work and i don't know why. Could anybody give me a hint or some advice how i should proceed? I really appreciate any kind of help!

  Read the article

• Angular JS - shop data disapears after using external payment script

  - by rZaaaa

  Im building a shopping cart in angular JS. till now all goes good but now i am at the checkout phase of y project. The problem is that im using external payment gateways such as ideal etc. when i checkout using for example Ideal the page redirects to the login page of the bank. All i have is a return url When i get to the return url al angular data is gone... I dont know how to do this properly. Also when i checkout and from the back page hit BACK again. the data is also gone and i have to do all the steps again, fill cart etc. So i gues i have to do something with sessions but what is the best way with angular JS how can i do this? The php backend is a slim framework. In the php version of my website i use the session generate id for the "lost" carts. is a user comes back, this session would be the same so i can retrieve his data (other session variables) ...

  Read the article

• How can I convince my boss that ANSI C is inadequate for our new project?

  - by justifiably cowardly

  A few months ago, we started developing an app to control an in-house developed test equipment and record a set of measurements. It should have a simple UI, and would likely require threads due to the continuous recording that must take place. This application will be used for a few years, and shall be maintained by a number of computer science students during this period. Our boss graduated some 30 years ago (not to be taken as an offense; I have more than half that time on my back too) and has mandated that we develop this application in ANSI C. The rationale is that he is the only one that will be around the entire time, and therefore he must be able to understand what we are doing. He also ruled that we should use no abstract data types; he even gave us a list with the name of the global variables (sigh) he wants us to use. I actually tried that approach for a while, but it was really slowing me down to make sure that all pointer operations were safe and all strings had the correct size. Additionally, the number of lines of code that actually related to the problem in hand was a only small fraction of our code base. After a few days, I scrapped the entire thing and started anew using C#. Our boss has already seen the program running and he likes the way it works, but he doesn't know that it's written in another language. Next week the two of us will meet to go over the source code, so that he "will know how to maintain it". I am sort of scared, and I would like to hear from you guys what arguments I could use to support my decision. Cowardly yours,

  Read the article

• Problem with understanding how to start

  - by Coolface

  Okay, this might be a little off-topic but i try anyway. Sorry to bother. So i'm working as sysadmin for at least 5 years now and i quite enjoy IT field in general. Somehow i was never interested in programming much but always want to learn something at least easy and for personal usage. As sysadmin i need scripting skills so learn shell scripting without much problems, i also try to learn pascal, delphi, basic over time and must recent was python. Well, my problem is when i try to learn programming i just can't apply what i learn from the books to the real word. What i mean is i understand there are data structures, algorithms, variables, lib's, if-then logic, etc. but i just can't understand how to apply this things when i want to do real things. Like i want to get a something simple as parse web page, i draw a quick algorithm like get a web page, find a word on it and write a to file, on the paper everything look simple but when i get to the coding i just stuck pretty much from the start. I try read code of the real programs that just totally confusing especially big parts with many classes so i'm just quickly lost a trail what this code do. I think i just lack some fundamentals to see a big picture but don't really know what this might be? Or maybe i just don't have a passion to programming at all... My best bet was a shell scripting so i have really no problems to write complex scripts but this just not enough. Recently i was read around 5 or 6 python books because everyone say it's so easy even kid can code something but still no much luck, python is good and easy but i can't make something harder then a prodecurial style code like in bash for easy things but when i want harder things i'm still stuck. In college i was also not a math and tech guy and like to study non-tech stuff mostly like economy, psychology maybe that my problem? Anyway any advice would be greatly appriciated.

  Read the article

• When and how does one become a good programmer these days? [closed]

  - by YoungMoney

  I mean, good enough to make software people want and get paid for it. Maybe even good enough to launch a company or something. I'm also concerned that I'm not applying the finer points of my algorithms/data structures/software design knowledge. Background: I'm 20 and have been struggling with programming for about two years now, trying to become a software engineer. I started with a few university courses that I did quite poorly in. I learned how to make websites with HTML/JavaScript and PHP/MySQL, but feel like I know very relevant theory for making good databases - how does something like Facebook serve hundreds of millions of people? What would be smart ways to store data? I don't know. Now I'm doing some android application development, but again I have no idea about good Java design theory (I use static variables like they're going out of fashion) and feel more like I'm gluing stuff together and letting Eclipse slowly autocomplete my project. In short, I'm not sure if I'm becoming a legitimate software developer or just "doing what's cool". At least I've taken some data structures and Algorithms courses and plan to take more in the next years. But I'm having a really tough time applying this stuff to my fun little apps that I'm building. Every language higher level than C++ seems to have its own quicksort function already built-in, for example. Similarly, I can't remember ever needing to implement a linked-list, heap, binary tree, or or worry about pointers and memory management. But maybe this is a good thing so that I focus on other things? I'm not too sure what those other things are though. Hopefully something more than building another photo sharing app. Anyways that's it for me, I look forward to your responses!

  Read the article

• Separate update and render

  - by NSAddict

  I'm programming a simple Snake in Java. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to Java and Game Developing, so please bear with me ;) Until now, I have been using a UI thread, as well as a update-thread. The update thread just set the position, set the GameObjects, and so on. I didn't think much of concurrency, but now I've come to a problem. I wanted to modify the ArrayList<GameObject>, but it throws a java.util.ConcurrentModificationException. With a little research I found out that this happens because the two threads are trying to access the variables at the same time. But I didn't really find a way to prevent this. I thought about copying the array and swapping them out when the rendering is finished, but I would have to deep-copy them, which isn't really the best solution in my opinion. It probably eats up more CPU resources than a single-threaded game. Are there any other ways to prevent this? Thanks a lot for your help!

  Read the article

• Microsoft and jQuery

  - by Rick Strahl

  The jQuery JavaScript library has been steadily getting more popular and with recent developments from Microsoft, jQuery is also getting ever more exposure on the ASP.NET platform including now directly from Microsoft. jQuery is a light weight, open source DOM manipulation library for JavaScript that has changed how many developers think about JavaScript. You can download it and find more information on jQuery on www.jquery.com. For me jQuery has had a huge impact on how I develop Web applications and was probably the main reason I went from dreading to do JavaScript development to actually looking forward to implementing client side JavaScript functionality. It has also had a profound impact on my JavaScript skill level for me by seeing how the library accomplishes things (and often reviewing the terse but excellent source code). jQuery made an uncomfortable development platform (JavaScript + DOM) a joy to work on. Although jQuery is by no means the only JavaScript library out there, its ease of use, small size, huge community of plug-ins and pure usefulness has made it easily the most popular JavaScript library available today. As a long time jQuery user, I’ve been excited to see the developments from Microsoft that are bringing jQuery to more ASP.NET developers and providing more integration with jQuery for ASP.NET’s core features rather than relying on the ASP.NET AJAX library. Microsoft and jQuery – making Friends jQuery is an open source project but in the last couple of years Microsoft has really thrown its weight behind supporting this open source library as a supported component on the Microsoft platform. When I say supported I literally mean supported: Microsoft now offers actual tech support for jQuery as part of their Product Support Services (PSS) as jQuery integration has become part of several of the ASP.NET toolkits and ships in several of the default Web project templates in Visual Studio 2010. The ASP.NET MVC 3 framework (still in Beta) also uses jQuery for a variety of client side support features including client side validation and we can look forward toward more integration of client side functionality via jQuery in both MVC and WebForms in the future. In other words jQuery is becoming an optional but included component of the ASP.NET platform. PSS support means that support staff will answer jQuery related support questions as part of any support incidents related to ASP.NET which provides some piece of mind to some corporate development shops that require end to end support from Microsoft. In addition to including jQuery and supporting it, Microsoft has also been getting involved in providing development resources for extending jQuery’s functionality via plug-ins. Microsoft’s last version of the Microsoft Ajax Library – which is the successor to the native ASP.NET AJAX Library – included some really cool functionality for client templates, databinding and localization. As it turns out Microsoft has rebuilt most of that functionality using jQuery as the base API and provided jQuery plug-ins of these components. Very recently these three plug-ins were submitted and have been approved for inclusion in the official jQuery plug-in repository and been taken over by the jQuery team for further improvements and maintenance. Even more surprising: The jQuery-templates component has actually been approved for inclusion in the next major update of the jQuery core in jQuery V1.5, which means it will become a native feature that doesn’t require additional script files to be loaded. Imagine this – an open source contribution from Microsoft that has been accepted into a major open source project for a core feature improvement. Microsoft has come a long way indeed! What the Microsoft Involvement with jQuery means to you For Microsoft jQuery support is a strategic decision that affects their direction in client side development, but nothing stopped you from using jQuery in your applications prior to Microsoft’s official backing and in fact a large chunk of developers did so readily prior to Microsoft’s announcement. Official support from Microsoft brings a few benefits to developers however. jQuery support in Visual Studio 2010 means built-in support for jQuery IntelliSense, automatically added jQuery scripts in many projects types and a common base for client side functionality that actually uses what most developers are already using. If you have already been using jQuery and were worried about straying from the Microsoft line and their internal Microsoft Ajax Library – worry no more. With official support and the change in direction towards jQuery Microsoft is now following along what most in the ASP.NET community had already been doing by using jQuery, which is likely the reason for Microsoft’s shift in direction in the first place. ASP.NET AJAX and the Microsoft AJAX Library weren’t bad technology – there was tons of useful functionality buried in these libraries. However, these libraries never got off the ground, mainly because early incarnations were squarely aimed at control/component developers rather than application developers. For all the functionality that these controls provided for control developers they lacked in useful and easily usable application developer functionality that was easily accessible in day to day client side development. The result was that even though Microsoft shipped support for these tools in the box (in .NET 3.5 and 4.0), other than for the internal support in ASP.NET for things like the UpdatePanel and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit as well as some third party vendors, the Microsoft client libraries were largely ignored by the developer community opening the door for other client side solutions. Microsoft seems to be acknowledging developer choice in this case: Many more developers were going down the jQuery path rather than using the Microsoft built libraries and there seems to be little sense in continuing development of a technology that largely goes unused by the majority of developers. Kudos for Microsoft for recognizing this and gracefully changing directions. Note that even though there will be no further development in the Microsoft client libraries they will continue to be supported so if you’re using them in your applications there’s no reason to start running for the exit in a panic and start re-writing everything with jQuery. Although that might be a reasonable choice in some cases, jQuery and the Microsoft libraries work well side by side so that you can leave existing solutions untouched even as you enhance them with jQuery. The Microsoft jQuery Plug-ins – Solid Core Features One of the most interesting developments in Microsoft’s embracing of jQuery is that Microsoft has started contributing to jQuery via standard mechanism set for jQuery developers: By submitting plug-ins. Microsoft took some of the nicest new features of the unpublished Microsoft Ajax Client Library and re-wrote these components for jQuery and then submitted them as plug-ins to the jQuery plug-in repository. Accepted plug-ins get taken over by the jQuery team and that’s exactly what happened with the three plug-ins submitted by Microsoft with the templating plug-in even getting slated to be published as part of the jQuery core in the next major release (1.5). The following plug-ins are provided by Microsoft: jQuery Templates – a client side template rendering engine jQuery Data Link – a client side databinder that can synchronize changes without code jQuery Globalization – provides formatting and conversion features for dates and numbers The first two are ports of functionality that was slated for the Microsoft Ajax Library while functionality for the globalization library provides functionality that was already found in the original ASP.NET AJAX library. To me all three plug-ins address a pressing need in client side applications and provide functionality I’ve previously used in other incarnations, but with more complete implementations. Let’s take a close look at these plug-ins. jQuery Templates http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ Client side templating is a key component for building rich JavaScript applications in the browser. Templating on the client lets you avoid from manually creating markup by creating DOM nodes and injecting them individually into the document via code. Rather you can create markup templates – similar to the way you create classic ASP server markup – and merge data into these templates to render HTML which you can then inject into the document or replace existing content with. Output from templates are rendered as a jQuery matched set and can then be easily inserted into the document as needed. Templating is key to minimize client side code and reduce repeated code for rendering logic. Instead a single template can be used in many places for updating and adding content to existing pages. Further if you build pure AJAX interfaces that rely entirely on client rendering of the initial page content, templates allow you to a use a single markup template to handle all rendering of each specific HTML section/element. I’ve used a number of different client rendering template engines with jQuery in the past including jTemplates (a PHP style templating engine) and a modified version of John Resig’s MicroTemplating engine which I built into my own set of libraries because it’s such a commonly used feature in my client side applications. jQuery templates adds a much richer templating model that allows for sub-templates and access to the data items. Like John Resig’s original Micro Template engine, the core basics of the templating engine create JavaScript code which means that templates can include JavaScript code. To give you a basic idea of how templates work imagine I have an application that downloads a set of stock quotes based on a symbol list then displays them in the document. To do this you can create an ‘item’ template that describes how each of the quotes is renderd as a template inside of the document: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div><div>${LastPrice}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div><div>${LastQuoteTimeString}</div> </div> </script> The ‘template’ is little more than HTML with some markup expressions inside of it that define the template language. Notice the embedded ${} expressions which reference data from the quote objects returned from an AJAX call on the server. You can embed any JavaScript or value expression in these template expressions. There are also a number of structural commands like {{if}} and {{each}} that provide for rudimentary logic inside of your templates as well as commands ({{tmpl}} and {{wrap}}) for nesting templates. You can find more about the full set of markup expressions available in the documentation. To load up this data you can use code like the following: <script type="text/javascript"> //var Proxy = new ServiceProxy("../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnGetQuotes").click(GetQuotes); }); function GetQuotes() { var symbols = $("#txtSymbols").val().split(","); $.ajax({ url: "../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/GetStockQuotes", data: JSON.stringify({ symbols: symbols }), // parameter map type: "POST", // data has to be POSTed contentType: "application/json", timeout: 10000, dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var quotes = result.d; var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); $("#quoteDisplay").empty().append(jEl); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert(status + "\r\n" + xhr.responseText); } }); }; </script> In this case an ASMX AJAX service is called to retrieve the stock quotes. The service returns an array of quote objects. The result is returned as an object with the .d property (in Microsoft service style) that returns the actual array of quotes. The template is applied with: var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); which selects the template script tag and uses the .tmpl() function to apply the data to it. The result is a jQuery matched set of elements that can then be appended to the quote display element in the page. The template is merged against an array in this example. When the result is an array the template is automatically applied to each each array item. If you pass a single data item – like say a stock quote – the template works exactly the same way but is applied only once. Templates also have access to a $data item which provides the current data item and information about the tempalte that is currently executing. This makes it possible to keep context within the context of the template itself and also to pass context from a parent template to a child template which is very powerful. Templates can be evaluated by using the template selector and calling the .tmpl() function on the jQuery matched set as shown above or you can use the static $.tmpl() function to provide a template as a string. This allows you to dynamically create templates in code or – more likely – to load templates from the server via AJAX calls. In short there are options The above shows off some of the basics, but there’s much for functionality available in the template engine. Check the documentation link for more information and links to additional examples. The plug-in download also comes with a number of examples that demonstrate functionality. jQuery templates will become a native component in jQuery Core 1.5, so it’s definitely worthwhile checking out the engine today and get familiar with this interface. As much as I’m stoked about templating becoming part of the jQuery core because it’s such an integral part of many applications, there are also a couple shortcomings in the current incarnation: Lack of Error Handling Currently if you embed an expression that is invalid it’s simply not rendered. There’s no error rendered into the template nor do the various  template functions throw errors which leaves finding of bugs as a runtime exercise. I would like some mechanism – optional if possible – to be able to get error info of what is failing in a template when it’s rendered. No String Output Templates are always rendered into a jQuery matched set and there’s no way that I can see to directly render to a string. String output can be useful for debugging as well as opening up templating for creating non-HTML string output. Limited JavaScript Access Unlike John Resig’s original MicroTemplating Engine which was entirely based on JavaScript code generation these templates are limited to a few structured commands that can ‘execute’. There’s no code execution inside of script code which means you’re limited to calling expressions available in global objects or the data item passed in. This may or may not be a big deal depending on the complexity of your template logic. Error handling has been discussed quite a bit and it’s likely there will be some solution to that particualar issue by the time jQuery templates ship. The others are relatively minor issues but something to think about anyway. jQuery Data Link http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/data-link/ jQuery Data Link provides the ability to do two-way data binding between input controls and an underlying object’s properties. The typical scenario is linking a textbox to a property of an object and have the object updated when the text in the textbox is changed and have the textbox change when the value in the object or the entire object changes. The plug-in also supports converter functions that can be applied to provide the conversion logic from string to some other value typically necessary for mapping things like textbox string input to say a number property and potentially applying additional formatting and calculations. In theory this sounds great, however in reality this plug-in has some serious usability issues. Using the plug-in you can do things like the following to bind data: person = { firstName: "rick", lastName: "strahl"}; $(document).ready( function() { // provide for two-way linking of inputs $("form").link(person); // bind to non-input elements explicitly $("#objFirst").link(person, { firstName: { name: "objFirst", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); $("#objLast").link(person, { lastName: { name: "objLast", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); }); This code hooks up two-way linking between a couple of textboxes on the page and the person object. The first line in the .ready() handler provides mapping of object to form field with the same field names as properties on the object. Note that .link() does NOT bind items into the textboxes when you call .link() – changes are mapped only when values change and you move out of the field. Strike one. The two following commands allow manual binding of values to specific DOM elements which is effectively a one-way bind. You specify the object and a then an explicit mapping where name is an ID in the document. The converter is required to explicitly assign the value to the element. Strike two. You can also detect changes to the underlying object and cause updates to the input elements bound. Unfortunately the syntax to do this is not very natural as you have to rely on the jQuery data object. To update an object’s properties and get change notification looks like this: function updateFirstName() { $(person).data("firstName", person.firstName + " (code updated)"); } This works fine in causing any linked fields to be updated. In the bindings above both the firstName input field and objFirst DOM element gets updated. But the syntax requires you to use a jQuery .data() call for each property change to ensure that the changes are tracked properly. Really? Sure you’re binding through multiple layers of abstraction now but how is that better than just manually assigning values? The code savings (if any) are going to be minimal. As much as I would like to have a WPF/Silverlight/Observable-like binding mechanism in client script, this plug-in doesn’t help much towards that goal in its current incarnation. While you can bind values, the ‘binder’ is too limited to be really useful. If initial values can’t be assigned from the mappings you’re going to end up duplicating work loading the data using some other mechanism. There’s no easy way to re-bind data with a different object altogether since updates trigger only through the .data members. Finally, any non-input elements have to be bound via code that’s fairly verbose and frankly may be more voluminous than what you might write by hand for manual binding and unbinding. Two way binding can be very useful but it has to be easy and most importantly natural. If it’s more work to hook up a binding than writing a couple of lines to do binding/unbinding this sort of thing helps very little in most scenarios. In talking to some of the developers the feature set for Data Link is not complete and they are still soliciting input for features and functionality. If you have ideas on how you want this feature to be more useful get involved and post your recommendations. As it stands, it looks to me like this component needs a lot of love to become useful. For this component to really provide value, bindings need to be able to be refreshed easily and work at the object level, not just the property level. It seems to me we would be much better served by a model binder object that can perform these binding/unbinding tasks in bulk rather than a tool where each link has to be mapped first. I also find the choice of creating a jQuery plug-in questionable – it seems a standalone object – albeit one that relies on the jQuery library – would provide a more intuitive interface than the current forcing of options onto a plug-in style interface. Out of the three Microsoft created components this is by far the least useful and least polished implementation at this point. jQuery Globalization http://github.com/jquery/jquery-global Globalization in JavaScript applications often gets short shrift and part of the reason for this is that natively in JavaScript there’s little support for formatting and parsing of numbers and dates. There are a number of JavaScript libraries out there that provide some support for globalization, but most are limited to a particular portion of globalization. As .NET developers we’re fairly spoiled by the richness of APIs provided in the framework and when dealing with client development one really notices the lack of these features. While you may not necessarily need to localize your application the globalization plug-in also helps with some basic tasks for non-localized applications: Dealing with formatting and parsing of dates and time values. Dates in particular are problematic in JavaScript as there are no formatters whatsoever except the .toString() method which outputs a verbose and next to useless long string. With the globalization plug-in you get a good chunk of the formatting and parsing functionality that the .NET framework provides on the server. You can write code like the following for example to format numbers and dates: var date = new Date(); var output = $.format(date, "MMM. dd, yy") + "\r\n" + $.format(date, "d") + "\r\n" + // 10/25/2010 $.format(1222.32213, "N2") + "\r\n" + $.format(1222.33, "c") + "\r\n"; alert(output); This becomes even more useful if you combine it with templates which can also include any JavaScript expressions. Assuming the globalization plug-in is loaded you can create template expressions that use the $.format function. Here’s the template I used earlier for the stock quote again with a couple of formats applied: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div> <div>${$.format(LastPrice,"N2")}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div> <div>${$.format(LastQuoteTime,"MMM dd, yyyy")}</div> </div> </script> There are also parsing methods that can parse dates and numbers from strings into numbers easily: alert($.parseDate("25.10.2010")); alert($.parseInt("12.222")); // de-DE uses . for thousands separators As you can see culture specific options are taken into account when parsing. The globalization plugin provides rich support for a variety of locales: Get a list of all available cultures Query cultures for culture items (like currency symbol, separators etc.) Localized string names for all calendar related items (days of week, months) Generated off of .NET’s supported locales In short you get much of the same functionality that you already might be using in .NET on the server side. The plugin includes a huge number of locales and an Globalization.all.min.js file that contains the text defaults for each of these locales as well as small locale specific script files that define each of the locale specific settings. It’s highly recommended that you NOT use the huge globalization file that includes all locales, but rather add script references to only those languages you explicitly care about. Overall this plug-in is a welcome helper. Even if you use it with a single locale (like en-US) and do no other localization, you’ll gain solid support for number and date formatting which is a vital feature of many applications. Changes for Microsoft It’s good to see Microsoft coming out of its shell and away from the ‘not-built-here’ mentality that has been so pervasive in the past. It’s especially good to see it applied to jQuery – a technology that has stood in drastic contrast to Microsoft’s own internal efforts in terms of design, usage model and… popularity. It’s great to see that Microsoft is paying attention to what customers prefer to use and supporting the customer sentiment – even if it meant drastically changing course of policy and moving into a more open and sharing environment in the process. The additional jQuery support that has been introduced in the last two years certainly has made lives easier for many developers on the ASP.NET platform. It’s also nice to see Microsoft submitting proposals through the standard jQuery process of plug-ins and getting accepted for various very useful projects. Certainly the jQuery Templates plug-in is going to be very useful to many especially since it will be baked into the jQuery core in jQuery 1.5. I hope we see more of this type of involvement from Microsoft in the future. Kudos!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  ASP.NET  

  Read the article

• Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

  - by arungupta

  Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ? There are already several blogs covering that topic: Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS) Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011 Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta I will try to share my perspective in this blog. First of all, I'd like to start with a note: Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework! While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts. I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/. I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar And it is not even using any database! The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log. Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added): ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar 2 more JARs for just doing Ajax. Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error: Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20)    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40)    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407) Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml". Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database! Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error: [ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here. With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies.  I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below. And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here. The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ... NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat) Spring Tool Suite  2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger) This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application .... In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as: ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\ com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\ javax.sql.DataSource --property \\ portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\ myConnectionPool ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them: Java EE 6 Spring WAR File Size 0.021030 MB 10.87 MB (~516x) Number of files 20 53 (> 2.5x) Bundled libraries 0 36 Total size of libraries 0 12.1 MB XML files 3 5 LoC in XML files 50 (11 + 15 + 24) 129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x) Total .properties files 1 Bundle.properties 2 spring.properties, log4j.properties Cold Deploy 5,339 ms 11,724 ms Second Deploy 481 ms 6,261 ms Third Deploy 528 ms 5,484 ms Fourth Deploy 484 ms 5,576 ms Runtime memory ~73 MB ~101 MB Some points worth highlighting from the table ... 516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server. 36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in. Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ? 3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications. Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation. Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ... Java EE 6 Spring Web Container ? 53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition) Security ? 12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0) Persistence ? 6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required) Dependency Injection ? 5.3 MB (Framework) Web Services ? 796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4) Messaging ? 3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936) OSGi ? 1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1) GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB) 83.3 MB There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options. The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications. The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you! Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software. Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ... Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether. Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ? Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be. The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly.  Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform. Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse. Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ? Do you really use tcServer ? ;-) Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ? Yep, you got it, its YOU! If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you! Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own! The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle. While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6. A message to the Spring lovers ... The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples: Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors "web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying: screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6. Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6: List of files in the Java EE 6 project: ./index.xhtml./META-INF./person./person/Create.xhtml./person/Edit.xhtml./person/List.xhtml./person/View.xhtml./resources./resources/css./resources/css/jsfcrud.css./template.xhtml./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml./WEB-INF/web.xml List of files in the Spring 3.x project: ./META-INF ./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class ./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml ./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml ./WEB-INF/jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp ./WEB-INF/lib ./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar ./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml ./WEB-INF/spring.properties ./WEB-INF/web.xml So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources: Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc) GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community) Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial) Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video) Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video) Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212  | Next Page >