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Just before i left Accenture, i remembered i was surfing all the internal sites for java resources and there were lots of them. Amongst them, I found Spring Batch. At that time, i had just rolled off from an batch integration project and i was very interested in mass processing and automation. Before that, my knowledge of mass processing was simply bash scripts and i enjoyed doing processing of multiple csv files to produce a final output file.

Before i start to go off topic, the reason why Accenture had a relationship with Spring Batch is due to the fact that they had a vast experience in batch implementation for various industries. Combined with the SpringSource team, i feel Spring Batch has the potential to be a defacto for batch implementation for as many reasons why Spring is a highly recommended application framework.

Spring Batch is a lightweight, comprehensive batch framework designed to enable the development of robust batch applications vital for the daily operations of enterprise systems. Spring Batch builds upon the productivity, POJO-based development approach, and general ease of use capabilities people have come to know from the Spring Framework, while making it easy for developers to access and leverage more advance enterprise services when necessary.

Spring Batch (Introduction)

An advantage it will definitely bring to enterprise is reusability. That is also why we love Spring. You code once and reuse it however you want by using Spring’s IoC. With reusability, the eventual advantage is a shorter build lifespan. You probably can do more with less. I’ll blog how to go about using Spring Batch next. In the meantime, go visit the Spring Batch home page here.

Stay tuned for more..

Today, there is only one API for creating production grade front end for RIA talking to Java. It’s called Adobe Flex. In 2010, JavaFX may become another alternative. But meanwhile, please stop bashing Java. Do not forget that many of these new popular programming languages exist because there is a J2EE application they need to connect to. Do not forget that Java puts bread on the tables of many people (including mine) around the world. Do not spit in the well you drink from.

Yakov Fain from Farata Systems » Flex is strong because of Java.

I can feel so much from what Yakov has written. I totally agree with him. Coming from an enterprise world, it is really where the big money pot is. No offense to the other languages, you can laugh all you want about Java but you are missing out on the potential Java can give to a Flex application. I am still a little skeptical about JavaFX. Let’s see what Sun can do with JavaFX.

Merapi is a bridge between applications written in Java and those running in and created for Adobe AIR™ (Adobe Integrated Runtime™).

Merapi has been designed to run on a user’s machine, along with an Adobe AIR™application and providea direct bridge between the Adobe AIR™ framework and Java, exposing the power and overall calabilities of the user’s operating system, including 3rd party hardware devices.

Introduction to Merapi

Got this from insideRIA.com and the moment i saw Java and AIr, it got me excited. First thing that comes to mind is “No more jfc/swing interfaces”. But visiting their sites, i see more potential in this. Adam Flater has created a demo which shows the interaction between the mac accelerometer and AIR. Check out the demos here!

I signed up for the alpha and hope to play with it asap.

Had some problems when trying to get Flex to invoke my Xfire Web Service. The culprit <xsd:any>. I don’t have the exact reason but i think Flex will try read the WSDL and attempt to decipher each soap message structure. <xsd:any> becomes a null. I get the error “No such property null… on com.myCustomObject”.

By default, Xfire will not generate the <xsd:any> in the WSDL but i have a complexType of a ValueObject in another ValueObject type. Strangely, it generates the <xsd:any>. My only clue is on the Xfire jira. The solution is there but i think i should let everyone know that the fix for the bug #295 only works for a normal valueObject. For my case, it doesn’t work.

My saviour: the extensibleElements, and extensibleAttributes flags.(Source) There should be some mention about this on the Xfire website.

Example codes:

import org.codehaus.xfire.aegis.type.java5.XmlElement ;

import org.codehaus.xfire.aegis.type.java5.XmlType;

@XmlType(name="A", extensibleElements=false, extensibleAttributes=false)

public class A {

	public int var1;

	@XmlElement(name="Var1")
	public int getVar1() {

		return var1;

	}

	public void setVar1(int var1) {

		this.var1 = var1;

	}

}

Generated WSDL:

<xsd:complexType name=”A“>

<xsd:element minOccurs=”0 “ name=”Var1“ nillable=”true“ type=”xsd:int“ />

</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType >