I've been introduced to this wonderful project, xhtmlrenderer; the flying saucer project. Problem is, is that where I work, it's strictly a microsoft shop and I haven't done any java development since college, and a smidge of WebSphere a few years back.
I was wondering what it takes these days to do java development? I set up a quick proof of concept to see if I could do what I wanted with this project and it works great, however, I used jnbridge whose licenses are a bit on the expensive side but Visual Studio was what I had handy and got the job done with an hour of finagling.
I'm wondering what it take to do java development these days? Are servlets still the norm? Is Apache where I should start looking to get a small web server up and running? Is Eclipse/Ganymede the IDE to use?
Essentially what I want to do is pass a url to the service and have it spit back out a PDF. Just on vacation right now, and stuck on dial up, but can't stop thinking about this.
Thought I'd post these thoughts now to see if I can get a jump start on next weeks work.
Eclipse is certainly the IDE on no budget, NetBeans is also free. I prefer IDEA from Intellij, but for something that sounds like such a side part of your project, it probably isn't worth the money.
In terms of servlets, etc., it really depends on the archetecture/scalability you are looking for.
If you are looking for something that needs to run as a small web interface, then something like Jetty or Tomcat with a basic servlet should be fine.
You might be looking at something invoked via the command line, although starting a JVM for every conversion is going to be too heavy for all but the most trivial usages, but a little program that monitors a directory and pulls stuff out of it for the conversion may be what you need.
If you give more details about the archetecture and how you are planing to use it you could get some more specific advice.
In general .NET and Java development are quite similar (.NET was started to compete directly with Java, after all), but the real practical difference is that a lot of the .NET environment is kind of provided to you on a silver platter. You need a web container, you have IIS, you need a database, you have MS-SQL, You need an IDE, you have Visual Studio, etc., etc. In Java development, these are all choices to be made, there isn't really a default obvious good choice for a lot of things - there are many competitors. That can create a larger curve for a Microsoft shop than you are expecting.
Java's not all that different, although generics add some excitement; PDF with iText is fairly straightforward; and the IDE world is pretty much the same as ever. Eclipse and Netbeans are common, there are several others, and real programmers still use EMACS.
Apache is pretty generic, but with servlets in mind you might think about Tomcat.
If you want a small enough web server, you can always use an embedded Jetty. If you need the full services of Tomcat, it's also available. For Java development, I use Eclipse for an IDE. Not only is it free, but its support of refactoring is ahead of Visual Studio. Actually, if you used the WebSphere development environment, then Eclipse will be very familiar.
Consider sneaking in IKVM (http://www.ikvm.net/) as it allows you to use Java components in a .NET environment.
Related
I am wondering if anyone can shed some lights on the situation. I am about to start a project and trying to figure out what solution is best to go with asp.net or java jsp pages
I have personally worked alot with .net and am really happy with the framework and Visual studio as IDE I find it easy to work with and there is a massive community support behind .net, i can get alot done quickly
I have not every written anything use java jsp, there will be a learning curve here , so my experience is limited here. however after seeing jira i am very impressed with its capabilities, it has changed alot since the old days ( java 1.2 ) that i used to work with, and the fact that it runs under linux is a huge plus, so i am trying to decide is the learning curve, worth the price ?
so given the situation above what would you recommended?
Thanks,
Amir
JIRA is issue and bug tracking software; it can function with any development environment, so it has no bearing on your choice of development platform.
If this is an important project or has time or budget constraints, use the platform you are familiar with that works for you.
If you have the time and inclination to learn a new platform, there is certainly merit in that. More importantly though, who will maintain this when you are not around? Will it be deployed to an environment that is already .NET-centric?
Few apps are deployed in a vacuum (unless you work for NASA), so consider all of the peopleware issues as well as the technical ones.
If .Net is what you're used to and the only real advantage you care about in JSP is that it runs on Linux why not take a look at Mono?
http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET
Ya jira is in jsp and is a magnificent tool. But its not like you could not have developed something similar in ASP.NET.
Personally, i always go with a technology that i am confortable in. In a professional environment we have to deal with several other factors like time, teams knowledge in various technologies, deployment and maintainence.
you should concentrate on your core tech and do it in ASP.NET as you havent done anything in java before.
I have a DVD cataloging application that I wrote a few years ago with MFC. Records are saved in a sqlite database, so basically it's a CRUD app. UI-wise, it has a tree view on the left, a list view (grid) on the top right, and an HTML view (embedded IE) on the bottom right. Nothing fancy.
I wanted to update the app with more features, but I've been using Java EE for the past couple of years and I realized that I wasn't productive at all with MFC. So I'm thinking maybe I should use something else to boost my productivity. Cross-platform would be a big bonus, but it's not absolutely required.
Here are the options based on my research:
Java / Swing: I can utilize my Java knowledge; great third party libraries (such as Spring for IoC and Hibernate for ORM); cross-platform. Downside is, JRE required for users; Swing seems to be in the "maintanence" mode and it's not getting much attention from Sun.
C++ / Qt: native application;
cross-platform. But I'm new to Qt so
I have to learn it first.
C# / WPF: WPF seems to be the future
of Windows GUI development and I'm
impressed by some WPF sample apps. I
have some experience with C# but I
need learn WPF. Downside is, Windows
only; .NET 3.5 runtime required.
So what would you use if you were in my situation? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
If you want to learn some new skills while developing this application, then C# / WPF, and LINQ in C# 3.0 is really great if you didn't have it in Java.
If you just want to get on speed, then you already answer your own question, Java / Swing. It is what you are good at.
I'm actually a big C# fan, but since you said that cross-platform would be a huge bonus, I think that Qt might actually be better for that. C# can be cross-platform via Mono, but I've had better results with Qt in that respect. They also have real good documentation in QtAssistant to get you started.
Consider PyQt + Python as well if your productivity is a big issue. Trust me when I say the learning curve for Qt is well worth it, and not as hard as it may seem at first.
Sqlite support is in both the Python standard libraries and the QSql module in Qt if you prefer to use that.
PyQt + Python is a cross-platform option as well, since Python is available for many platforms and Qt's cross-platform to begin with.
The controls you mentioned you used in your application are all available in Qt.
The only other tool apart from raw C++ is Delphi. Period.
With other tools you will have problems in the deployment.
With Delphi you will produce native exes, self-contained. Also, the database connectivity is great.
You never will be dissapointed by lack of controls or 3d party tools, a lot with source code and with free/commercial toolset.
And the compiling times are the fastest in this galaxy ;)
So, if you are serious in provide no-hasle app for your customers, and that customers are not tech-oriented like developers so could be confused because which one of the 4 .NET runtimes install, want minimal support, easy downloads, click-click-install-go, apps that work instanly like Skype,TopStyle (made with Delphi) and others,then Delphi/C++ is are your only option. Seriously. The ONLY options.
If you want a cross-plataform solution, then FreePascal/Lazarus could work if your GUI is minimalist.
In most cases, as long as the scope of the project is reasonably small, and the computational needs are modest, I tend to favor using TCL/Tk. I have not yet learned a gui api in which I'm more productive than tk (not to say that there isn't one, just that I've tried several and found them slower). TCL is not the most wonderful language to program in, to be sure, although there are a number of add-ons that help a lot, specifically [incr tcl] and tcllib.
The reason I choose this instead of other systems, I prefer coding in python, for instance, is because deployment with tcl/tk is close to unbeatable. With Starkit, you end up with a single file double clickable application that requires no installer, and is trivially portable.
Well if you really want a class platform type of application, I would convert it into a web application and host it. That way if one user uploads dvd information or a dvd cover picture another user could take advantage of that information already input into the system.
If your going to develop for the desktop try to make feel like its an application made for that platform by utilizing the OS UI tools. And for windows, pick your 3rd option C# /WPF.
If you have some non UI code in your MFC app that you would like to reuse then consider QT. Otherwise pick whatever you prefer to learn.
Instead of C#/WPF you could give Silverlight a look. You app seems simple enough that it would not take a lot to get up and running. Similar to the demos that are shown off at conferences.
Once you get the basics down it will be fairly easy to add some cool features like animations, movie clips, album art, coverflow like interface etc.
You will be able to target Windows/Mac users and possibly Linux with Moonlight. But I haven't looked at Linux in the past 8 years so I really can't say much about it.
With Eclipse RCP, you get Java, cross-platform development (see Delta Pack), native look (via SWT) and a great framework collection for desktop development (declarative UI, plugin management etc.). You should definitely give that a try.
I went the C++/wxWidgets (but you could do Qt) route a few months back when presented with almost the exact same scenario (upgrade an app with a SQLite db). wxWidgets was fairly easy to pick up, had everything I needed, and was way easier than MFC. The best part was I found a good C++ wrapper for SQLite on CodeProject (e.g., CPPSQLite) and had the whole thing up an running in no time... The project sold me on wxWidgetss, in case you couldn't tell.
I would actually look very closely at something like adobe air. It is cross platform and can be html/javascript based so chances are you won't have a heck of a lot to learn except maybe a javascript library or two. It has the ability to talk to a local datastore or over the interweb to a webservice or RESTFUL service. Development is free with aptana. Check out some of the stuff written in it:
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/showcase/
I'm working on some Flex spike in my company. We are basically evaluating different scenarios etc. What solution would you recommend for embedding Flex components into Java app? Flex <-> Java communication is not (yet...) an issue, just embedding swf into JFrame.
I've done it with EasyJCom. It's pretty straight forward as long as you're using one of the standard Java windowing libraries (Swing, awt). You can see an example (From the EZJCom site) here: http://www.ezjcom.com/FlashTest.java.txt
The people responsible for EasyJCom are also very responsive, and even though we ended up not using their product (Switching platforms), I'd recommend them.
I haven't used JFlashPlayer, but did take a look at the docs, it seems to be adequate as well. I think their license requires you to obfuscate your code. I thought it was a little odd, but maybe I mis-understood the license.
It gets quite a bit more complicated if you don't want to use Com, or if you need to embed in another type of window.
If you need to embed flash cross platform, you may be stuck rolling your own Jini library for the Mozilla plugin. At that point... Maybe it's worth just switching platforms if you aren't too far in. ;)
Haven't tested this, but it looks like JFlashPlayer will do the job. http://www.jpackages.com/jflashplayer/
None of these supports Linux or MacOS. So much for the cross-platform Java and Flash.
I think the best way to do something like this would be to embed something like xulrunner into your java app then have the java app interact with flash via the xulrunner interfaces.
I need to implement webservices in an upcoming project and wanted to know what are the main points to base the decision on whether to implement using java or .NET
I'm a C++er...
If you're a Java shop use Java. If you're a .NET shop use .NET.
There really is no difference that makes one of the two languages superior to the other in regards to web services.
Possible consideration - .NET pre 3.5 only provided support for SOAP based services, but I believe the 3.5 WCF offers REST and SOAP now.
There's no real difference from programmer's point of view (implementation).
For me, a reason to pick Java is that all tools and infrastructure are free/open source. OS, deployment web server, databases, IDEs and developer tools.
I have plenty of experience with both, and both will certainly do the job.
However I tend to prefer Java over .Net for things like web services for the following reasons:
It's cross-platform, which gives you much better options on the hosting side (e.g. running a big Linux cluster on Amazon EC2)
The library ecosystem is larger and more mature, especially on the server side.
I prefer the more flexible open source philosophy to "the only way is Microsoft". Vendor lock-in is always a bad idea for your enterprise architecture in the long run.
You can optionally use awesome languages like Clojure or Scala on the JVM
Ultimately though, I'd go with the one your team has the most skills with. This will determine what you are most productive with, which is usually most important if your main objective is to deliver value quickly.
It's a personal decision, usually determined by the technology already in place or the skill set of the developer(s) writing the services.
i've never really developed web services in java, but i have in .NET and if you're using Visual Studio they're an absolute cinch to whip up (i expect they're a little more difficult to do without the aid of VS).
if you're already working in java, and don't have any .NET stuff in place, stick with java - it'll save you a lot of money (if you were to get Visual Studio in, as i mentioned), and possibly some time involved in learning the specifics of .NET
In my experience, Web Services are a bit more tightly integrated into Visual Studio than they are into Java's editors.
The Eclipse IDE doesn't even have JAX-WS (Java standard web services stack) support built in, opting to use Apache Axis 1 instead.
Netbeans supports JAX-WS, though.
I personally prefer .NET to Java for many reasons I don't want to go through, since it doesn't really matter and is more a personal preference than a strict guideline I can recommend.
If you have Java infrastructure in place or using a platform other than Windows for your server applications, I strongly suggest Java. However, if you don't have anything in place and running on Windows platform, .NET is pretty cool in that area (WCF/ASMX/WSE/...).
As you say you're a C++ - er you'll probably find .NET easier as you can target it directly from C++.
I'm a Java guy, but I think Web Services are easier to code in .NET. Visual Studio takes care of everything, in Java it takes a bit to get started.
A bit of a problem in some projects with JAX-WS is, that SUN ships the "old" version 2.0 with Java 6. If you want to use the current version, it's some work to make it run with Java 5 and Java 6.
If your app must be portable, you should obviously choose Java. Otherwise I would say it's just a choice of your preferred language, since the above issues are really small (maybe you want to choose Axis or something else anyway, I haven't worked with something other than JAX-WS yet).
IMO if you want to do SOAP, then its a heck of a lot easier to use .NET and WCF. However, I've found REST to be a bit tricky with WCF, and had to implement a custom XML parser to do it instead of using their built-in one.
You probably want to consider your hosting environment too. If you are going to serve this from Windows hardware, you can drop .NET WCF web services into IIS. If you are going to run a Linux/Solaris server, then it isn't even a question...
I suggest implementation with JSP ,it provides a robust platform for development
I prefer JSP to ASP or any microsoft techonolgy!
I am starting a project for which we will have a thin client, sending requests and getting responses from a server.
We are still in the planning stages, so we have a choice to settle on either an Eclipse based GUI (Eclipse plugin) or using GWT as a fromtend for the application.
I am not very familiar with Eclipse as a GUI (Nor with GWT) but do know 'normal' Java.
What would be the main benefits and drawbacks of either approach?
Edit: Addressing the questions posed:
The project, if Eclipse based, would be using the core Eclipse gui (No coding tools, just bare bones) and the GUI would be packaged with it.
I have been looking at GWT and so far seems the best choice, but still have some research to do.
Communication method is a variant of CORBA (In house libraries)
If you are thinking of using Eclipse to build a standalone client or a plugin that's just added to an existing Eclipse install, how are you planning to communicate with your server?
Our team tried building an Eclipse Rich Client Platform application and having that communicate with a J2EE EJB-based middle tier over RMI, and that worked pretty well, except for when we got to security and couldn't use any of the standard J2EE security patterns to create a login on the Eclipse client that would authenticate against the server.
This seems to be a known issue in Eclipse circles, but I haven't seen anything thats a good solution for it.
GWT seems pretty advanced for what it is, and there's several IDEs that added tooling for working with it, but I have no first hand experience developing with it. Everything that I have seen in terms of demos and examples makes it look really powerful and easy to use.
So my basic point is, Eclipse is an exciting platform, but you will face difficulties which you might have to solve yourself. GWT seems to be an easier alternative for now.
Coming from someone who has just as much experience as you do (haven't developed any Eclipse based plugins or anything with GWT), this is purely an opinion from another set of eyes on your problem.
Purely from the standpoint of this application being served from a thin client, I would think GWT would fit the bill for this situation a bit better. It would certainly be a bit lighter and would not require the overhead that an Eclipse Plugin would.
I also think this would make deploying updates a lot easier.