J2ME's support for calling a server is rather simple and low level. Not only do you have to deal with the HTTP Connection at a low level, there is no high level support for cookies, authentication or remote procedure calling. So if you want to pass an object to the server and get a response, you need to figure out how to do that. XML over HTTP is one solution, but presents its own problems like the serialisation and deserialisation of objects, not to mention higher network traffic because of the meta-data held within the XML. JAX Binding is certainly not supported in J2ME-land which results in you having to use a SAX parser. In previous projects I have toyed with a simple way of providing services over JSPs, which take and receive delimited text. The idea is to implement your own simple serialization and deserialisation of simple objects allowing you to make simple calls to the server and receive simple responses. I purposefully used the word "simple" four times in that last sentence to impress upon you the idea that server calls should be kept simple. Take for example a J2ME application which tracks a GPS location. To send the location of the user it can simply send a line of text like this: 006.574438|045.453345|11022344843373 What's it mean? longitude | latitude | timestamp The serialising and deserialising of the data is VERY simple using a StringTokenizer (erm, which doesn't exist in J2ME, so see later!). And the server could…
Author: Ant
Base X Encoding
Ever needed to shorten a number so that its easier to remember? Or provide someone with a temporary PIN which is short enough to remember, but long enough to pretty much ensure it wont be randomly guessed by someone else? Converting a binary number into a hexadecimal is exactly the process used in such cases. But hexadecimal only has 16 characters in its "dictionary". Base64 is the next step up, with a bigger dictionary containing all alphanumerics (upper and lower case) as well as "/" and "+". I need a solution which didn't contain certain characters. For example, its easy to mix up an O with a 0. Or an I,l and a 1. I wanted a solution whereby I could encode a number, but using my own definition of the dictionary. So I built just such a solution. You can see the source code below. It contains a main method which runs a simple test, the output of which is: Original: 123456789012345678901234567890 encoded: 2aYls9bkamJJSwhr0 decoded: 123456789012345678901234567890 Passed! decoded value is the same as the original. As you can see, the encoded version is only half as long as the input. Using an 89 character dictionary, it gets even shorter: encoded: "9Kgbz])M.w8KgK The implementation uses the BigInteger class from Java, so you can encode REALLY big numbers. My phone number is now only 5 characters long and really easy to remember: rDm3T /* * Copyright (c) 2010 Ant Kutschera, maxant * * The code…
Generating animated GIFs for AJAX loading
Cool! http://www.ajaxload.info/
Enterprise GWT: Combining Google Web Toolkit, Spring and Other Features to Build Enterprise Applications
The following is just the introduction taken from a new white paper available at www.maxant.ch/white-papers: Google Web Toolkit (GWT) provides developers with a powerful means of developing AJAX front ends without the worry of having to maintain complex Java script libraries to support multiple browsers and browser versions. GWT also provides support for Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) to the server. Since April 2009 the Google App Engine has existed, which allows developers to deploy their GWT applications and also provides support for Java Data Objects (JDO) and the Java Persistence API (JPA). However what is missing for GWT to be deployed to a modern Enterprise environment is a service framework providing dependency injection and inversion of control (IoC), transaction demarcation and security, such as that provided by Spring or Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.0. Furthermore GWT does not define any patterns for User Interface designs, or composite widgets. This paper describes how to successfully integrate Spring into a GWT Application with the aim of creating a fully scalable development framework for deployment in the Enterprise and beyond (including simple and small applications), with very little start up time being required, because you can download the demo application. It includes UI Patterns and composite widgets to improve the development of the front end. This GWT Demo Application is live at http://gwtdemo.maxant.co.uk and is available for download at https://www.maxant.ch/white-papers (c) 2010 Ant Kutschera
Professional enterprise JAX-WS in no time at all?
My current client is talking about migrating to Java 1.6 and a Java EE 5 app server (we are currently still on 1.5 because our data center only supports an older app server). One reason for doing so is that this stack supports JAX-WS. Not knowing much about JAX-WS, I decided it was time to take a look. The Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) is basically a specification of how to deploy and use web services in the latest Java runtime. My first question was "whats so good about it compared to Apache Axis 1.4", which I've used successfully plenty of times in the past. Not only does JAX-WS offer improved performance as its based on StAX (a more efficient streaming pull parser for XML), but its also a standard. Axis isn't a standard, even though it is extensively used. JAX-WS is partially part of Java SE 1.6 and the bits which are not part of it, namely the server side implementation, can be theoretically exchanged without breaking anything, because all implementations implement the given specs. So, no vendor lockin; and you get choice over implementations. What more could one ask for... So I went with what I knew, and downloaded Axis2 which is an implementation of JAX-WS among other things and started to migrate a simple web service which had run under Axis 1.4. But it wasn't as simple as I had hoped. The requirement was to create a web service based on an existing Java "service"…
Houses of Cards
I have often heard of software systems being compared to a house of cards, meaning that they were poorly built and are ready to topple at any time. The system I am currently helping to maintain has from time to time also been labeled in that way, yet it always manages to go live with quite a few new functions, and apart from the odd all-nighter to fix a few last bugs, it works to the customers satisfaction. So while I was doing the washing up today, I noticed something. I am well known amongst family and ex-house mates for building what look like unstable piles of washed up dishes, as they dry. Yet I have never ever had a pile collapse on me. Never once have I lost it all. And remember, there are slippery suds involved in holding up these piles! As I thought a little more about it, it didn't take long to come to the simple conclusion that a pile of washing up is stronger than a house of cards. Cards are uniformly shaped and have no edges or surfaces which help to lock their neighbours in place. Plates, dishes, cups, pans and cutlery on the other hand can be placed tactically so that they lock together forming a strong structure. Notice in the picture below that the heavy pan is placed at the top! It still looks ugly though. But as long as its just left to dry it will be safe. Just like our…
Idempotency and Two Phase Commit
The requirement for services to be idempotent is often stated as being important for enterprise applications. But what does that mean, and why? Idempotent means that a service can be called multiple times with the same data, and the result will always be the same. For example, if a service call results in a value being written to a database, the same service call made again would result in the same value being written to the database. As such, additative processes where values are incremented cannot be idempotent, for example an insert statement in a database is not idempotent, whereas an update statement usually is. Imagine the case of purchasing a ticket from a web service offering airline tickets. The process probably includes getting an offer to see the price and tarif, reserving an instance of that ticket and finally when the shopping cart is full, confirming that ticket by booking it. Getting an offer would be an idempotent call, since we are just effectively reading data, not writing it. Reserving the ticket cannot be idempotent because each call should result in an individual seat being temporarily reserved - you don't want to reserve the same seat for two passengers. However, should such a reserved ticket not be booked, a background process would need to cancel the temporary reservation, so idempotency is effectively achieved. In the final call, to book a reservation (to guarantee the seat), the call should be idempotent - setting the status of the ticket to "booked"…
Building a Webmail Solution on top of Apache James Mail Server
Part of maxant's offering to small businesses is email hosting. As well as standard POP3/SMTP access, maxant offers webmail access. A quick search on the web shows that there are several open source webmail solutions available. The problem with all of them is that they communicate with the email server through the SMTP protocol. For example, if you wish to preview a list of emails, the web application needs to access the email server and ask for details of each email (while leaving them on the email server, so they can be downloaded at a later time via POP3). Reading all the emails is inefficient and the larger the number of emails in your inbox, the longer it takes to just see a list of emails. The solution built by maxant is based on the Java Mail API from Sun. This API lets you access individual emails in your inbox using an ID. But Apache James Mail Server (James for short) doesn't maintain the index, if a new mail is put in the inbox, so if you have a list of all emails and decide to access one, and in the mean time you have received email, the chances are that you won't be able to read that email! The next problem is how to deal with keeping a copy of sent emails for your "sent items" folder. If you just use the Java Mail API, the only solution for getting a mail into your email server so that it…
Creativity – Yet another driver towards agile processes
Software developers are often creative people, having entered into software development precisely because of its need for creativity during implementation. While solving a logical problem might sound unrelated to creativity, the ability to solve that problem in many different ways and choosing the right way, is what requires the creativity. This is what turns a mundane data entry job into an exciting and fun job. Not only are there many different ways to implement algorithms or user interfaces, so that they provide the same inputs and outputs as required, there are many different ways depending upon the architectural or design view points taken. For example, should the implementation use as much reusable code as possible, or should the code be as simple, readable and hence maintainable as possible? Or is breaking architectural policy allowed, in order to ensure maintainability, productivity or other aspects, etc... So if programmers, designers and architects are so creative, is it a problem? Well it can be, when requirements specifications are rigid. Developers need a certain amount of leeway in order to feel that they are being creative whilst doing their job. If a specification goes into exact detail about how to implement something (which a requirements specification shouldn't actually need to do, unless the requirement is defining the inputs or outputs of the system), then a developer can feel there is no need for creativity, and the fun part of their job disappears quickly. Once that happens, developer motiviation becomes reduced and project success starts…
NEWS FLASH: Agile does not mean there is no plan
Why aren't all projects run using agile methods? Working in an enterprise where we have maybe 50 applications which all go live at the same time twice a year (as well as another 450 which are also in some stage of the software lifecycle), I was told that it would not be possible to plan such a release without tight control over the planning, and frankly agile methods do not cater for such planning... Erm... I see it a little different. Agile to me means that there is a plan and you know the maximum amount of money that you can to spend. To me it also means there is a fixed deadline. As quality is also fixed (come on, it has to be bug free!), it is scope which changes. Or admittedly to some degree also quality, as you decide that some bugs are tolerable and you can live with them. What is different about agile projects, is that the project plan and scope (functionality) are alive. They are dynamic. They change from day to day as everyone on the project learns and discovers. Just like your day to day plans change as events unfold. It should be illegal for a project manager to state that a project plan is fixed. It shouldn't be allowed that the project manager, upon discovering that a plan needs to change, states that it will not be changed because it has already been communicated to the customer. This view is certainly un-agile. But…
