Best of this Week Summary 25 May - 31 May 2009

• Facebook is now also supporting registration/login via a GMail account and OpenID, see the image below. I especially like that they've implemented it with a lightbox ("popup") so the user doesn't get as much confused anymore, as was the case in the old/standard implementation where the user is completely redirected to Google or the OpenID provider's website. Note that it is actually more "Facebook Connect" like this way! See here another example where OpenID is combined with OAuth to enable a popup login.
  
  
  
• Understanding how the JVM uses native memory on Windows and Linux. The extensive article explains what native memory is, how the Java runtime uses it, what running out of it looks like (so you're not running out of heap space!), and how to debug a native OutOfMemoryError on Windows and Linux. A companion article covers the same topics for AIX systems.
  


• Quite big news was of course Google's announcement of Google Wave at the Google I/O conference. It has been built with GWT. A good description can be found here. It's open source with plugin-like APIs with many integration possibilities. See the 80 minutes video for the full details. It hopes to become the replacement for email... Servers can be run by anybody. Wonder how Google is thinking of making money with it. Ads, just like in GMail? Maybe they are going to charge you for using their Wave server instances (SAAS version)? An interview with Wave's creators can be found here. And six reasons why Wave could be game-changing.
  


• Eight generic best practices for scalable high performance systems.
  


• Are you any of these two tools with almnost the exact same name? SonarJ is a plug-in for Eclipse that helps you validate your code against a software architecture, using static analysis (free for projects up to 500 classes). And now for the confusion: check also Sonar: enables to collect, analyze and report metrics on source code. It leverages the existing ecosystem of quality open source tools (ex. Checkstyle, PMD, Maven, Cobertura …), to offer a fully integrated solution to development environments and continuous integration tools.
  

Best of this Week Summary 18 May - 24 May 2009

• Tutorial in which you learn to build an SOA application which is listening for incidents coming from web service or files. According to the origin, the content (= incidents) are transformed into their corresponding objects using for the CSV file, a new Camel component : camel-bindy and for the Web Service camel-cxf component. Each message transformed is placed in a queue handled by ActiveMQ engine. All the messages (containing the objects) are next processed by a Bean service who will (with the help of injection of dependency provided by Spring) save the incidents in a DB using Spring and Hibernate frameworks.
  A small Apache Wicket web application running in Jetty Web server provide to the users a screen to consult the incidents created.
  


• This feed is handy to follow to see what's getting more mainstream traction and technology trends. E.g Thought Leadership: Technology Brief May 2009.
  


• All of Dion Hinchcliffe web 2.0 diagrams at one place.
  


• JSON REST webservices best practices described by the Feedly team. A related more general pros & cons of REST are described in this article.
  


• WiQuery aims to integrate the JavaScript frameworks jQuery and jQuery UI with Wicket, a Java framework providing a real way to create web applications with an OO approach. Other integrations like with MooTools, Dojo and Scriptaculous with Prototype can be found here. BTW, a comparison between MooTools and jQuery can be found here.
  


• The distinction between a spring singleton and a java singleton explained.
  

Best of this Week Summary 11 May - 17 May 2009

• About three weeks ago, a serious vulnerability was detected in OAuth: a Session Fixation Attack. This article describes how the hole was handled by the 30 or so companies offering OAuth, and how Twitter took the heat for it.
  


• More on OAuth: how to get OpenID and OAuth working on Google App Engine.
  


• Here's an interview with Bruce Eckel regarding his thoughts on the RIA landscape.
  


• A short implementation guide on how to integrate performance management into development - or more specifically Continuous Integration.
  


• Which webframework is the Dutch software company JTeam using for what type of application?
  
  
  
  • Rich Internet Application: GWT and Flex
    
  
  
  • General-purpose, public website: Wicket
    
  
  
  • Miscellaneous website: Spring MVC
    
  
  Focus of the article is on why they pick Wicket for the second category of websites.
  


• A great insight in the BBC's iPlayer innerworkings and data usage. E.g, during peak hours, it streams 12G of data per second, making a total of seven PetaByte a month! For streaming CDNs are used, and each program is created in about 14 formats.
  

Best of this Week Summary 04 May - 10 May 2009

• Reference to an AJAX framework analysis/comparison result by Matt Raible (for example known for his framework of frameworks: AppFuse). Compared were Dojo, Ext JS, GWT, and YUI. Check also the comments.
  


• Beginners level host and Java performance tuning concepts.
  


• Handy PHP profiler and debugging tool/library. Helps you with logging, memory usage, double includes, page execution time and database activity monitoring.
  


• Nice presentation on scalable web architectures from Cal Henderson, (ex) Flicker architect. Including horizontal vs vertical, architecture, sessions, load balancing, queuing, relational data, caching, H(ighly) A(vailable) data, federation, serving and storing files, CDN, real-world examples.
  


• SpringSource has created Roo, a sophisticated round-tripping code generator that should make it quicker and easier to create and evolve Spring applications.
  


• Funny: how to measure code quality: WTFs/minute :)
  
  
  Via.
  


• You as a developer can now go social on IBM's myDeveloperWorks, a social network spun off of developerWorks.
  


• An introduction on how one could formalize a SOA using WS-CDL, including a few real-world insurance based uses.
  


• Yahoo has just released a major update for their innovative YQL. "The Yahoo! Query Language lets you query, filter, and join data across any web data source or service on the web. Using our YQL web service, apps run faster with fewer lines of code and a smaller network footprint. YQL uses a SQL-like language because it is a familiar and intuitive method for developers to access data. YQL treats the entire web as a source of table data, enabling developers to select * from Internet." The update adds "Execute", with which "developers now have full control of how the data is fetched into YQL and how it’s presented back to the user. With Open Data Tables, developers can build tables that manipulate, change, and sign the URLs to access almost any protected content, allowing YQL access and combining data across a variety of different authenticated services such as Netflix or Twitter. Developers can call multiple services and data sources within Execute to join and mashup data however they desire, letting Yahoo! do the work rather than their applications. Data can be tweaked and manipulated into an optimal format for applications to consume." Another example of what is possible can be found here. Check also this article for more explanations.
  

Best of this Week Summary 27 April - 03 May 2009

• Already the fifth entry in a series on Wicket patterns and pitfalls.
  
  A PDF of presentation during TSSJS March 30 2009 on architecting applications using Wicket. Includes a short comparison to JSF.
  
  Here's eight areas to look into when considering using Wicket. Definitely don't forget to read the comments, because not all eight reasons are that valid. The same blogger also responds with a new article why he prefers Stripes over Wicket.
  


• Here's a presentation of Facebook's application stack during QCon SF 2008. In short: "Facebook runs a typical LAMP setup where P stands for PHP with certain customizations, and back-end services that are written in C++ and Java. Facebook has released some of the infrastructure components into the open source community, including the Thrift RPC framework and Scribe distributed logging server". Summary via Slashdot.
  


• An interesting new opensource technique developed by the guys from Digg for optimizing delivery of AJAX-enabled pages regarding the many HTTP requests needed and caching challenges.
  


• Interesting: a collaborative code review plug-in for Eclipse.
  


• A summary writeup of the Architect Summit 2008 can be found here.