NetBeans 6.0, Buildr, GlassFish v2, IONA Fuse...

While many of us have been busy vacationing, it seems many Java developers are busy being productive. (Isn't that what winter is for?) While summer has been heating up, so has the global Java community.

NetBeans 6.0

The NetBeans team at Sun recently released milestone 10 of the future NetBeans version 6. This version is particularly interesting because it contains many new features, as well as improvements to existing features. For instance, code highlights act like automatic searches; when you place the caret on any word in your code, NetBeans 6 automatically highlights all instances of that word throughout the file. Simply scroll through to see all instances of that word. You no longer need to pull up the "Find" dialog box to type or paste the word. Simple, but cool.

NetBeans 6 also adds UML support with forward engineering and code generation. Not only can you assemble useful UML diagrams with the Diagram Editor, improvements allow you to automatically align or distribute shapes within diagrams to make them more visually appealing. Code can then be generated from your UML diagrams. Generated code will comply to your customizations to the built-in code templates, or you can create your own domain-specific code generation templates.

Other features include:
- Better, and quicker, code completion: works with methods, fields, variables, and full blocks of code, as well as the Java APIs
- Ruby, JRuby, and Ruby on Rails support: create Ruby projects, edit and debug Ruby applications with support for Rails
- GUI development: Automatic beans binding; Swing-based database application development with the Java Persistence API; fast desktop GUI application development
- Built-in code profiler and heap walker
- Support for Ajax-enabled JSF development
- New integrated user interface for CLDC/MIDP and CDC application development with and without GUIs
- Built-in graphing and graph library for data modeling
- Lots of new tools and features for SOA and Web service development

Buildr

Written in Ruby, Buildr is meant to be a "simpler and more intuitive" build system than Maven for Java projects. Here is a summary of what Buildr is:

- An Ant-based build system with sophisticated dependency for more efficient system builds
- A drop-in replacement for Maven 2.0
- Buildr uses the same file layout, artifact specifications, local and remote repositories
- A simple way to specify projects and build large projects out of smaller sub-projects
- A set of pre-canned Ant tasks that require the least amount of configuration
- Faster than Maven

For another opinion on Buildr, read Jim Alaleras' blog here.

Glassfish v2

The latest version of the next version of GlassFish, Sun's open-source Java EE application server, is setting records for performance on Sun hardware. It's recently become the highest performing application server for SPECjAppServer 2004, on Sun's Niagra-based T2000 hardware.

This version of GlassFish includes JBI and Open ESB, WSIT (formerly Project Tango), Sun's recently open-sourced clustering technology, performance enhancements, and many other features, either completed or proposed.

IONA Fuse

A few months ago, IONA purchased LogicBlaze and inherited their Fuse suite of messaging and integration products. The fruits of this relationship have brought forth a complete set of upgrades for the following Fuse applications:

- FUSE ESB - JBI-compatible Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based on the Apache ServiceMix project. It's lightweight and easily embeddable, offering several deployment options.
- FUSE Message Broker - A high performance, distributed JMS messaging platform based on the Apache ActiveMQ project. It supports Java, C, C++, C#, Ruby, Perl, Python, PHP, and others.
- FUSE Services Framework - Based on the Apache CXF project and formally known as the Celtix Advanced Service Engine, the FUSE Services Framework is designed to deliver high performance, fully featured service creation, integration and flexible reuse of technical and business service components. It supports SOAP, WS-RM, JAX-WS and others.
- FUSE Mediation Router - Based on the Apache Camel project, FUSE Mediation Router offers powerful rules-based routing and mediation engine that provides a POJO-based implementation of the Enterprise Integration Patterns. It works with protocols such as HTTP, JMS, JBI, SCA, MINA and others.
- FUSE Services and Support - IONA offers a complete set of enterprise-quality support offerings for FUSE users to help ensure success with open source SOA deployment.

For a full description of Fuse and other IONA Java-based products, go here.

That's it for now. Happy coding!
-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 11:50 PM  Permalink