stillhacking

Open Office labels There's a lot going on the world in general and there's a lot going on in the world of programming these days. At least there is a perception that a lot is going on. This is especially true if you happen to make a living doing anything related to Java. Oracle buying Sun may change some things for the better and others for the worse. Making (more) money from Java than Sun was able to do is not necessarily a bad thing. Speaking of Sun...I mean Oracle...Open Office has an interesting bug related to printing labels. The procedure itself is documented and maybe even relatively intuitive (if you're a programmer that is). But seriously once you get past these great instructions you may run into this problem: The first page prints two or three labels with addresses and the remainder of the page with labels containing field names only. I played around for a little while before I found what I think is the bug that's gone unanswered in a few places. If...

...additional JARs have been added : ' some maven corrupted jar file name here '...repeatedly So it seems with the combination of Eclipse, Tomcat, Axis2, and maven one might run into this. The actual error I was getting was, at least initially was the "Initial Server Error". This particular error is mentioned in the Axis2 FAQ section and should be looked at if you get this error. However, it seems the maven corrupted jar error is not, as of this writing, documented so well, hence this quick blog entry. The bottom line is there seems to be something amiss with maven and corrupt repositories because this issue impact another related project...and given that I should have thought about this sooner. If you do get and error in your Tomcat console which says "...additional JARs have been added" every five seconds or whatever reload timeout setting you might have and you're using maven, take a look at that jar in your local repository. If it a few hundred by...

Again I write about one of what seems to be my favorite subjects. Binding in Java has, over the years, occupied a bit of time for many Java developers (not that binding is unique to Java). I am thankful for this time because it has ultimately made using really easy. Despite the busy holiday season now among us (Thanksgiving and Christmas for my family and me) along with the usual stuff, I wanted to write something quickly about NetBeans , specifically about version 6.5 since it was released not that long ago and has something relatively minor but very nice included. I have, in the post, posted a hack we employ to get JAX-WS to generate property listeners/notifiers in the generated POJOs we rely on for binding (we're using JSR-295). The NetBeans team resolved an outstanding issue that makes this a good bit easier (although in my opinion it should be default JAX-WS behaviour). Assuming JAX-WS does not yet generate property event notifiers (and last time I checked it did not), you...

Off by one day...and worth writing about... It's been quite a while since I blogged about anything.  I have been very busy but I really should make more time to blog.  Some of the bugs I encounter, fix, and yes sometimes re-fix seem familiar.  It sure would be nice to read about them to provide myself or someone else a clue now and again. We have been working on an application which is built using web services.  The Java Swing client utilizes JAX-WS and the server was built with Apache Axis.  One of the issues we have run into on more than one occasion involves dates.  There's a Java class that's used to send date(times) over the wire in XML format which includes the time zone.  It's called XMLGregorianCalendar   If you're sending or receiving date/times over the wire using Java and web services, chances are you have bumped into it. One issue we have had to deal with is null date/times.  Certainly they can exist in databases and that's not a bad thing.  Getting ...

Eagles still fly... We went to the Eagles concert this past Wednesday evening in Charlottesville, VA with some friends. I was amazed, no blown away, by the performance. Sometimes we (or at least I) "filter" experiences to see, hear, or otherwise sense an event in a manner more consistent with what we expect rather than the way it actually is. I could easily go off on a tangent about philosophy at this point but instead I'll just admit I certainly have my own biases. This concert, discounting any biases I might have, was truly amazing. It's not necessarily because I really enjoy listening to both old and new music written and performed by the Eagles although that's certainly true. No, this is more about using a God-given talent with no compromises whatsoever. To simply say we witnessed a bunch of artists who happen to be perfectionists does not do the performance justice. I believe God has given each one of us one or more talents which He expects, sometimes i...

Binding...finally getting it together (well maybe) It's been a while now but I might have hacked a solution for binding. We have an application which we developed using NetBeans . We have been through various binding solutions but once JSR-295 code was released by Scott Violet a couple of JavaOne's ago, we decided to use it. Looking back this decision may have been even more premature than we expected but I don't regret it. JSR-295 has, at least on some level, been usable since it was available. In my opinion the initial release was as good (and as bad) at most anything else we tried. In the one project I have in mind at the moment we had a couple of wrinkles. This is a Swing application that utilizes web services. We really do like NetBeans for many reasons including the ability to visually design Swing apps. Having just returned from I think what was my seventh JavaOne (I was not at the first one and missed quite a few years along the way), I am not unaware that ...

JavaOne 2008...worth the trip. It seems like I do well to write something here quarterly and I should make it more of a priority. Anyhow here are some of my impressions of JavaOne in no particular order. First off JavaFX is just about where I have expected it to be since last JavaOne. I do believe this language extension will be a success. Personally, I don't see how it can't be although I may measure success differently than some. I am not claiming Flash apps will no longer be available on the web and the world will flock (back) to Java but I do think if you're using Swing and maybe Java2D to build your apps, you'll start using JavaFX and you're stuff will find it's way from the desktop to the browser and back with little to no effort on your part. I think Josh Marinacci explained this well on the last day in one of his sessions. There was not a lot of technical content in this particular session and I happen to agree with his assertion that we might u...

Eclipse rocks...again. I was just reading one of my older posts. In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I must say I have been very impressed with Eclipse these days on both Ubuntu Linux and OS X. There have been many updates/new features since writing that post and this is (for what I've been doing with it lately) one solid IDE.

OK so it's been a while since I wrote anything. I am in the processing of getting Leopard installed on a MacBook Pro. Java 6 from Apple actually caused the "upgrade." We have been running Ubuntu on a fairly wide variety of hardware including some Macs. Actually we're dual booting the Macs so we can keep an eye on how our project has been moving along on multiple platforms. It's a Java Swing app which ultimately has to run on Windows, Linux and OS X. Now that Java 6 is out (at least something usable), we can test and, as it turns out, develop on OS X as well. That's all well and good now. The main reason for the post is actually Eclipse and the WTP. One thing that bugs me about the WTP is the dreaded "IWAB0489E Error when deploying Web service to Axis runtime axis-admin failed with { http://xml.apache.org/axis/}HTTP (404)/s1/services/AdminService" This is certainly not new and I have read where the "fix" is to wait and try again. I f...

IDE fun NetBeans 6.0 is getting better all the time. Using it has been fun, interesting, and certainly a bit frustrating lately. I must say I can see a whole lot of great improvements and it is becoming an IDE to love (being an old Borland guy Delphi and JBuilder are my benchmarks). I found M9 to be OK. Initially I thought M10 was unusable. We have been taking advantage of JSR-295 and JSR-296 (binding and appframework respectively). Both of these efforts are thankfully (and sometimes painfully) being updated along with NB. Some of code certainly broke (not that we didn't expect it) but after relatively mundane effort our app compiled again. I was having trouble moving a project which uses web services from the m10 release to anything which came after it. As it turns out I needed to delete and then add back all web service references. This may seem obvious but I had gotten into the habit of using the "Refresh Client" feature (because our web services are still in de...

Thinkle I wonder why more of us (including me on some days) don't think more for ourselves. Has this age of information and automation actually coaxed us into thinking less? I am not so sure. As I write this (of course inspired by something I'll get to in a bit) I recall my own father complaining about the same thing over twenty years ago. But then he was one who naturally picked up on human behavior. This topic has become a common theme of sorts with me as well. I came across the Blackle site (sorry, no link here I am writing about it, not encouraging it) the other day. Now here's a piece of marketing. I'm not saying I don't care about the environment by any means. I just don't see how feeling good about something by itself does any good. Common sense and/or research should tell you that LCD monitors use much less energy than the old tubes. If you're still using a CRT and googling with the rest of us, Blackle may be for you. Google for it usin...

We've been using NetBeans 6.0 (M9) since getting back from JavaOne and aside from some minor annoyances one might expect in "pre-release" stuff...it's NICE. I have grown to like the support for the early versions of JSR-295 and JSR-296. If you have not had time to play with it, check it out. You can see where NB and these two JSRs are headed and there's more to like than not.

Long time...no post. Working on an application that makes heavy use of Web Services we have come across a Delphi SOAP issue. It seems Delphi does not like to see a nil returned as the value for an integer. This client code written in Java ( JAX - WS ) that calls this same Web Service works OK. In this case the null data is coming from the database and (last time I checked) it was OK to have null data in a database. To be fair to Delphi I understand null (nil) is not supported as a value. However the (generated) code that calls the web service should do something besides raise an EConvertError exception and return nothing to the called. I don't really like the idea of arbitrarily returning zero (-1 or some other value) but if a language does not support something, we have to make some type of a logical decision and move on. IMHO EConvertError is not a good choice.

Skype'ing I have certainly known about Skype for a while now but frankly have not had the need to even try it. Last weekend I configured a cable modem in a house in a relatively remote area. We don't have a land line phone in this house and had not planned to install one. Our cell phone coverage is however a little spotty. Since the high speed connection is there I thought I would give VoIP a try. I have been very impressed. For those of us who are in the U.S., for $15/year you can get unlimited calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada. That service is called SkypeOut. If you need an inbound number, you can get SkypeIn for about $30/year. The audio quality is very good. I don't know if that's because Skype is a proprietary protocol (as advertised) or if it's par for VoIP now. But I can say it's a lot cheaper than others I found if there's any significant use.

Yet another... earlier this evening I found yet another binding library for Swing. This one is called yasb (yes, it could be Yet Another Swing Binding library or it might be the first part of the developer's name which is Yassine Elouafi and "B" for binding). If you're wondering when we might see the code Scott Violet demoed at JavaOne or when JSR-295 will be a reality in NetBeans 6.0 (or in Java itself) you're not alone. In the meantime the brief look I have taken at yasb, has moved it to the top of my list for achieving binding in Swing while we wait for the official stuff. Check it out but don't make the same mistake I made. As the how to use tutorial says, set the component's name property to the name of the property to which you would like to bind preceded with an "@" sign. (Maybe it's because it was late on a Saturday night but I thought the idea was to change the name of the component itself which would not be a legal Java name....

After a week away, I'm back. It feels funny to not write any code for a full week. I had my notebook with me and limited Internet access during the week but time and energy kept me from coding. We took the week away to finish up a long term project. The project, which was the major renovation of a house that's been in my wife's family for many years, never had a specific time line but it feels good to be done. While we put a lot of time and energy into this multi -year project it was truly a labor of love. Because I enjoy programming so much, on some levels I liken it to software projects I have been a part of over the years which take on a life of their own. When we complete or reach major milestones on such projects we should take time to reflect on our efforts. I took a good bit of time before we left to come home and on the six hour ride back to do just that. It's not all that unlikely that I'll take on a similar effort in the future and I am confide...

A couple of weekends ago we decided it was well past time to get rid of some old computer hardware. I don't consider myself an environmental nut but I must admit I was bothered by the fact that I could pay $3 and dump as much electronic equipment as I wanted in my local landfill. I was previously under the impression that this was against local, state, and federal law but then I am sometimes guilty of listening to media folks who don't know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day (so check your facts). The bottom line this hardware was taking up room and we were allowed to dump it. So after pondering this for a week or so and being a long time Linux fan, I made some time to check out a few of the smaller Linux distros. I must say as I write this I am still not sure there is one I would recommend to anyone who has an old 200Mhz computer with 64MB of RAM on it but Vector Linux is installing as I write (I did not say I got rid of everything). Anyway I was surpri...

So where's binding in Java at? Don't 'ya just hate that? I'm not sure if using bad grammer even makes a point anymore because so many of us don't recognize even obvious butchering of our language (not that I couldn't benefit from a refersher at this point in my life). I guess I could have said "what's up with binding in Java these days?" Lately I have been doing my Java programming in Eclipse and NetBeans after loving and using JBuilder just about since it was released (although I have heard I won't be able to do without the Eclipse-based JBuilder which I can never remember is code-named Peleton). I understand that NetBeans 6.0 will have binding but I'm not sure what that will look like and after attending Java One and reading about binding, I think I'm clueless. If you're doing some type of binding now and you're not using the stuff from SwingLabs (assuming you can still find it) or JGoodies , I'd like to know what...

For some reason we all have days (sometimes a few days in a row) when it seems like people all around us have taken a break from thinking. I'm not even talking about the critical thinking I'd like think is not as rare as it seems. Well I've had more than my share of days lately during which I've encountered little to no customer service, witnessed worse than average driving, and heard news reports that seemed to involve little to no thinking during what if any preparation occured. This past weekend we made a trip to the local Wal-mart. When we saw this minivan with a trailer attached parked like it was, I had to take a picture. Notice how the driver strategically chose one of the few spaces which has a tree directly in front of it so that the van itself fits nicely in the space and the trailer takes up right at half of the lane designed for driving between spaces. You can probably guess bad driving in parking lots is one of my pet peaves (also spelled peeve). If y...

We'll it's time to get (back) at it. Like many of you I have probably started a blog a half dozen times or so and left it for one reason or another. Perhaps I'll keep at it for a while this time. Among the reaons for doing so there is programming. There's a lot going on in the programming world (at least in mine) these days (not that this is unusual) but it seems there's much to discuss. If not discuss, at least write about so that when I forgot what I learned it does not take quite as long to relearn it.