Friday, March 21, 2003

Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages Technologies Discussed I found an interesting transcript from the March 11, 2003 Java Live session. Marty Hall, author of the books Core Servlets & JavaServer Pages and More Servlets and JavaServer Pages was one of the guests. Marty says, "I have seen both approaches used successfully. And I don't have a clear answer about when it's better to use either approach. But there are some general principles: 1. If you're using XML to represent an entire PAGE, then the XSLT approach makes sense. 2. If you're using XML to represent data ELEMENTS, then the JSP approach makes sense. 3. If you have highly structured results, the XSLT approach makes sense. 4. If you want web developers to be able to more easily manipulate the presentation, the JSP approach is probably better. On the whole, I see a lot more people using MVC (that is, business logic creates beans, JSP technology extracts values from beans and presents them) than the all-XML way." Interested in reading more? Check out the article. 7:49:58 PM    The Soapbox

Sun's VB? Sun is preparing the ground to compete with Microsoft's VB. At the heart of the project is Java. Java is in already in a very good position in the enterprise, providing a solid and mature environment required to deliver iron-clad solutions. Will a VB-like environment attract other developers to the Java-fold? I guess we will see. "All of our tools today ship on Windows, Linux and Solaris. We think we should go where the developers are sitting. By mid-year at JavaOne, we will have a new set of tools targeting these platforms. We are working on tools that the historic visual developers will find attractive. They will all be written in Java." - Rich Green, VP of Java software development at Sun. For more information check out this eWeek article. I find it odd that Mac OS X is not listed in the mix. Apple is doing everything in their power to deliver a 1st-class Java experience on OS X. The development tools provide a 1st-rate environment for delivering Java apps to the platform. I hope that there is some plan in place for delivering ProjectBuilder developed solutions to the other platforms mentioned by Mr. Green. Considering the number of serious developers which have already moved to Mac OS X, Sun should consider working with Apple to nuture the growth of this developer community. 6:12:51 AM    The Soapbox