While NetBeans ain't perfect, far from it, SWT and Eclipse aren't right for Java, says Joseph Ottinger; a position with which Henry Roswell disagrees. Read the first of a new series of 'Point/Counterpoint' discussions...and join the 80+ readers who have already weighed in on one side o...

JavaOne is here at last, and while it's not really my place or choice to issue a 'State of the Union' for Java, I think we need to do some straight talking. Sun has, for what it's worth, given us a language and platform. It has restrictions and limitations based on a long-range view of...

It's hard to find great Java applications. Next month's JDJ contains our Editors' Choice Awards, and so far for me it has the feel of a repeat - even though I decided to focus on applications I've been using day-to-day outside my own personal development environment. That's frustrating...

Two conversations over the past few days started a train of thought about where Java is right now, as did the settlement between Microsoft and Sun, the new JCP revision, and the new 1.5 JDK. One conversation was with the author of a messaging system, talking about the use of his SDK to...

How can Swing be made more tenable to a broader range of developers? Amy Fowler, a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems and one of the founding members of the Java Swing GUI Toolkit, discusses Swing, JSF, and the Java Desktop Network Component project. 'Swing is indeed broad and f...

Joseph Ottinger speaks to Sun to find out more about Java Studio Creator and its place in the development pantheon, and comes to the conclusion that Sun's done a better job than many developers expected.

Joseph Ottinger, JDJ's editor-in-chief, throws out some article ideas he'd like to see in upcoming issues...and underlines, in so doing, just how much Java there is 'out there' these days.

'A great initial stab at questionable technology,' says Joe Ottinger, editor-in-chief of JDJ, in this first look at Studio Creator (a.k.a. Project Rave).

There is no magic bullet. Managers and developers alike have a tendency to look for a simple, one-shot solution to address a series of complicated issues, even while we all acknowledge that there is no philosopher's stone. That fails to stop us, though - the search continues for some m...

While browsing through a book on Web services (XML and Web Services Unleashed by Ron Schmelzer), some things jumped out at me. First, it's really scary how many options we have in Java. A few months ago Alan Williamson asked, 'Haven't We Got Enough to Remember As It Is?' (JDJ, Vol. 8, ...

In the Java community you have two schools of thought: the zealots, if you will, who feel that pure Java is worth the attempt, and the compromisers, who feel it's more important to use Java no matter what.

There's a J2EE tie-in. I promise. A fellow user mentioned something the other day about using libraries in Java. He said, and I paraphrase, that he simply didn't feel comfortable using a library if it couldn't be explained in one page.

It's that time of year, when the air is crisp and cool, and lights fill the air with the glint of good cheer and renewal. It's when wishes are fulfilled; when revitalization is just around the corner. Here Joe Ottinger takes some time to share some of the things he'd like to see for th...

We tend to see the United States through a lens made up of its major population centers: New York; Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Miami; Atlanta; Chicago; and a few others. That's because these are the places that have things 'going on,' and as a result we get a skewed picture not only o...

Every month we're told again and again how Java is on its way out. A multibillion-dollar company tells us that, while hiring other large companies to say the same thing.

Sun's 10,000,000 developer mark is annoying me. I was surprised they had the gumption to say it in the first place and, as it sinks in, the implications are staggering. The implications aren't new, mind you - Sun also admitted they'd dropped the ball on marketing Java. It's just be...

Chaos. Anthropomorphically speaking, it wants to go everywhere. Order. It wants to be everywhere too, and is willing to fight chaos to do it. Michael Moorcock used to write lots of fundamentally depressing books about this very idea, and you can see it everywhere today ­ politically s...

(July 21, 2003) - Sun Microsystems released JSR 168, the Portlet API spec, for public review on Thursday. Along with this, WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) was submitted to OASIS for consideration, and a tentative release date for Sun ONE Portal Server 6.2 was set, coinciding wi...

In my last editorial (Vol. 8, issue 6), I argued that we, as an industry, have too much innovation. We have solutions pouring out our ears, stuff we often don't need, yet we use it anyway. This month, I'd like to clarify that somewhat: we need more innovation.

Lately Sun and The JBoss Group have been rather publicly sparring over the use of the J2EE brand, culminating in quite a bit of heat (and little light) in the press and in the blogosphere.

As I look over my choices for various tasks, I'm a little unsettled at how many choices I have, what they do, and how they interoperate. I'm not going to be the one to say that innovation is a bad thing, but too much innovation probably is a bad thing. In software design, it usually me...

It's with continued amusement that I constantly read about how Java should be defended from .NET, and how .NET will destroy Java. I understand the invective used by both sides, but the shine is starting to wear off; it's time to stop hurling insults, and examine what the future really ...

Lately it's been easy to dislike Sun. Their JVM is slow; Sun ONE is certainly nowhere near the fastest J2EE application server; Forte, while capable, is far from what coders actually want to use if they want to write code in a reasonable amount of time; MS's constant marketing and tech...

I've been actively involved with Java development in one way or another since 1996, including working with some of the original issues of the servlet specification, the early adaptation of the EJB spec, and migration to JSP not long after it became an official part of the J2EE spec.

Of course you can. .NET is a platform; Java is a platform. One convenient feature of .NET is that it uses SOAP internally for messaging; provided Microsoft sticks to the SOAP spec (that they helped write!) that means that Java will be able to leverage .NET services without even knowing...

If you already have your ResultSet, you have two choices, both bad: one is to keep a counter as you read the records in the ResultSet, and the other is to hope you have a compliant JDBC driver that supports the getRowCount() method. Both ways probably do the same thing: read the entire...

It depends on the SQL backend you're using, and how sincere you are. Basically, you'd want to convert every single quote to be double-single-quotes (i.e., O'Donnell becomes O''Donnell), which means writing a custom function. That's ugly, and unnecessary. (Aren't you glad?) If you u...