JEE Development

The selected hardware components are a direct hit to get a new and fast working machine with ubuntu linux and vista 64 bit editions including a wireless connection to the internet router.

• Asus P5K3 Deluxe (WiFi AP Edition)
• 2 x 1 GB DDR3-1333 MHz Kit CAS 9
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphic card (DirectX 10 compatible, cheap and without a fan). A better graphic card will maybe also work fine.
• 2 x S-ATA II Harddisks
• P5K3 Deluxe (WiFi AP Edition) supported powersupply
• Case
• Intel Dual Core CPU (775 socket)

Ok, before i start to explain how i installed a multi-boot system with Vista 64-bit and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 i tell you that i connected two SATA harddisks to my mainboard. The first harddisk contains Vista and the second harddisk contains Ubuntu.

So disk 1 with Vista (64-bit) will be

/sda

disk 2 with Ubuntu (64-bit) will be

/sdb

I also prepared a bootable Ubuntu DVD from an ISO file from the Ubuntu website. Before continuing: Make sure that you have made a backup of all your important data if you do not start from scratch (a completely new installation).

1. At first (after installing the hardware (CPU and fan, mainboard, harddrives, graphic card, tower and powersupply unit as described in the supplied manuals from the manufacturers) i installed vista on my first harddisk. i just had to put the dvd into the dvd-drive and boot from this device. Make sure the DVD drive boots first (BIOS Options).

The Vista installation should start itself. The installation is easy and you will prompted for details if it goes to specific informations like Computername, User, Partitions, Date and time, language etc.

2. Then i installed all new and required drivers and software for the mainboard provided from the Asus support site for Vista OS (64-bit). That´s it for the first time. Individual software and Vista updates can be installed at a later time (right after the ubuntu installation).

3. Ubuntu install: i configured my BIOS to boot the Ubuntu DVD first.

After this i inserted the Ubuntu DVD and turned on my PC again.

4. The Ubuntu Live install should then normally start. For installing Ubuntu look at the installation steps from the really good documented Ubuntu websites or video-clips (see sources below). The most important thing is that i had to select the second harddisk drive (/sdb, see screenshot)

Otherwise you have to select “Manually edit partition table if you want to prepare the disk space for Ubuntu OS on only one existing harddisk where Vista exists or if you want different partitions formatted with ext3 file system. In the case where you want to install Ubuntu and Vista on only one disk it is also required that you have different partitions for Vista and Ubuntu. Otherwise Ubuntu normally erases the first disk/partition to install.

Select your language with F2

Select Ubuntu start or install (Ubuntu starten oder installieren)

Wait…

double click on install icon (Doppelklick auf installieren-symbol)

Choose language

Select Timezone/Country

Select keyboard-layout

Load software for partitioning

Prepare harddisk

Importing accounts

Realname, Username, password, Name of Computer

Summary page

Bootloader

Formatting partitions

Installation (basic configuration) – analyze files

Installation (basic configuration) – copy files

Security updates not available

Installation (basic configuration) – hardware configuration

Remove DVD from drive before rebooting

Ubuntu Login

Firefox on Ubuntu

5. The next part was to configure my WLAN, but this was no problem. I already had configured my router with preshared keys and TKIP encryption. So i just selected the right options in the appropriate settings menu and entered the shared key, that´s all. I got my wireless connection and opened firefox to test the connection. It works great.

Select wireless network

Select available private/own network

Sound is also available through Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). Ubuntu configured graphics and sound by default. No additional driver installation was required to start with UBUNTU.

WLAN connection available

Bootmenu after installation and reboot

The Ubuntu Linux installation took less one hour including formatting the harddisk. That was amazing, i remember the times ten years ago installing Linux…

So now it is time to secure your system if needed.

Sources:
About Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (German)

How to install popular proprietary software in Ubuntu

Ubuntu on 64-bit systems (German Galileo Openbook)

64-bit Architecture (German) and forcing 32-bit software to work on a 64-bit Ubuntu

Install using the Alternate CD – Installation/AMD64

Ubuntu graphic install

Ubuntu install (German)

Ubuntu clips 1. (A good way to start with Ubuntu is to view the install videos)
Ubuntu clips 2

Ubuntu partitioning

P5K3 Deluxe (Wifi Edition)

searchitems: Product/Produkt: Hauptplatine/Mainboard > Series/Serie: Sockel/Socket 775 > Modell/Model: p5k3 deluxe

Radeon HD 2600 series

Wikipedia article Radeon HD 2600 series

The Big Ol’ Ubuntu Security Resource

• IE View
• Yet Another Window Resizer
• Dummy Lipsum
• Modify Headers
• YSlow
• Total Validator
• Quick Locale Switcher
• HTML Validator
• Web Developer
• Firebug
• Live HTTP Headers
• Tamper Data
• Colorful Tabs
• Split Browser

If you want to know which JSF Ajax Component library fits best into your project take a look at ajaxjsf.net.

Today Ohloh Labs announced that they provide open source access to some of the tools that power the Ohloh website.

Ohloh itself is an open source network that connects people through the software they create and use.

Read the full press release at www.ohloh.net.

After or within the Requirements elicitations phase you often think about webflows and maybe basic functionalities on your web pages. Some functional requirements can be grouped together in web-/navigation-flows e.g. an order flow, an editable address book, a credit card edit page or a passwort retrieval within a web application. Different views like clickflows in particular, sitemaps (pages overview) and wireframes for each page can help you getting an idea about the whole thing. Additional informations can be included into use cases (see: Use Case on wikipedia)

Web page prototypes or mock-up screens, wireframes, clickflows can also help the page designers thinking about the user-interface and usability. Page designers, software architects, application- and UI-component developers can deliver input for the next step: the technical design specification. The technical design document contains informations about the appropriate architecture (platform, framework, library and software) and implementation details e.g. sequence and/or activity diagrams.

The processs shortly described above begins from the business view through the frontend and then to backend implementation. So i would say the implementation is a more frontend-driven process. At least you create a overall documentation with references, an operational handbook and if needed a userguide for your software.

In order to your requirements you can implement your enterprise application from a domain model . Some tools can help you by generating the needed classes for a crud (create, read, update, delete) application from the given domain model class diagram (domain driven development). This process goes from the backend to the frontend through the middle tier. This is in most cases a typical monolithic architecture but in nowadays the architecture is more service oriented. Architectures are following the SOA principles (see SOA on Wikipedia). Note that each architecture, monolithic with multi-tier layers or SOA landscapes have pro and cons. It´s up to you to find out what´s the best suited model/philosophy for your software. Your IT landscape has also some constraints to the maintenance staff, business view etc.

In my point of view the software development in the near future will be driven by business rules which are modeled and described with appropriate tools/languages like BPEL or JBPM. With JBPM you can model a particular business process. It´s also possible to group particular business processes together so that you get a new web flow or navigation rule for the whole business process. Think about a complete business process from customer registration to order to delivery to billing to maintenance. This software process is rule based way.

Tools for creating wireframes, mock up pages, sitemaps etc.:
- Axure,
- Omnigraffle (Mac),
- Concept Draw WebWave

ORM Data Mapper Frameworks:
- Hibernate,
- iBatis

JBPM:
- JBoss Tools 2.0.0.GA with integrated Hibernate Tools as a core component of JBoss Tools

Rules Engines based on JSR 94, Java Rule Engine API:
- JBoss Drools,
- JLisa,
- Ilog JRules,
- Jess,
- OpenRules

Note that the web application framework JBoss Seam 2 contains Hibernate (hibernate.jar, hibernate-annotations.jar, hibernate-commons-annotations.jar, hibernate-entitymanager.jar, hibernate-search.jar, hibernate-validator.jar) and Drools (drools-core.jar, drools-compiler.jar) as libraries within the framework. There exist a lot more frameworks/jar files within Seam 2 (overall 86 jars plus additional jars in lib/test and lib/src folder). See Seam 2 page for details or take a look into the JBoss Seam 2.0.0.GA Package.

That was fun. Happy about a new 64bit system/processor and OS Vista 64bit and the first evaluation by Vista i was overwhelmed by a rating of 1,0. phew…

But after installing some drivers, software and activating Aero i again evaluated my system. What happened? A new rating of 4,7 ?

bad, hmmmm. – i don´t think so.

seam 2 setup on windows vista 64bit

well, in this tutorial i show you how you can easily setup seam 2 (dvd store example) with MySQL on windows vista 64 bit.

First, download the required software:

MySQL Database (mysql-5.0.45-winx64.zip (64bit MySql))
MySQLAdministrator (32bit, mysql-gui-tools-5.0-r12-win32.zip)
MySQL Connector (mysql-connector-java-5.0.8.zip)
Java EE 5 SDK Update 4 (with JDK 6 U3) for Windows, English, java_ee_sdk-5_04-windows.exe, see: J2SE system configurations, Java on Windows, Sun installation notes)
Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (eclipse-jee-europa-fall2-win32.zip),
Apache Ant 1.70 (apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.zip)
Xdoclet 1.2.3 (xdoclet-bin-1.2.3.zip)
Jboss 4.2.2 GA (jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip)
Jboss Seam 2 (jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA.zip)
Jboss Tools (JbossTools-2.0.0.GA-ALL-win32.zip),

After you have downloaded your files, create a folder C:\DEV on your Harddisk. This is the place where i installed my software.

For MySQL, MySQL Administrator and the SDK i used the setup routines to install the software. The other packages i have only extracted (zip) and moved to the right place. The folders look like this (i do not use blanks in foldernames!):

C:\DEV\apache-ant-1.7.0
C:\DEV\mysql5045
C:\DEV\SDK
C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA
C:\DEV\jboss-4.2.2.GA
C:\DEV\xdoclet-bin-1.2.3
C:\DEV\eclipse-jee-europa-fall2-win32

Then i configured my IDE (eclipse-jee-europa-fall2-win32.zip):
To install Jboss tools you have to extract the Zip file (JbossTools-2.0.0.GA-ALL-win32.zip) and copy the content of the folder features to C:\DEV\eclipse-jee-europa-fall2-win32\features and the content of the folder plugins to the folder C:\DEV\eclipse-jee-europa-fall2-win32\plugins.

Right after that i configured Xdoclet to work with eclipse. I run eclipse and selected C:\DEV\workspace as my workspace folder. Within the workbench i selected: Window>Preferences>XDoclet and entered my Xdoclet path and the appropriate version 1.2.3.

Then i created a server instance of Jboss AS 4.2.2 by clicking on the „new server“ icon in the toolbar.

Add your JMX login credentials and click on finish. The next time you create a new project you can easily start and stop Jboss from your Eclipse IDE by selecting the server instance. Note the deploy directory of your Jboss instance.

Now i configured my windows environment variables and path. Goto the windows system control panel > system characteristics > Advanced tab > Environment variables and enter a the ANT_HOME variable with path pointing to your ANT folder (C:\DEV\apache-ant-1.7.0). Do not forget to check or set the JAVA_HOME variable and the path pointing to the bin folder of the SDK. Do not remove existing values. Just add the path for the SDK and ANT bin folders right after the existing values after the semicolon
(C:\DEV\SDK\jdk\bin;C:\DEV\apache-ant-1.7.0\bin;).

The Seam 2 „DVD Store“ store example is in the folder „C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\examples\dvdstore“. I opened the datasource file (dvd-ds.xml) for that example located in the folder „C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\examples\dvdstore\resources\“.Then i configured the mysql datasource like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<!DOCTYPE datasources
PUBLIC “-//JBoss//DTD JBOSS JCA Config 1.5//EN”
“http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/dtd/jboss-ds_1_5.dtd”>

<datasources>

<local-tx-datasource>
<jndi-name>dvdDatasource</jndi-name>
<connection-url>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/dvdstore</connection-url>
<driver-class>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driver-class>
<user-name>yourusernamehere</user-name>
<password>yourpasswordhere</password>
<exception-sorter-class-name>
org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.vendor.MySQLExceptionSorter
</exception-sorter-class-name>

<metadata>
<type-mapping>mySQL</type-mapping>
</metadata>
</local-tx-datasource>

</datasources>

Note that the values user-name and password are corresponding to an existing user within the MySQL Database. If you are not sure, open the MySQL Administrator and add a new user with password. Please also make sure that the MySQL Database Server is running as a Windows Service. If you have selected the „user administration“ (Benutzerverwaltung), point your mousepointer to the area where the accounts (Benutzerkonten) are and right click to create a new user account.

You should also have a blank schema called „dvdstore“ in your database. The user should have all privileges to that schema.To make the JDBC driver classes available to JBoss, copy the file mysql-connector-java-5.0.8-bin.jar from the Connector/J distribution to the lib directory in the default server configuration (assuming that is the configuration you’re running, of course. E.g.:
C:\DEV\jboss-4.2.2.GA\server\default\lib\mysql-connector-java-5.0.8-bin.jar).

Create a folder „jboss-seam-dist“ in your seam home folder:
C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\jboss-seam-dist

Add the following lines to your build.properties located in your seam home folder
C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA


# added:
# Location of JBoss AS and Tomcat
# -------------------------------
#jboss.home /Applications/jboss-4.2.1.GA # Default
#tomcat.home /Applications/apache-tomcat-6.0 # Default
jboss.home C:\\dev\\jboss-4.2.2.GA
#tomcat.home C:\\Tomcat-6.0
#
# Misc Settings
# -------------
# Enabled validation of example XML descriptors
validate.xml true
# Directory in which to put build distribution, defaults to ../jboss-seam-${version}.${patchlevel}
dist.dir C:\\DEV\\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\\jboss-seam-dist
# alphanumeric qualifier for the version number
#qualifier -SNAPSHOT


Then i opened a dos console window. Goto the folder:

C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\examples\dvdstore>

and fire up the command:

ant

Your build should be successful. Otherwise something is going wrong within the configuration or installation.
The Jboss AS can be started by using the run.bat file. Open the DOS console window and goto C:\DEV\jboss-4.2.2.GA\bin
type run and press enter and the server will start.

When the server is ready and your application (ear) is successfully deployed to $JBOSS-HOME/server/default/deploy directory start the browser and enter the URL:

http://localhost:8080/seam-dvd/

note: the name is seam-[project name]
The correct project name is located in the file: C:\DEV\jboss-seam-2.0.0.GA\examples\dvdstore\readme.txt

i hope this tutorial helps you to dive into the seam 2 world.

“Getting Real” (by 37signals) is a very good book about software projects and development. It seems that the author picked up the truth in software development.
Most of the big projects went wrong because nobody of the team reads all the documentations with endless papers and/or functional specifications in detail to get the whole idea of it. It´s right that a screen says actually more than written letters on some sheets of paper.

Well, it´s new year 2008 and for this year i thought at the end of the last year i will setup a new weblog which will be my aid of memory – mostly in the field of web development.

I think this year (2008) will be an interesting year for (web/JEE-) developers. Many new frameworks are available and new releases are to be raring to go.

Personally, to me “Seam 2″ is the most interesting framework at the time of writing…

Happy new year!!!