Jakarta Newsletter ================== Issue: 1 Date: June 2002 URL: http://jakarta.apache.org/newletter/200206.html
Welcome to the issue #1 of the Jakarta Newsletter. The aim of the newsletter is to try and let people know what's been going on in the jakarta projects that when have been unable to monitor all of them. The editorship of the various sections and overall will probably vary which should hopefully lead to a fairly dynamic monthly newsletter. So who's sending this to you? I'm a UK software developer working mainly with database webapps but with an interest in development processes. My involvement at jakarta has been mainly as a user of various subprojects, a lurker on the general and commons-dev lists, a long time lurker and occasional conributor to Ant, and lately this Newsletter has become my pet project. This month we have news based contributions from several projects and a plea for requirements from avalon. I'd like to thank those who contributed and hope that you enjoy the read. If you would like to comment further on any of the highlighted discussions then please do so on the appropriate list, if you want to comment on the newsletter itself then please point your comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rob Oxsping Contents -------- General Ant Avalon Commons Log4j Object Bridge ORO POI Struts Taglibs General ======= Editor: Rob Oxspring Discussions on general have been fairly light weight this month. The main points have been in regard to issue 0 off the newsletter [1] and some discussion about how best to setup the scarab installation for bug reporting [2]. The other main "on topic" thread regarded java.sun.com's new look. Is it time for jakarta to have a facelift? can we learn lessons from sun? The answer seems to be wait for maven or forrest but generally the familiar open source rule of "your itch, you scratch it" applies [3]. The same thread also discusses the idea of announced and arranged live chats about the various jakarta project with key developers on hand to help explain and assist. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102328553200005&r=1&w=2&n=21 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102391995300001&r=1&w=2&n=12 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102520044100002&r=1&w=2&n=10 Avalon ====== Editor: Berin Loritsch The Avalon team is in the process of identifying the requirements for a new version of the Avalon Framework. The changes are minimal, and focus on a tighter definition of the contract between the container and the component. The container is the code that manages all the components and how to access them. The Avalon team has identified some anti-patterns related to its use, and wants to provide a way to make it easier to use correctly. What we want to find out from the community at large is: 1) Are you currently using Avalon in one of your projects? 2) If not, what would it take for you to consider using it on a future project? 3) If yes, what did you like best? What were your greatest challenges? If you could choose one way to improve Avalon, what would it be? Slated for the next version of Avalon already: 1) Enhanced Meta Data. We are unifying the way we define meta data for the components. This allows the component to be used in any Avalon compliant container with zero issues. Previously you had to find out how any one container defined meta information (like version, whether the component is threadsafe or not, etc.). 2) (Tentative but likely) Standard way of extending the component lifecycle. Avalon already has a rich lifecycle management system, but sometimes you need an application specific extension. We have plans of allowing that to happen, and use any of the existing containers. 3) Enhanced tutuorials, user documentation. The new docs (when written) will focus first on how to use Avalon (the biggest complaint about our documentation). It will then present the anti-patterns that Avalon is supposed to address, and the patterns it uses to solve those issues. Ant === Editor: Rob Oxspring Conor MacNeill introduced some documentation aobut his Ant2 proposal and this lead to a discussion of how we could make ant projects more object oriented and reusable and looking at how other systems achieve a similar result [1]. In particular the Myrmidon Ant2 proposal featured with discussion moving onto whether templating could solve the problems being faced [2]. The antidote (ant gui) project has seen a small revival this month with a couple of new developers joining forces with Christoph Wilhelms to try and drive the project forward [3,4]. The cvs freeze for Beta3 went without a hitch [5,6] and in preparation for the release Erik Hatcher and Steve Loughran lead the way updating javadocs and manual entries for various tasks [7]. In the aftermath of Beta3 some new version checks and diagnostic information have been discussed and added to aide users in getting the appropriate help later [8]. Among the task specific issues this month was a question regarding how best to add logging capabilities to elements below the task level, a number of solutions were volunteered with pros and cons to each [9]. Lou Fox has been having some problems getting the regexreplace task to do what he wants with line endings [10], also the SOS and VSS tasks were treating some $ symbols a little differently to the rest of ant[11] . With luck the fixes should be part of Ant1.5 Finally, thanks to his contribtion in the form of the new Selector API Bruce Atherton was invited to join the team of committers [12]. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102480404800002&r=1&w=2&n=12 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102480534600002&r=1&w=2&n=15 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102359754500002&r=1&w=2&n=19 [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102378075700002&r=1&w=2&n=11 [5] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102467096900003&r=1&w=2&n=12 [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102478669600003&r=1&w=2&n=2 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102436209200002&r=1&w=2&n=17 [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102493495300002&r=1&w=2&n=10 [9] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102338712200003&r=1&w=2&n=12 [10] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102459759100001&r=1&w=2&n=13 [11] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102481925900001&r=1&w=2&n=13 [12] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102531237400002&r=1&w=2&n=9 Commons ======= Editor: Rob Oxspring There were two main discussions applying to the whole of commons this month: Thanks to mass approval the new commons-user list was set up to allow users to find solutions without the intimidation of votes, commits and similar discussion [1]. The more controversial discussion regarded the take up of maven betas for the build process in various components, can we require betas for building? can we drop ant support without a formal vote? See what you think [2]. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102451084800002&r=1&w=2&n=25 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102468327700006&r=1&w=2&n=99 Collections recieved a donation of code from avalon this month [3] and it was decided that some naming and layout conventions were needed [4,5]. The implementation of the primitive collections came under scrutiny as Ola Berg noticed that myIntList.contains("Foo"); would throw a ClassCastException rather than returning false [6]. The decision seems to be that they are best as they are but the pros and cons are all presented. The same theme was tackled in a thread that went on to discuss the differences and similarities between assertions, predicates and closures [7]. [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102458650800005&r=1&w=2&n=25 [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102478064000001&r=1&w=2&n=15 [5] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102398907200001&r=1&w=2&n=25 [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102477824200003&r=1&w=2&n=20 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102430815500002&r=1&w=2&n=20 Comparators came under discussion the month too: How should nulls be treated in comparators? The NullFirstComparator and NullLastComparators were proposed and implementations discussed [8]. In collaboration with BeanUtils a BeanComparator was posted comparing the results of a method or property for order [9] although the class seems to be homeless at the moment. Also regarding collections was some discussion to the thread safety of StaticBucketMap [10] and a proposed reorganisation of util and collections [11]. [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102347883700003&r=1&w=2&n=22 [9] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102345448200001&r=1&w=2&n=18 [10] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102503642500002&r=1&w=2&n=21 [11] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102504081900002&r=1&w=2&n=14 CLI had some issues with how best to support options such as java's -D see the discussion [12] for full details. Plans are afoot to move into the commons proper and make a release, see the comments and action plan [13]. [12] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102402777700001&r=1&w=2&n=11 [13] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102336826000003&r=1&w=2&n=17 Betwixt also has plans to move to proper in preparation for a 1.0 release [14], but there may be some a couple of bugs to resolve first [15,16] along with some new features that Stephen Colebourne wants to add [17]. [14] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102327447100004&r=1&w=2&n=10 [15] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102384358400001&r=1&w=2&n=10 [16] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102392973900001&r=1&w=2&n=12 [17] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102400292600005&r=1&w=2&n=14 Elsewhere in commons there is talk of a release for JXPath 1.0 [18], how the discovery package should discover its configuration [19] and a discussion as to the distinction between BeanUtils, Reflect and Introspect [20]. Components new to commons were also proposed this month; Berin Loritsch introduced a component to find out how many CPUs are available on a machine and similar information [21], Patrick Luby is planning on separating tomcat's Daemon code into commons [22] and Avalon-Excalibur began the process of integrating its components into commons effort [23]. [18] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102423733200004&r=1&w=2&n=11 [19] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102510710000006&r=1&w=2&n=11 [20] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102435473700001&r=1&w=2&n=26 [21] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102492741300004&r=1&w=2&n=12 [22] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102461582900003&r=1&w=2&n=10 [23] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102455617000003&r=1&w=2&n=19 Log4j ===== Editor: Ceki Gulcu The month started with a question by John Armstrong [1] on whether log4j offered any guarantees on binary compatibility between various versions. To which Ceki replied by stating [2] the current policy of not removing deprecated methods until at least two release cycles are completed. This reply did not seem to satisfy John Armstrong and a long discussion ensued. A historical perspective [3] seemed to satisfy most people, at least the discussion petered off. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102335790906496&w=2 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102336327109965&w=2 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102387540521717&w=2 Mike Agnus started [4] a discussion about timezone and locale related issues in log4j date formats. James Cakalic and Mike discussed the importance of the decimal character separator. Possible performance improvements were also suggested. Mark Womack submitted code for timezone support for date elements of pattern layout. Unfortunately, the code was anonymous and we could not take into consideration. The idea seemed to catch on though. [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102209832808942&w=2 [5] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102420694310844&w=2 Ceki asked for clarifications [6] on java buffered IO because his experience did not match the myth. Georg Lundesgaard mentioned [7] the character conversion buffering aspect as explained in the OutputStreamWriter javadocs. [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102326443025158&w=2 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102327620700816&w=2 Costin Manolache related his experience [8] with configuring log4j with JMX. He mentioned the web-application logging insulation problem. In response, Ceki wrote a specification [9] for solving the logging separation problem. This was followed by a promising discussion [10] on Tomcat-dev. [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102412323003656&w=2 [9] - http://qos.ch/containers/sc.html [10] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102510381000001&r=1&w=2 Mark made a proposal [11] for a new log4j component called "Receiver." [11] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=102523926310678&w=2 Object Bridge ============= Editor: Mahler Thomas OJB joined Jakarta in June! ObJectRelationalBridge (OJB) is an Object/Relational mapping tool that allows transparent persistence for Java Objects against relational databases. OJB provides multiple APIs:: A full featured ODMG 3.0 compliant API. A JDO compliant API (work in progress) A low-level PersistenceBroker API which serves as the OJB persistence kernel. There has been a long discussion on using the commons-logging API for OJB. OJB currently uses its own wrapper API for logging. We came up with a proposal to extend commons-logging with features we need urgently for OJB logging [1]. There has also been a discussion on a proposal [2] that tries to define an implementation strategy for the new OJB JDO layer. Matthew Baird answered [3] that he will assemble a draft for a functional specification of the proposed Object Transaction Management layer. This document is almost finished and will be the base for our next implementation steps. [1] - http://archives.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] .org&msgNo=274 [2] - http://jakarta.apache.org/ojb/jdo/jdo-proposal.html [3] - http://archives.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] .org&msgNo=225 ORO === Editor: Daniel F. Savarese Jakarta-Oro development has continued its trend of making small incremental additions and fixes in response to user requirements, rather than the major development initiatives that have been discussed. The most recent set of fixes and improvements were made available in a 2.0.7-dev-1 developer release on June 27th. The most pressing need for the project is the contribution of comprehensive unit tests for the core Perl regular expression classes. Without these, we will not be able to quickly press forward toward Perl 5.6 (soon 5.8) compatibility. Long term goals are to include factory class(es) for plugging in any regular expression package using the org.apache.oro.text.regex interfaces, provide a J2ME version of the package, and build more commonly used high-level text processing functionality into the package, becoming a general purpose Java text-processing toolkit rather than strictly a regular expression package. POI === Editor: Avik Sengupta The POI team made two releases in June. A production release of version 1.5.1 on June 17, and a dev milestone release 1.7.0 on June 24. The dev release was notable for the inclusion of a large body of formula support. This was preceeded by some expected wrestling with the undocumented parts of the excel file format [2]. The dev list was animated for a while on the issue of whether poi should have a calculation engine built in. Andy summarised the discussion [3]. To better understand how POI and its components are being used in practice, a call for case studies was made [4]. These have been put up on the project site [5]. There have been many requests for a java viewer for excel files. Andy hacked up "Sucky Viewer" as a GUI component built on POI/HSSF [6]. Logging has been the cause of a large number of problem reports. It was therefore decided that POI would have logging disabled by default, and thus no extra libraries would be required to run POI [7]. However, developers wou ld have the option of enabling logging at runtime using either commons logging or log4j. This decision was further validated when there were reports of significant performance hit with logging enabled [8]. As a result, the 1.5.1 and 1.7-dev versions have logging disabled. The POI team is working towards a 2.0 release that adds the functionality for formula, charting and Word documents. There are many feature requests that have been asked for, but these are the top priority at the moment [9]. [1] - http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/hssf/formula.html [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=102382900822300&w=2 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=102468743701331&w=2 [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=102371435712172&w=2 [5] - http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/casestudies.html [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-user&m=102476270711166&w=2 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102333893500001&r=1&w=2 [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-user&m=102518419020006&w=2 [9] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=102500927422333&w=2 Struts ====== Editor: Joe Germuska * Path-based action mapping in 1.1 One of the architectural advances from Struts 1.0 to Struts 1.1 involved supporting multiple applications with a single Struts controller servlet. As part of the initial implementation of this functionality, some configuration flexibility was lost: the multi-application controller only supports mapping URLs to Struts "actions" by extension (i.e. "*.do") while Struts 1.0 also supported mapping by path prefix (i.e. "/do/*"). After James Young asked if any fixes were in the works [1], Craig McClanahan pointed out some of the complexities involved [2]. Ted Husted described a possible solution and asked for feedback about whether to pursue it. [3] [1] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8226 [2] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8234 [3] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8244 * Tiles add-in to moved to core Craig McClanahan moved the "Tiles" add-in into the core CVS source tree from the "contrib" directory [4]. Ted Husted initiated a discussion about some code modifications to "Tiles" to make it work more closely with the core code base.[5] [4] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8682 [5] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8621 * FormBean: Interface or Class? The discussion about whether the "FormBean" concept was best implemented as an interface or a class resurfaced, and Craig McClanahan wrote a decisive response explaining the motivation for maintaining it as a class.[6] In summary, designing FormBean as an interface would facilitate inappropriate tangling of the "model" layer with the "view" layer, while making it a class of its own encourages clean separation of those layers. [6] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8253 * Struts and the Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) After announcing the 1.0 release of the JSTL, Shawn Bayern offered assistance towards integrating the rich Struts tag libraries with the JSTL, which in many cases offers equivalent functionality.[7] Craig McClanahan indicated that a likely goal for a post 1.1 release of Struts would be thorough integration with the JSTL expression language, and aiming towards an eventual replacement of the Struts "bean" and "logic" tag libraries with the equivalent tags from JSTL.[8] [7] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8434 [8] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8439 * New Committer: James Holmes James Holmes, author of the popular Struts Console tool, was proposed as a committer by Ted Husted [9] and was accepted unanimously. [9] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8341 * Steps towards Struts 1.1b2 As much of the activity on the list in June involved "swatting" bugs in the current 1.1b1 release, Craig McClanahan proposed steps towards a Struts 1.1b2 by around July 8th [10] The requirements for the next beta are basically closing any remaining bugs and improving documentation of new Struts features. Committers responded promptly with +1 votes and further contributions. [10] - http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.org&msgNo=8691 * Other Struts News: 24 June 2002 - Tiles Article in DeveloperWorks 23 June 2002 - Struts Controller UML Diagrams 12 June 2002 - Struts Console version 1.12.1 12 June 2002 - Easy Struts 0.2 12 June 2002 - Artimus 0.4 11 June 2002 - Struts Builder v0.4 beta 07 Jun 2002 - O'Reilly Chapter 7 05 Jun 2002 - Struts Console version 1.12 07 Jun 2002 - Easy Struts on SourceForge 04 Jun 2002 - FL Child Support Payments: Powered by Struts 03 Jun 2002 - strutsGuessingGame1.0 * Struts News and Status page: http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/news.html Taglibs ======= Editor: Shawn Bayern On June 21, Jakarta Taglibs released version 1.0 of the "Standard Taglib," a compliant implementation of the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL), which is a new specification from the Java Community Process. The Taglibs group has also begun efforts to reorganize its web site and improve the process for responding to new submissions and ideas. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
