System Architecture

I've decided to start a new blog which continues from this one and covers much the same ground.

Java development

Developers seem to be getting tired of the complexity associated with the J2EE architecture and as such are developing and using lightweight frameworks which use POJOs. A combination which seems to becoming popular is Struts for the (web) user interface, Spring for the code container and Hibernate for object/relational mapping".

Distributed Computing

What happend to JINI? This article Jini: Out of the Bottle and Into the Box by Daniel H. Steinberg show how it could be used and also makes a comparision to Apple's Rendezvous.

From this recent (Dec. 2004) article IEEE DS Online: Critics Say Web Services Need a REST it seems that the debate between the SOAP and the REST crowd hasn't been resolved. Basically the argument seems to run that SOAP is a web based implementation of a RPC model of communcation, whereas REST is document based. Although I tend to agree with this, I'm confused by the fact that the REST theory (see, for instance, Ray Fielding's doctoral dissertion ) seems to require that the HTTP verbs of GET, DELETE, POST and PUT should be used. If each service is uniquely defined by a URL then why have something else to define the semantics?

Messaging

Distributed Enterprise Messaging with MantaRay by Amir Shevat -- Java Messaging Service (JMS) is a much-used system for distributed enterprise applications, but many implementations use a "broker" approach that creates bottlenecks. MantaRay implements the JMS API through a peer-to-peer approach that, as Amir Shevat reports, provides some significant advantages.

Rich Clients

A couple of "loosely coupled" weblog entries which demonstrate that rich clients are still on the agenda (pro and contra)

More on rich clients - Loosely Coupled weblog, Jul 7th 2004 10:19pm

Rich Clients, network wealth"

BPM and Open Source

Open source workflow and the BPM-market is an overview of what open source projects are implementing (various types of) BPM.

Clustering

Designing J2EE Applications for Real-Life Clustered Environments by Anil Sharma and Navneet Singh -- What works on a single server can crash and burn in a cluster. In this article, the authors draw from their practical experience to list and discuss some critical considerations when building J2EE applications so that they can be deployed in a clustered environment without requiring any code changes.

This article also references the Smart Cache pattern  in dealiung with application caching in a clustered environement.