Blogs

Annotations and annotation processing are great new methods to insert configuration directly into source code. One immediate result of annotations introduced in Java 5 is the elimination of XML configuration. XML configuration does satisfy some situations for definitions and configuration but leads can make the application more complex, harder to maintain, and take longer to develop. Annotations can be directly inserted into the application code itself as opposed to externally describing the data from another file. The benefits are extrodinary.

Oracle's Java SDK for OLAP technology has a lot of room for improvement. I came to this conclusion after completing reporting project requring I decided to design a framework utilizing OLAP beans and query techniques making an easier and simplier Java API using Java generics. I have used Oracle's development example that uses the channel, product, time and customer dimensions. Here is an example of utilizing this API at a high level. I think a simple interface like the one below to the OLAP structure is much easier to understand and utilize.

JSP has been the De facto standard for Java and web development for years. JSP is one of the first popular dynamic web application frameworks. Since then as architecture models have evolved. PHP has taken a foothold in the simple dynamic web applications and large enterprise application with complex business logic has moved to MVC design using Java or .Net. Where does that leave JSP and how does it compare with Velocity and Freemarker?

What is Springframework?
Springframework is a loosely coupled component based framework where all, or none of the components can be utilized. Simply put, it is an integration tool. Springframework allows a developer to choose and use different packages of preference. For example, Spring allows you to specify Toplink with Struts, or Hibernate with Spring-MVC. This is the ability of Spring. Libraries can be seamlessly interchanged. If a software library is not built into the core package of Spring, then it is usually very simple to integrate the library into Spring’s IoC container. Packages from DWR to Sitemesh and others were easily incorporated into a production level Spring based application.