Friday, October 4, 2002

Friendly URLs I think most people would agree that URLs are an important part of a web UI. If designed correctly they can be as intutitive and helpful as a label and button on the page. One of the decisions I find myself occasionally faced with when developing a web application is whether you should always go through code to access templates, or mix it up by accessing templates or html directly when going through code doesn't really add value. For example, I may map code to urls with the extension *.action and templates to the extension *.vt. Thinking about friendly predictable URLs I would have to lean towards always going through code. That way a user doesn't have to second guess to use .action or .vt. 3:09:14 PM

Do you need EJBs? a check list Do you need support for objects distributed across Java VMs? Do you need distributed transactions? If you answered no to both of these questions, a good database and JDBC connection pool are all you probably need. 10:32:32 AM

Same as it ever was... UML, Use cases, Agile modeling, extreme programming, Waterfall, RAD, blah, blah, blah.... Modeling and design books are like books on leadership and management. They keep saying the say stuff over and over just using different words. It's always amazed me they sell so many books on leadership and management. You can summarize most of them like this: Listen to people and be honest Yet many managers still don't get it. Modeling and design books are much the same. Here's a couple ideas that are a few hundred years old that can probably summarize many of the $65.00 design books: From Rene Descartes The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence. And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted. There's no silver bullet, no chance of divine intervention, no short cuts, no $1500.00 tool that'll do it. To be truely effective, you gotta roll-up your sleeves and master the simple stuff. 9:54:19 AM

Scripting Java web apps A lot of code in a web application is devoted to glueing the presentation and business logic/data tiers together. Most of this code is dedicated to the same things: validating input, updating the database, deciding where to send the user. One of the draws backs to using a compiled language such as Java in this scenario is the pain of code, compile, start web server, test, loop.... Seems to me that a scripting language ( jython) would be perfect as the glue between the html and backend components. No only does the scripting language speed the development cycle but usually the scripting language is simple enough for junior programmers to use and become productive with. Now I realize that using a scripting language in this area is not a new idea ( tcl and the AOLServer, Perl... ). But it certainly is still very uncommon in the Java web app world and IMO much needed. More Interesting reading on the topic 9:23:20 AM

Scalability, Three-Tiered Architectures, and Application Servers This has been part of my recent reading (12 step program ) I've been doing as I make a return to focusing on the simple, basic, and sound ways of building apps. It's all to easy to get wrapped up in technology marketing hype and API overload at the point where you've forgot how well the simple stuff works. Although this paper is a couple years old, it still has some valid points: Focus on sound enginerring principles! Just say no to EJBs! ( at least for the majority of apps anyway) 9:01:27 AM

from the Register Gosling: Microsoft's Java threat is financial, not technical 8:47:43 AM