Blog Xebia France

Review of the papers Xebia

The review of the papers of actuality Popular dance / weekly J2EE offered by Xebia.
Agility

• Is your team cross-country running - functional?

RIA

• A state of art, seen by the Evangelists.
• The battle of announcements) raged in the Mobile world.

The corner of technology

• Exit of Spring 3.0 M2
• Exit of GridGain 2.1.1
• A small GIN?
• Initiative Swing 2 criticised

Agility

Is your team cross-country running - functional?

In this article, Henrik Kniberg reminds us of signification to have a team cross-country running - functional. It means under no circumstances that all members of the team have to have all knowledge. It is the team as a whole that must have knowledge necessary for the installation of the product.
Then, he offers a method to list knowledge of each. He results from it a simple matrix where the members of the team list their knowledge as well as their level:

• Star: main domain of expertise
• Point: some knowledge
• Space: no knowledge and/or wants to acquire knowledge on this domain

This matrix has advantage to identify fast a 'resource ' and therefore to make distribution easier. It also allows to list the persons who want to advance in other domains. Here is a simple and efficient idea!

RIA

A state of art, seen by the Evangelists.

In resonance in RIA contest of Xebia (accomplished by architects / developers, around the development of an application), InfoQ organised a panel (based on a series of question) with six major actors of the world RIA, one for every framework (Ajax, GWT, Curl, FLEX, Silverlight, JAVAFX).
For lack of open debate (the participants were interviewed by email), they have an impression that each preaches for his chapel and he does not take out again big thing of this study which is not already known. However, this article remains a good starting point for those which would have missed the recent developments of the market of the RIA.

Even problematic, different approaches: Sony Mathew, architect to Bonus Therapeutics, compared, under matrix form, force / weaknesses of some some of this frameworks (GWT, FLEX, Lazlo, 'pure ' Ajax). A help to be chosen by more.

Anyhow, it is clear that the battle of the RIA will be one of the major subjects of 2009 (having agitated a lot of 2008), and that that (or those) who will not be present on the stage, as well marketing (to persuade the decision-makers), which technical and Community (to rally the developers), risks the marginalization on the horizon 2010.

The battle of announcements) raged in the Mobile world.

After the exit of mobile JAVAFX, it is in the turn of Adobe to announce an advance for Flash (and indirectly FLEX) in the world of smartphones. Flash 10 will be available nativement, in complete version on a vast majority of flat forms in 2010: Mobile Windows, Android, Nokia S60, and Palm webOS (with the exception of the iPhone, put under periodic felling by Apple). Cel does not mean the abandonment of Flash Lite, but compromises seriously chances of the model of deployment 'at request' which Adobe tried in vain to impose (to a great extent because of weight of the player FLASH Lite).
Having quoted Microsoft, Silverlight 2 Motive remains at the moment a pious wish.

The corner of technology

Exit of Spring 3.0 M2

Let us note this week the exit of second milestone of Spring 3.0. Every new major version of this framework makes vibrate the community. We did not infringe with a ruler. You besides probably noted that we were proud to make to you to discover the novelties of this next version 3.0. We then used the exit of M1 to consolidate our to say. This time, we will not go on forever on the exit of M2. She brings only not enough real novelties which we already announce (the main concerns in our sense the support of JPA 2). Just note that she went out. Also notice that this M2 will be followed by third and last milestone.

Exit of GridGain 2.1.1

The platform of cloud computing which goes up, , has just gone out in version 2.1.1. It is about a version of stabilisation and of improvement. Not enough novelties therefore, but several correctives of bug raised since 2.1. For recall, GridGain gives an integration to Spring as well as a game of annotations allowing an application of "Gridifier" easily and fast.

The possiblit to throw your unit tests JUNIT 3 OR 4 on agents' grid GridGain, for a simple annotation of your continuation of tests, is very interesting also. Those who still do not know this product, it is a chance to download this last version in augmented stability.

A small GIN?

GIN (GWT INJECTION) is other than Guice for GWT side client (seen on onGwt).

As usual in GWT, the use of a new bookshop passes by the hut modulate and the addition of a new entrance inherits:

It will then be necessary to encode the class modulate to configurer the binding of our classes. This class will have to spread AbstractGinModule:

The adaptation GWT of Guice is made by the creation of an interface which spreads Ginjector.
This one defines objects to be recovered (by getters) as well as the module which is applied to it (here MYWIDGETCLIENTMODULE) by the annotation @GinModules.
They get so an injector such as:

This injector is then instanci by GWT.CREATE (CLASS) where it will then be possible to use to recover our panel:

Examples above BABY FAQ is on this page, is also at disposition.

Nevertheless, it is always possible to be surprised at the choice of GOOGLE to put integration forward with Struts 2 (in form of plugin) rather than with GWT (Gin is supported by a team distinct from that of Guice, even if some members belong to both teams).

Initiative Swing 2 criticised

The IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET Swing evolved in the course of last years: its performances improved, she won in graphic components and constitutes currently, in spite of the investments of Sun in JAVAFX, a choice favoured for the development of heavy clients. Nonetheless, as very IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET ageing, his lack of productiveness and his sometimes useless complexity are often reproached him.

One month ago we spoke you of plan initiated by Jonathan Giles further to sound very mediatized ticket. Since, they count about fifty commits on SVN of plan. Shown purpose is to cool the IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET of Swing by using some novelties of Popular dance 5 (generics, enums and varargs). In practice, it is no more and no less about a source fork open of Swing. Step is audacious at least and as it was possible to expect it, some reactions appeared within the community.

Fast, Danny Coward, representative Sun, expressed himself about this plan and about requests of evolution of Swing in a general way, by showing his reservations as for a break of the ascending compatibility of the IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET, although admitting the real need of improvement. He named nonetheless the possibility of leaning on Jigsaw, from JDK 7, to allow the joint use of two incompatible IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABETS.

Elliott Hughes, judging the reaction of not much hired and rather light Sun, issued Swing 2 strict of initiative by reproaching him mainly for the uselessness: none of the problems which he meets in the daily by using Swing does not think it is regulated by the addition of generics or of enums. Since then, this job of overhaul would miss interest since it would not attain its target.

What is it possible to say about these critics? In fact, it is clear that the real problem of Swing is that the IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET offered to the developers remains low level and, because of its age, rests on principles of designs which can seem heavy by comparison with frameworks extremist productive who is found around JEE at present. To make him use novelties of Popular dance 5 would therefore be only camouflaging these defects partly. But if the IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET does not evolve, it is necessary to leave Swing therefore? It seems surrealist due to the capitalisation of the developers, editors and of firms around this technology, all the more so as she fulfils her role perfectly. The intermediate solution between revolution and immobility could be in the multitude of bookshops which created around Swing for some years, allowing to simplify the job of the developer (new layouts, new components, utilities and support for IDE).

Whatever is the exit of step, Swing 2 plan will have drawn the attention of the community to these problems and caused many debates likely to bring new ideas of subject.