@Singleton
public class TimerService {
    @EJB
    HelloService helloService;
  
    @Schedule(second="*/1", minute="*",hour="*", persistent=false)
    public void doWork(){
        System.out.println("timer: " + helloService.sayHello());
    }
}

A timer doesn't have to be a singleton - it can be a @Stateless and even a @Stateful bean. The method doWork() will be invoked every second. There is no registration or configuration needed.

How to compile:

You will need the EJB 3.1 API in the classpath, or at least the @Singleton, @Schedule and @EJB annotation.

How to deploy:

Just JAR or WAR the interceptor with an EJB and put the archive into e.g: [glassfishv3]\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy

Btw. the initial deployment of the entire WAR took on my machine:

INFO: Loading application SimpleTimer at /SimpleTimer
INFO: SimpleTimer was successfully deployed in 363 milliseconds.

How to use:

Another service can be easily injected to the timer and so invoked periodically:

@Stateless
public class HelloService {
    public String sayHello(){
        return "Hello from control: " + System.currentTimeMillis();
    }
}

And: there is no XML, strange configuration, libraries, additional dependencies needed...You will find the whole executable project (tested with Netbeans 6.8 and Glassfish v3) in: http://kenai.com/projects/javaee-patterns/ [project name: SimpleTimer].

[See also "Real World Java EE Patterns - Rethinking Best Practices"] 

Catching up on Hudson news in the last couple of weeks:

The most important change is that on Jan 27th, during the Strategy Presentations around the completion of Change in Control of the acquisition of Sun, Thomas Kurian indicated that Oracle was going to continue supporting Hudson as an Open Source project, to be integrated into Oracle's offerings (other CiC news in the Summary Post).

As part of the CiC, Kohsuke is now in the Developer Tools group, under Ted Farrell, which provides continuity for the current arrangement: although Kohsuke will no longer report to me, he will work full-time on Hudson with a large number of other committers into the project.

In other news:

• Kohsuke has made available a MSI Installer for Hudson on Windows (download). • Tyler has started the new official Hudson Blog. • Follow Hudson News via Twitter at @hudsonci. • We will continue to track key Hudson news at TA and @glassfish.

TOTD #106 explained how to install Oracle database 10g R2 on Mac OS X. TOTD #107 explained how to connect this Oracle database using NetBeans. This Tip Of The Day will explain how to use the sample HR database (that comes with Oracle database server) to write a simple Java EE 6 application.

This application will use Java Server Faces 2.0 for displaying the results, Enterprise Java Beans 3.1 + Java Persistence API 2.0 for middle tier, and Oracle database server + GlassFish v3 as the backend. The latest promoted build (65 of this writing) will not work because of the issue #9885 so this blog will use build 63 instead.

Several improvements have been made over NetBeans 6.8 M1 build and this blog is using the nightly build of 9/27. The environment used in this blog is:

• NetBeans 9/27 nightly
• GlassFish v3 build 63
• Oracle database server 10.2.0.4.0 R2 on Mac OS X
• Oracle JDBC Driver type 4 (ojdbc6.jar)

Lets get started!

1. Configure GlassFish v3 with JDBC connection
   1. Download and unzip build 63.
   2. Download ojdbc6.jar and copy to "glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext" directory.
   3. Start the Application Server as:
      

      ./bin/asadmin start-domain --verbose &
      

   4. Create a JDBC connection pool as:
      

      ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource --restype javax.sql.DataSource --property "User=hr:Password=hr:URL=jdbc\:oracle\:thin\:@localhost\:1521\:orcl" jdbc/hr
      

      
      and verify the connection pool as:
      

      ./bin/asadmin ping-connection-pool jdbc/hr
      

   5. Create a JDBC resource as:

      ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid jdbc/hr jdbc/hr
      

2. Configure GlassFish v3 build 63 in NetBeans
   1. In NetBeans IDE "Services" panel, right-click on "Servers" and click on "Add Server...". Choose "GlassFish v3" and provide a name as shown below:
      
      
      
   2. Click on "Next >" and specify the unzipped GlassFish location as:
      
      
      
      and click on "Finish".
3. Create the Java EE 6 application
   1. In "Projects" pane, right-click and select "New Project...".
   2. Choose "Java Web" and "Web Application" and click on "Next". Choose the project name as "HelloOracle":
      
      
      
      and click on "Next >".
   3. Select the recently added GlassFish v3 server and choose "Java EE 6 Web" profile:
      
      
      
      and click on "Next >". Notice "Java EE 6 Web" profile is chosen as the Java EE version.
   4. Select "JavaServer Faces" on the frameworks page:
      
      
      
      and click on "Finish". Notice the JSF libraries bundled with the App Server are used.
4. Create the Java Persistence Unit
   1. Right-click on the project, select "New", "Entity Classes from Database...":
      
      
      
   2. From the Data Source, select "jdbc/hr" as shown:
      
      
      
      This is the same JDBC resource created earlier. Select "EMPLOYEES" from the Available Table, click on "Add >" to see the output as:
      
      
      
      The related tables are automatically included. Click on "Next >".
   3. Click on "Create Persistence Unit ..." and take all the defaults and click on "Create".
   4. Specify the package name as "model":
      
      
      
      and click on "Finish". This generates a JPA-compliant POJO class that provide access to tables in the underlying Oracle database. The class name corresponding to each table is shown in the wizard.
5. Create Enterprise Java Beans
   1. Right-click on the project and select "New Class...".
   2. Specify the class name as "EmployeesBean" and package as "controller", click on "Finish".
   3. Annotate the class to make it an Enterprise Java Bean and a JSF Managed Bean as:
      

      @javax.ejb.Stateless
      @javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean
      

      
      
      Notice, the EJB is bundled in the WAR file and no special type of modules are required. Java EE 6 provides simplified packaging of EJB which makes it really ease to use.
      
      Also this application is currently using JSF managed bean but will use JSR 299 (aka Web Beans) in a future blog.
   4. Inject the Persistence Unit by adding the following variable:

      @PersistenceUnit
      EntityManagerFactory emf;
      

   5. Add a new method to retrieve the list of all employees as:
      

      public List getEmployees() {
       return em.createNamedQuery("Employees.findAll").getResultList();
      }
      

      
      "Employees.findAll" is a default NamedQuery generated by NetBeans and makes it easy to query the database. Several other queries are generated for each mapped JPA class, such as "Employees.findByEmployeeId" and "Employees.findByFirstName". Custom queries can also be created and specified on the POJO class.
      
      The completed class looks like:
      

      @Stateless
      @ManagedBean
      public class EmployeesBean {
      
       @PersistenceContext
       EntityManager em;
      
       public List getEmployees() {
       return em.createNamedQuery("Employees.findAll").getResultList();
       }
      }
      

6. Use EJB in the generated JSF page
   1. JSF 2 uses Facelets as the templating mechanism and NetBeans generate a simple "index.xhtml" file to start with. Expand "Web Pages" and open "index.xhtml".
   2. Replace the body template with:
      

      <h1>First Java EE 6 app using Oracle database</>
      <h:dataTable var="emp" value="#{employeesBean.employees}" border="1">
       <h:column><h:outputText value="#{emp.lastName}"/>, <h:outputText value="#{emp.firstName}"/></h:column>
       <h:column><h:outputText value="#{emp.email}"/></h:column>
       <h:column><h:outputText value="#{emp.hireDate}"/></h:column>
       </h:dataTable>
      

      
      It uses JSF value expressions to bind the Enterprise Java Bean and dumps the HTML formatted name, email, and hire date of each employee in the database.
7. Run the project: Right-click on the project and select "Run" to see the output at "http://localhost:8080/HelloOracle/" as:
   
   

So we can easily create a Java EE 6 application using NetBeans, Oracle, and GlassFish.

A complete archive of all the TOTDs is available here.

This and other similar applications will be demonstrated at the upcoming Oracle Open World.

Technorati: totd oracle database glassfish v3 javaee javaserverfaces ejb jpa netbeans oow

Patch 1 for NetBeans 6.8 has been released on Friday 2/5/2010. Update your IDE to get the latest JavaFX SDK 1.2.3 and 36 fixes in JavaFX area.

disclaimer: all opinions/comments/ideas in this blog represent my view of the world. They may differ from a view or an opinion of my current/recent/future employer. All feature/product reviews/screencasts or presentations were taken from a parallel universe and are not connected with anything you know if not stated differently.

It's been just over a week since Oracle held its post-acquisition stategy webcast and we've already seen some fast reactions and comments from Oracle on several topics :

• Projects hosted on Kenai will preserve their infrastructure and be moved to java.net (the best of both worlds if you ask me). See Ted Farrell's post for the details.

• GlassFish has seen an interesting set of reactions most of which worried about the wording used during the launch event. Mike Lehmann, WebLogic PM discusses here and there the situation and the likelihood of GlassFish v3 getting HA/Clustering capabilities in the near future. That's Mike's 1st post on TSS btw! I think that means he cares about GlassFish ;)

• On the JVM side, people have been asking question about HotSpot vs. JRockit and Henrik Ståhl, JRockit PM offered a first insight into what it would mean to have a combined product in the long run (also covers OpenJDK).

Overall, it's great to see Oracle reacting quickly to the community's concerns and I think one should judge the work of the combined teams (Sun and Oracle could not talk about future plans before January 27th) on the roadmaps and the execution. Remember, the proof of the pudding is in the roadmap!

Two weeks ago Oracle announced that it would be shutting down Project Kenai for public use and moving it inside the company for continued internal use.  Oracle said that the project was not achieving the expected usage levels, but they also said that they would look for other avenues to advance the project and possibly re-open it to the public if it could be improved.  It appears the plan has...

Sometimes it’s good to cool down, relax & wait & see.  A lot of people (me included) were unhappy due to the sudden death of Kenai. It was a project I loved, especially because it was closely integrated in NB and had some features  I was missing from java.net, my favorite Java community site.

So we were discussing various scenarios what we could do. There were lot’s of discussions what would be the best project hosting site for our projects and what we should tell our community. Some people already moved their projects to Google Code or JavaForge. We were discussing if we should have our own forge for NB related projects, or if we should ask the NetBeans Team to open up their Kenai infrastructure for us.

But now it turns out that the Kenai infrastructure will be part of Java.net:

Kenai Infrastructure and Projects to Become Part of Java.net | Java.net.

Actually this is perfect. I never understood why Sun would open a second project hosting site, if not as a playground for improvements for java.net. So now we have the best of breed, the strong and vivid community of Java.net, and teh advanced and modern features of Kenai. And Java.net still seems to be an independent entity inside Oracle.

Nevertheless let’s not forget we lost some strong supporters of our community through the merger. For the NetBeans Dream Team this is especially true for Aaron Houston. Thanks Aaron and congratulations to your new employer for having you aboard…

Recently I mentioned the E-Mail Management System that is part of a customer service suite provided by Artificial Solutions in Stockholm Sweden:

However, it turns out that that same organization also has inventory management software on the NetBeans Platform. Their internal Time Reporting, Project Management and Resource Allocation system is based on the NetBeans Platform, while they've worked on quite a few different prototypes and mock-ups, using the NetBeans Platform as a natural base, using a wide array of the different APIs provided.

And the NetBeans Platform was also chosen for the UI for their internal computer hardware, server and virtual machine inventory system:

All three of the above applications are extremely data-intensive, which is a typical reason for wanting to use the NetBeans Platform, since it provides so much UI (especially complex Swing components that aren't found in standard Swing) for managing large sets of data out of the box.

In other news. Read an interview, published today, with the developers behind these applications here on NetBeans Zone!

An interview with two engineers from Artificial Solutions in Stockholm, Sweden... about their customer service solutions that make use of the NetBeans Platform!

The Sun-Oracle Strategy WebCast and subsequent Webcasts and Docs generated multiple comments and discussions threads in the Web from which I want to highlight a few comments in here. Please check the original posts for context, clarification and caveats.

On OSS licensing - "There are no plans to change the open source GlassFish licensing for any of the GlassFish modules that I am aware of as I work directly with the team right now in the integration process" (Mike Lehmann, Director of PM for WebLogic Server and GlassFish).

On clustering - "Clearly GlassFish 2.1 has clustering today and 3.0 currently does not. Customers depend on the GlassFish 2.1 implementation and as I have said on TSS we are committed to continue supporting it per our lifetime support policies" (ML).

More on clustering - "We are very much working with the team to assess how clustering will fit on the 3.x roadmap given it was already on the original 3.x roadmap - the ideal will be at least parity with 2.1 - so judge on the result when we deliver versus ahead of the plan" (ML).

Ultimately, all of these comments will need to be judged by the reality of what Oracle delivers. As I wrote at TSS, "The Proof of the Pudding is in the RoadMap". In that same thread, Mike writes: "You will have to judge us on how we execute over the next few months while we realign roadmaps and delivery schedules but I hope we can surprise folks with some good turns we can do as a combined company."

It is still very early in the process of integrating the GlassFish team into Oracle; remember that the two companies could not work together before CiC. Hopefully we will soon be able to give you more details.

The position of braces in PHP code can be set up in the PHP formatting setting, category Braces(select item Braces in the Category combo box). It's possible to set up separately position of the brace after class declaration, function or method declaration and for other statements.

There are three values -  Same Line, New Line and Preserve Existing  that can be set to. The default value is Same Line.

After the addition of a hard disc to a mirrored zfs rpool, the boot process immediately stopped with the GRUB message: "bad pbr sig". It means that something is wrong with the Primary Boot Record (aka Master Boot Record). The solution was simple - I swapped the boot order of the hard discs in BIOS. Now it works perfectly again.

Dear fans of Felix, Equinox and NetBeans.

Recently we faced a little bit of instability. First of all we did significant refactorings of the OSGi and NetBeans integration code. We wanted to polish the integration with NetBeans Runtime Container and abstract away any dependencies on individual OSGi containers. We are done and right now everything seems to be stable. See the family of Netigso related build jobs at our hudson builder. The other reason for instability was crash of my Internet connection. This is fixed now as well. You can connect the the builder again.

There is more good news. First of all the Netigso project has become part of NetBeans and will be available in 6.9M1 (thus I disabled the special Netigso job on my own builder, it is no longer necessary).

Second, I have improved the Netbinox IDE. It is now more stable (especially the equinox integration) and also includes brand new splash screen.

Enjoy! Test. Report bugs.

--JaroslavTulach 07:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

This running entry collects key announcements related to Oracle's Acquisition of Sun; some from the Jan 27th event, some from companion webcasts, and some later announcements. The main theme of the acquisition is "We're Changing the Way you Buy, Run and Manage Business Systems".

Main Entry Points:

• Sun Acquisition
• Jan 27th Strategy Event. Includes webcast, highlights and presentations. 5 hours but worth it.
• Strategy Webcast Series.

From the Software Segment of the Strategy Webcast Series:

• Jeet & Hasan on Java Strategy. Covers JavaFX, JavaSE, Blu-Ray, GlassFish, JavaCard, Developer Sites, JCP, JavaOne Java For Business.
• Hasan Rizvi on Application Server. GlassFish, WebLogic, protecting investment in existing products, Oracle Application Grid, Grid Architecture, jRockit, Coherence, Tuxedo, OpenMQ, GlassFish WebStack and GF SpaceServer - and Liferay, Sun WebServer, Portal Server, Oracle WebCenter. Check slide 12 (and 6'12") for current level of details on WebLogic/GlassFish alignment.
• Richard Sarwal and Steve Wilson on Oracle Enterprise Manager and xVM OpsCenter. Combined story covers discovery, provisioning, updating, monitoring - including for virtualized assets. Application-to-disk management.
• OpenOffice, with Michael Bemmer. Open Source, name changes, Oracle value proposition, Web-Based version, JDeveloper support, Extensions, ODF-support, integration with other Oracle products.
• Cloud with Richard Sarwal. A pretty good presentation covering IAAS, PAAS, SAAS; Private and Public Clouds; range from Silo > Grid > Private Cloud > Hybrid including Private and Public Cloud; cloud-in-a-box. Discontinuing the Sun public cloud offering but leveraging Sun's technology, including Q-Layer team for Oracle products that provide flexible, self-service, dynamic services.
• Operating Systems by Edward Screven.

From the Systems Segment of the Strategy Webcast Series:

• Storage with Mike Shapiro, including OpenStorage and Flash products. Blade Server and x86 Rack Server are covered by Ali Alasti; Archival (tapes) by Jim Cates, and SPARC Servers by Masood Heydari.

Other Links and Project Status:

• Overview and FAQ for Developer Community - Covers SDN, Java.Net, Java.Sun.Com, BigAdmin, Kenai, JavaOne and more.
• Developer Tools FAQ
• Kenai - Public Site To Be Merged Into Java.Net; infrastructure supports NetBeans.org and will support Java.Net and other sites.
• WonderLand - Group at Oracle is Shut Down, but they go on their own. See New Blog Site.
• Darkstar - Project shutdown
• LivelyKernel - Seems to have moved to a New Site.
• Derby/JavaDB - Live and well (Still here).

Additional Information - Oracle continues to update their site; see also:

• Middleware Home

Press, Analysts, Friends, Others:

• @Redmonk - Cote and Stephen.
• NYtimes, WSJ, PCWorld, MercuryNews, CNet and many more...

• Competitors:
  Savio Rodrigues (IBM/Geronimo), Mark Little (JBoss) and Sateesh Narahari (MuleSoft),
• Friends:
  Scot McPhee, Markus Eisele, and Douglas Dooley.
• Thread at TSS, including posts by Mike Lehman, PM for WLS.

A general comment is that we need some time to put the roadmap together; remember that the Sun people could not work with Oracle folks before CiC, so, if there had been a detailed roadmap it would have come from Oracle, not a collaboration...

Dear fans of Felix, Equinox and NetBeans.

Recently we faced a little bit of instability. First of all we did significant refactorings of the OSGi and NetBeans integration code. We wanted to polish the integration with NetBeans Runtime Container and abstract away any dependencies on individual OSGi containers. We are done and right now everything seems to be stable. See the family of Netigso related build jobs at our hudson builder. The other reason for instability was crash of my Internet connection. This is fixed now as well. You can connect the the builder again.

There is more good news. First of all the Netigso project has become part of NetBeans and will be available in 6.9M1 (thus I disabled the special Netigso job on my own builder, it is no longer necessary).

Second, I have improved the Netbinox IDE. It is now more stable (especially the equinox integration) and also includes brand new splash screen.

Enjoy! Test. Report bugs.

--JaroslavTulach 13:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Even got this email: 

"In an effort to get information out to the Kenai community quickly, while trying to manage the integration of our two companies, I think we did a poor job at communicating our plans for Kenai.com to you.  I would like to remedy that now.  Our strategy is simple.  We don't believe it makes sense to continue investing in multiple hosted development sites that are basically doing the same thing.  Our plan is to shut down kenai.com and focus our efforts on java.net as the hosted development community.  We are in the process of migrating java.net to the kenai technology.  This means that any project currently hosted on kenai.com will be able to continue as you are on java.net.  We are still working out the technical details, but the goal is to make this migration as seamless as possible for the current kenai.com projects.  So in the meantime I suggest that you stay put on kenai.com and let us work through the details and get back to you later this month. 

Thanks for your feedback and patience."

These are actually great news. Hopefully all the kenai.com infrastructure like mercurial (subversion isn't fun), jira and hudson will be supported by java.net. So I'm waiting with the migration of "Real World Java EE Patterns" project and will even commit some more content soon. The great story about mercurial: the whole repository with history etc. sits on my machine and can be pushed wherever I want :-). kenai.com is/was an interesting platform - suitable not only for opensource projects.

In case you missed it, there's a new interview/article on NetBeans Zone entitled "Airport Operation Management on Oracle and the NetBeans Platform".

You'll find out about two NetBeans Platform applications created by AirIT in Orlando, FL, for managing airports and passengers. AirIT's solutions are operational at many airports around the world including Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Philadelphia, Miami, Puerto Rico's, Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Düsseldorf International Airports in Germany.

Why is the NetBeans Platform being used? "When we began thinking about evolving our rich client framework, we wanted a proven foundation to base it on. The NetBeans Platform provides us with a module-based system that includes many conveniences that we now take for granted: full Swing integration, allowing us to reuse existing UI components; a robust windowing framework, modes and undocking windows enhance user productivity; loose coupling between modules, allows for the recombination of modules to build new suites of products to meet the needs of a specific customer; and the ease of use, the underlying APIs are easy to pick up and use even for a developer new to the platform. The NetBeans Platform has been integral in our efforts to integrate our products into a comprehensive enterprise suite."

The first of the two applications is Flight Information System, used by airport personnel to plan for and manage flights of all types, airport usage (such as concourses, terminals, gates, ticket counters), and flight schedules, among other information:

The second is Local Departure Control System, which is a passenger processing solution that allows airline operations without proprietary departure control systems to deliver first-rate passenger and baggage handling by alleviating the need to manually process passengers and baggage:

Next week more recently discovered NetBeans Platform applications will be highlighted here and on netbeans.dzone.com. If you have applications on the NetBeans Platform that the world should know about, please say so!

Next time you fly somewhere, be aware that a lot of the processing of your trip might have been planned via the NetBeans Platform! AirIT, based in Orlando, FL, provides software for managing airport operations. And, though AirIT is database agnostic, a majority of its installations are running on Oracle Database 10g or greater.

Based on the comments under this post the options for placing braces were changed. So this post is not relevant anymore and new information you can find here.

When you select PHP language in the formatting setting then in Category combo box you can select category Braces. The panel for this category contains only one combo box, where you can define the position of braces. There are three values -  Same Line, New Line and Preserve Existing. The default value is Same Line. See the picture.

 I'm not sure whether this one option is sufficient. Does someone have a requirement to offer more options for the braces? For example the Java formatting has options that allow to set different behavior for class declaration, methods declaration and other cases. Also it allows to set that  braces are indented on the new line.

If there were a doubts that the Sun and Oracle are different companies with different approach and different kind of employees then you should see these videos. LOL.

• Videos: Overreacting to Oracle Acquisition of Sun
  
  
  
  disclaimer: all opinions/comments/ideas in this blog represent my view of the world. They may differ from a view or an opinion of my current/recent/future employer. All feature/product reviews/screencasts or presentations were taken from a parallel universe and are not connected with anything you know if not stated differently.

The Swedish Defence Research Agency is a Swedish government agency for defence research that reports to the Ministry of Defence. In this document (or here in Swedish) you can read about its MOSART Research Testbed, which is a framework for integration, testing, visualization, and evaluation of research results relating to surveillance data. The primary goal of MOSART is to simplify the integration of research results and other advanced functionality into larger simulations and demonstrators.

One part of MOSART is an application called NetScene. It is a tool for creating, editing, and executing scenarios in the testbed and is especially developed with distributed simulation in mind. Its main features are that it uses an XML based scenario format, that it has a GUI for adding, editing, and removing entities and paths, and that it connects to other parts of the MOSART testbed, such as HLA (High Level Architecture), which relates to real-time processing.

Here's a screenshot to give an impression of what NetScene is, i.e., an application created atop the NetBeans Platform:

These developments and the documents referred to above were created in co-operation with the Swedish Armed Forces in 2005 and 2006.

Project News Download Java Card Modules for NetBeans IDE 6.8 Java Card is a platform for writing and deploying Java code to run on tiny embedded devices, such as smart cards. The new Java Card modules for NetBeans IDE 6.8 are now available in the NetBeans Update Center. Please test the Java Card modules and tell us what you think!

The English Version of the Article is out:

Comment: A Sigh of Relief For NetBeans? - JAXenter.com.

In the upcoming release of the NetBeans Platform, already in 6.9 Milestone 1 (as shown here), one big new feature will be native REST support in NetBeans module projects. What does this mean? Whereas in the past you would need to create a REST client in a separate JAR and then attach that JAR within a library wrapper module to your NetBeans Platform application...

"ASTRAD, which stands for "architecture and simulation tool for radar analysis and design", is a powerful software platform fitted to radar techniques. It provides users with all the functions needed to model, simulate and design radar systems. Launched as a joint project between French Ministry of Defence and the radar industry community, the ASTRAD software has the ambition to stand out as a reference platform for engineering and scientific applications."

Don't take my word for it, read the article (assuming you want to pay $36 too) published May 2008, here:

ASTRAD: Simulation platform, a breakthrough for future electromagnetic systems development

Here are some small and grainy screenshots from within the article above:

When you read the article you'll find the following paragraph: "ASTRAD includes open-source components to avoid license pending issues and to maintain control over the software. The IDE is based on the NetBeans Platform, a Sun Microsystems open-source reusable framework for assisting in the development of other desktop applications. ASTRAD is a set of NetBeans modules providing many additional features. The resulting architecture inherits from NetBeans modularity and is easily tailored to different deployments."

And guess how the article ends? "Launched as a joint project between French Ministry of Defence and radar industry community, the ASTRAD software has the ambition to stand out as a reference platform for engineering and scientific applications. A common objective is also to promote ASTRAD as the European solution and propose built-in solution for the design and assessment of complex systems."

That reminds me a bit of what Saab Systems Grintek is doing with the NetBeans Platform for the South African National Defence Force: http://kitt.co.za. Hmmm. Along the way there are now so many defence related NetBeans Platform screenshots on NetBeans Platform Showcase that the time has come to create two separate categories from the "Aerospace and Defence" section.

In other news. Tomorrow's blog entry will be entitled "Swedish Ministry of Defence on the NetBeans Platform".

FERMAX is a Spanish family company with headquarters in Valencia, Spain. Founded in 1949, the company specializes in designing, manufacturing and commercializing Audio/Video Door Entry and Access Control Systems. At present, FERMAX enjoys a prominent position among the leading brands worldwide.Below follows an interview with Oswaldo Rubio, a software developer in the FERMAX R & D department.

Ne faites pas comme moi, ne loupez pas si vous êtes sur Paris la soirée pour fêter les deux ans du ParisJUG le 9 février 2010 dans le 17ème (attention c'est pas la Sorbonne du quartier latin...).

Antonio et la bande on préparé une belle soirée avec Sacha Labourey (que j'ai déjà raté lors de son premier passage) comme intervenant dans la séance plénière. Je regrette beaucoup de ne pas pouvoir être là, je pense que mes oreilles Sun/Oracle vont siffler ;)

Je compte bien suivre la soirée sur Twitter (juste pas jusqu'à la fin du resto ou de la quatrième mi-temps orchestrée sans doute par Cyril & co. :)

Few weeks ago I wrote that I try to improve indentation engine and formatting for PHP files. Some improvements in the indentation engine were done during fixing NetBeans 6.8 and with this post I would like to start a discussion about formatting, which I try to improve during these days. In the development builds there are new categories for the PHP formatting options. Now are available categories for setting Tabs and Indents, Braces, Spaces and  Blank Lines.

User can modify behavior of the formatter in two levels. In Editor category -> Formatting tab in Options dialog (Tools -> Options) you can modify setting for PHP formatting. You should select PHP in the Language combo box, if you want to change PHP specific settings.

These global options influence the behavior for all PHP files, except the files belonging projects that use their own setting. So the PHP formatting can be also influence on the project level. In Project Properties dialog is Formatting category and you can decide, whether the project will use global options or the project specific options. Also you can easily reuse options from other project after click on Load from other project button. Like in the global options you should select PHP in the Language combo box, if you want to change behavior of the PHP formatting for the selected project. 

The first category is Tabs And Indents. The options Number of Spaces per Indent, Tab Size and Right Margin are common for all editors and by default the global setting is used. The check box Expand Tabs to Spaces is clear. By default it is checked and it means that the existing chars '\t' are replaced by the count of spaces that is defined as Tab Size property. Property Number of Spaces per Indent defines the maximum number of spaces that will be created after pressing TAB key to indent the source code.  When the check box Expand Tabs to Spaces is unchecked, then the defined number of spaces in Tab Size property is converted to the '\t' char. For this reason is good if you set Number of Spaces per Tab to an even multiple or divisor of Tab Size .  

The PHP specific options:

• Initial Indentation -  In files only with PHP code it defines number of spaces, that are placed at the beginning of every line (except the PHP delimiters <?php, <? and ?>). In files, where is HTML mixed with php, the Initial Indentation defines number of spaces from beginning of the PHP delimiter. 
• Continuation Indentation Size - If there is a long expression, which is on more lines, then the continuation of the expression is indented through this property.  
• Items in Array Declaration - It's similar to previous property, but for an array declaration.

 

I've come across a whole bunch of new (to me, anyway) NetBeans Platform applications in the past few weeks. Mostly commercial applications. While working on interviews with the related developers, I'm also gathering their cool screenshots for inclusion in our evergrowing NetBeans Platform Showcase.

Here's one of them, from Fermax Electronica SAE, a company specializing in audio and video door entry systems. The application is designed to manage an Access Control installation based on thermal fingerprint readers, manufactured by Fermax:

Pretty cool stuff and I'm interested in finding out more about thermal fingerprint readers and how that works with Java, aren't you? That's what the interview will spend some time on, so watch this space (and NetBeans Zone) for that interview in the coming days! (Update: here it is.)

In other news. Read Building an OSGi declarative service with Maven using NetBeans, by Kayode Odeyemi, published this week in his blog.

Today, February 3rd 2010, at 10 AM Pacific Standard Time, Prasad is talking about SailFin V2 (Sun GlassFish Communications Server 2.0) in the latest edition of Sun Software Webcasts. The webinar will cover new features in SailFin V2 and also explain how to develop SIP applications using SailFin V2. You can register here for the webinar. For more information, please take a look at Prasad's blog.