OpenOffice.org api

Through Geertjan Wielenga's blog I listen about a quite promising project I haven't hear before. It's the OpenOffice API and it provides interfaces to allow the use of OO.org facilities from within your own programs. You can see some initial tests done by Geertjan here and here. Actually the OO.org site is under maintenance so I can't download it, but i'll do it as soon as possible and post something here.

Schwartz says the GPL is *on* the table for Java

Mr.Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's CEO) says in his blog that:

"But all in all, a really great week - we're now making serious progress
on open sourcing Java (and despite the cynics, using a GPL license is
very much *on* the table), while focusing the debate on what matters
most: not access to lines of code (that's already widely available), but ensuring compatibility."

Who says Sun is not open?

Ajax for Java dummies

Google just released a framework through their Open Source site to let Java programmers that doesn't know the quirks of web development create cool dynamic webpages using only Java code to generate pure HTML/Javascript (Ajax) code. This way the webs generated with the framework can be accesed by almost every browser (not with Konqueror 3.5.2 though), making easier to developers it's deployment in multiple browsers from one codebase.

Another interesting fact about the Google's approach is that they provide a class to show the (to be) generated web inside a Java app so developers can debug it from within their favorite IDE.

Somebody should create a Netbeans project Template to integrate the toolkit in it...

Opening Java

    If you are not living under a stone, you have surely listened about Sun's intention to "open" the sources of Java, a good move from Schwartz who clearly sees that the future ot software is not only in innovation but also in participation.

    If you want to watch the anouncement that is in every mouth, open this RealPlayer file, go to minute 23 and watch Rich Green state before a huge audience that "it (open sourcing Java) is not a question of wether but a question of how, and so we will do this". It doesn't sound like a rummour...

Hibernate made easier

Hibernate is a relational persistence service initially developed for the Java language (and succesfully ported to C#) that allow programmers to bind objects from their language with rows in a relational database. It's a cool technology that let developers forget about SQL queries, and integrate the database systems advantages more easily into their applications.

While Hibernate is quite easy to learn, it still includes some hand work that may be a bit boring and repetitive. Here is where NBXDoclet comes in action.
NBXDoclet is a plugin (module) for the Netbeans IDE (download here) that will include common tasks related to Hibernate projects within the netbeans editor.

You can watch a flash demo to see how nice it is.