A company called GemStone Systems, who's focus is enterprise and performance, has a teaser site that's got a few people talking...

Ruby that scales™

http://ruby.gemstone.com/

What are they up to over there? Not sure yet, guess we'll have to wait for RubyConf '08... but it could be interesting.

I recently took a look at some simple benchmarks for a JRuby on Rails application... just to see where things stand. The results were not all that surprising.

While JRuby performs well against Ruby 1.8.6 in straight benchmarks, the Rails performance is still lagging a bit. But things are getting better.

So you have most likely heard of Scala, even if you have never seen a line of code written in it. Scala is a dynamic language written for the JVM... it's statically typed, it's not statically typed... it's OO and it's functional... I think it's confused. But turns out to be quite a performer.

The most surprising thing I've come across are the numbers shown here:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=nsievebits&lang=all

Yes, the Java 6 server impl may need tweaking to get better numbers, but the fact still remains... Scala (language running on top of JVM impl'd in Java) beat actual Java (THE language for the JVM)!!!

Am I the only one somewhat surprised here? I really need to block some time to take a closer look at Scala. (http://scala-lang.org)

Unless you have been living behind your monitor and keyboard only to look up to find the coffee mug you knocked over, you've most likely heard about all the attention dynamic languages, or dynlangs, have been getting these days. Dynamic Languages (or scripting languages) have been taking their spot in the limelight in recent years... I feel this is in large part due to the readily available video streaming sites showcasing the benefits of such languages/frameworks.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

What does the new Adobe Apollo framework and runtime spell for future Swing development? With soo many people out there who already know flash/adobe products Apollo could capture quite a bit of the market.

This is not to say Apollo will replace enterprise level Swing devlelopment... but maybe it can? Send some simple requests to a smart backend server on the enterprise that does the heavy work and returns results to the view??? (leave comments)

Have you ever been developing something requiring a connection to a development server over SSL?  Was the server not under your control?  And you had either an invalid, corrupt or possibly no cert at all to add to your trustStore?

We won't go into why this scenario may occur... but I know there are quite a few people out there asking how to bypass the cert validation for HTTPS and LDAP over SSL (LDAPS) connections.

The place to start is the SSLSocketFactory and more specifically the TrustManager you use. 

In the sample reference file "BlindSSLSocketFactoryTest.java" we establish connections to HTTPS and Active Directory via SSL (LDAPS) servers without valid certs by using our own SSLSocketFactory.  We need to come up with a SSLSocketFactory that will use a TrustManager list we specify as an alternative to the SSLSocketFactory that will be used by the JVM.

Just a quick post to make sure all know that a version of Oracle's 10g database is now free...

Free
to develop, deploy, and distribute

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g
Release 2 code base that's free
to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to
administer.

 Oracle 10g Express Edition has the expected limitations on size, but Oracle has greatly improved the install process.  (If you have tried to install 9i before... you'll see what I mean.)  They appear to be going after the MySQL market share with this free offering...  should be interesting to see how it plays out for them.

For your next project, it will be worth your time to investigate this new option.

If you have written a servlet or a single JSP, it is almost guaranteed that you have used Apache's Tomcat Server.  Whether you use it for development, to run intranet applications, or to serve your production needs... Tomcat is ready and willing to step up to the plate.

There are many different ways to manage your Tomcat instance, but for a great "Web 2.0" interface with lots of bells and whistles, take a look at Tomcat Probe.

Tomcat Probe is the ultimate tool to manage and monitor your Tomcat instance. Lightweight web user interface, killer features, no-fuss installation and weekly updates. Tomcat Probe gives you total control over live Tomcat instances and applications.

The interface provides for the management of deployed webapps, JSP's within apps, and data sources.  You can view all kinds of stats for threads, charts for traffic information, download log files, call the garbage collector and much more.  All of this with a great looking interface.

Even if you don't have a need to use this tool, it is worth a look.

Have you ever worked on a project that has been successfully deployed for some time only to have the topic of integration creep into the picture late in the game?  Lucky for us there is an easy and efficient way to deploy Web Services for integration literally within minutes!  If you've been faced with such a situation or are simply curious, please read on!

For us to see what is to come after Java, we'll have to take a look at where we've been.  Let's just agree for the sake of this blog entry that C hit the scene around 1973 (32 yrs), C++ came ten years later in 1983 (22 yrs), Java made its debut in 1995 (10 yrs) and another language some of you might have heard about called PHP put it's hat in the ring around the same time in 1995 (10 yrs).  

Why did I pick these languages?  According SourceForge.net these languages rank as follows:
1. Java
2. C++
3. C
4. PHP