Written by: Dan HinojosaMon, 18 Feb 2008 10:16 AM PST .
Filed Under: SeamDownloadJBossJBoss World 2008

Here is the presentation of 'Agile Development with JBoss Seam'  that I tried to give at JBoss World 2008 in Orlando Florida.  I use the word 'try' because when I got on stage, I became so excited that I ended up expanding on every topic of every slide.  Then, when the proctor indicated that there were only five minutes left, I started to freak out and sweat buckets - I had only gone through half of what I wanted to present! :(  It was all downhill from there...

Unfortunately, the dry run that I gave to my JUG before-hand didn't help at all, because the atmosphere at JBoss World put me into a 'sharing' mode so that all I wanted to do was dump everything 'Seam' from my wet squishy brain onto the folks that attended my presentation.

So even though the actual presentation didn't go the way I wanted it,  the work I put into it did.

To download the slides (format is OpenDocument Presentation), click here: www.evolutionnext.com/blog/files/jbossworld_presentation.odp

To download the demo seam-gen project, click here:
www.evolutionnext.com/blog/files/jboss_world_2008_download.zip

The download requires a little bit of setup. Don't worry, it isn't anything difficult. ;)  All of the information you need is in the README.txt file (located in the demo seam-gen project zip file).  The demo is licensed as GPLv3 to encompass all of the component's licenses.  

I was thinking of maturing this little project as a reference implementation for testing in Seam.  If anyone out there is interested in having me upkeep this demo, let me know.  One consideration that I need to make is whether to host the demo from here or add it to the Seam project.  I am leaning towards the latter.

1 comment for 'Agile Development with JBoss Seam' Download

Written by: Dan HinojosaThu, 14 Feb 2008 09:51 AM PST .
Filed Under: SeamJBossJBoss World 2008

Just finished the first day at JBoss World 2008. There is no center theme, but there is certain buzz about the JBoss Developer Studio.  The Studio features a great set of tools to get started with Seam Development.  The demos are certainly outstanding and has made developers eager to try it out.  As far as I gathered it is Eclipse based, but plugins for IDEs will be forthcoming.

The Keynote gave clarity to how jboss.org is set up for open-source development and community, and jboss.com is the production and support based website that will be their money maker. 

The Introduction To Seam presentation got a lot of fanfare, so much so, that I wasn't able to get in on it.  That's OK since I know Seam anyway.  The BOF by far was the best part and perhaps the 2nd best reason for coming (the 1st being that I will be presenting Agile Development using JBoss Seam on Friday).  I got a few of my questions out of the way. 

My first question, was how to get rid of more of LIES (LazyInitializationExceptions) other than just use the SMPC.  Pete Muir and Gavin King helped to explain that if I have a session scoped entity bean for example and have a conversation based session bean that has reference on the entity bean, then that session will naturally have issues with transaction locking and produce the LazyInitializationException.  The overall answer was that LIES should never happen in JBoss Seam, and if you get the error message in anyway then you are obviously doing something wrong. I am going to have to research more about the scoping and workarounds and I will have an article posted either here on my blog, or in the seamframework.org website.

That brings me a to a great segue, the Seam Framework website is up and running out of alpha, and I got to say, that is absolutely impressive. If you need to see a complete implementation of jboss seam in a production environment sign up and try it.

The other question I asked is how I can inject components into my validators and converters in JSF without using Component.getInstance("<<component name>>"). Using the getInstance method of course makes testing very difficult.  Pete Muir explained that their hands were tied.  The reason for @BypassInterceptors and the use Component.getInstance("<<component name>>") is because jsf reserializes the validator or converter object, and in the JSF domain it cannot recognize the @In annotation and provide the correct injection.

That's it for now....currently I am attending the 2nd keynote with a complete "business value, paradigm shift, SOA, value added, ROI, service mix" happy business feel good discussion.

Written by: Dan HinojosaSat, 5 Jan 2008 02:33 PM PST .
Filed Under: SeamDaniel HinojosadbunitJSFJBoss SeamxmlunitseleniumJBosspresentationXML UnitJBoss World 2008easymock

I was accepted to present at JBoss World 2008 about a couple of months ago, and I am just about done crafting my presentation. My presentation highlights how to unit-test, integration-test, and acceptance test your jboss seam web applications.

The presentation will use a slew of technologies from easymock to selenium. I only have a measly 90 minutes to go through it all, but I hope and anticipate that it will be exciting, entertaining , and informational.

My bio and information about the presentation is here. For complete information on JBoss World 2008 in Orlando and other presentations that will be presented, please visit jbossworld.com

1 comment for Agile Development Using JBoss Seam @ JBoss World 2008 in Orlando

Written by: Dan HinojosaMon, 5 Nov 2007 01:58 PM PST .
Filed Under: SeamJavaJBossWebFramework

The best java web framework, JBoss Seam 2.0.0GA is out and it is absolutely amazing.

What is so amazing about it?

• PDF generation
• email generation
• easiest ajax development
• integrated ajax widgets
• integrated facelets templating
• unit-test, functional-test, integration-test friendly
• component-based
• ejb3-based
• rapid-development
• conversation based scoping
• integrated security
• GWT integration
• extended JSF EL features
• and on and on...

I am so confident in everything that JBoss Seam does that I am ready to change my entire business around it. This is your complete solution in a web framework. I am updating a customer's site currently using JBoss Seam 2.0.0, and I am really excited about it mainly because Seam is expressive and keeps me productive. I look forward to doing more business with this framework for many years to come.

Disclaimer: I am not an employee or contractor with JBoss

4 comments for The best damn web framework (Jboss Seam 2.0.0GA) is out....

Written by: Dan HinojosaFri, 29 Dec 2006 02:10 PM PST .
Filed Under: SeamGroovyRuby2007EJB3JavaGrailsRailsJBoss

Predictions for 2007:

Just a minute while I take out my crystal ball. It is currently sitting in my garage, caked over with dust. There! All dusted off and just like new.
Here are my predictions for the year 2007. Take note, because all of these will come true. Eat your heart out Nostradamus.

• Groovy will enjoy great success. People will love the idea of having a powerful scripting language that uses the well known Java API at their disposal. Groovy will bring about the repatriation of several Ruby users that defected from Java.
  
• Grails will see some success, but that success won't come 'til late 2007. This is because people need time to learn Groovy first, and the Grails developers will probably be working diligently towards version 1.0 throughout 2007.
• Developers will realize that SOA has nothing to do with Web Services. The SOA community will also gain a general understanding of what SOA really is, hopefully before SOA 2.0 comes out. ;)
• The Java community will continue to seek clarity on the future of Java and whether or not Java is meant to be an easy language to learn. Such ruminations will lead to more great debates on generics, in-line XML, the arrow operator, and whether it is Java's manifest destiny to include features from other languages in the JDK in order for Java to remain on top.
• EJB3 will finally be released by major vendors and will gain acceptance by developers.
  
• JBoss Seam will gain acceptance by many web developers, but will continue to have problems selling its idea because those same web developers will have difficulty wrapping their heads around what stateful development is and how it's useful to them.
  
• Legions of well-known web and desktop Java developers will be bored with web and desktop development and will start to get creative with Java on other devices.
• JUnit dominance will be relinquished to TestNG.
• Ant will be demoted by the masses as merely a vehicle for scripting to get builds done.
• Dependency Injection and Interface Oriented Design will continue to be accepted by Java Developers.
• The Google Web Toolkit will be the most talked about Java based product in 2007. It will bring non-Java developers to the Java language, eager to do outstanding things with AJAX without the need to code in JavaScript.
  
• With systems like Subversion/CVS, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Feature/Bug Tracking software, Gmail, Blogs and Wikis. Developer machines will be and should be relegated to being hard drives dedicated to holding only the JDK, version controlled source code and libraries, and music files that developers listen to while coding. 
  

Now, go in peace, and spread the good words of what I have foreseen and given to you. ;)
Happy New Year!
Danno!

Written by: Dan HinojosaWed, 1 Feb 2006 10:30 AM PST .
Filed Under: MyFacesJSFJava Server FacesJBossNullPointerException

If you are trying to get JSF-RI and JBoss 4.0.3 to work with each other, you are in for a special surprise. The following code will help de-stupefy the situation:

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentTag.setupResponseWriter(UIComponentTag.java:615)
        at javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentTag.doStartTag(UIComponentTag.java:217)
        at org.apache.myfaces.taglib.core.ViewTag.doStartTag(ViewTag.java:71) 

The NullPointerException is a result of a collision with the JSF-RI. This error occurs only with JBoss 4.0.3 because it comes packaged with MyFaces. The following solution was recommended by JBoss in their wiki.

Fix for the all configuration

The all configuration has something missing from the all/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat5.5.sar/meta-inf/jboss-service.xml file. If using the all configuration with JSF you should edit the value of the FilteredPackages attribute to make it look like this:

<attribute name="FilteredPackages">javax.servlet,org.apache.commons.logging</attribute>

Note that there should be no space on either side of the comma. For more details on this issue, see http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-2349

Using the JSF Reference Implementation

To use the JSF Reference Implementation instead of the bundled MyFaces implementation, simply delete the jbossweb-tomcat55.sar/jsf-lib directory. Then, package the RI in your WEB-INF/lib directory as usual.

Note: You may also need to delete temp directories such as server/default/tmp and server/default/work. See comment by Geoffery in http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-1508

I hope that helps.

1 comment for Getting JBoss 4.0.3 to work the JSF-RI

Written by: Dan HinojosaWed, 30 Nov 2005 10:29 AM PST .
Filed Under: java:comp/env/processorfreezehangJNDIJBosshangsfreezes

Ok, so you have developed an enterprise application using JBoss. You deploy, and you fire up your web app, and it hangs. The web site never comes up and before you know it your processor is screaming. You check and double check. You're kicking in chairs and knocking down tables, in a restaurant, in a western town. What to do?

Well, I had this problem a while ago and corrected it. It came up again this morning. I knew I had resolved something similar. It was the same problem and of course the same solution.

The problem is that JBoss isn't a graceful server if you get a JNDI name wrong. So if you have this problem, double check the following:

• Your configuration files like your ejb-jar.xml or your web.xml. It is possible that names, links, or references are not matching up correctly.
• Your code. Remember that the standard lookup prefix is java:comp/env/ when looking up resources on a J2EE server. Check the names of the resources you are looking for in your code. This happened to be my problem consistently.

I hope this helps. I will check the mailing lists and bug databases and see if it has already been taken care of. If it hasn't, I will create a new report. If you have similar problems and/or solutions I would like to see them, so comment away.

2 comments for JBoss severely hangs or freezes and you don't know why.

Written by: Dan HinojosaMon, 5 Sep 2005 03:05 PM PDT .
Filed Under: server.xmlApachemod-jk.confhttpd.confVirtualHostJ2EEJBossVirtualHosts

A few days ago, I set up a virtual host on my server using JBoss/Tomcat with an Apache front-end. It was pretty simple. First thing is that I edited the server.xml document located in the tomcat sar directory in the deploy directory of your favorite server (minimal, default, or all). When I refer to the tomcat sar I am referring to the sar directory that houses all tomcat information. On my current server (JBoss-4.0.2), the sar directory is called jbossweb-tomcat55.sar

In the server.xml file you will see something similar to the following...

<Server>

   <Service name="jboss.web"
      className="org.jboss.web.tomcat.tc5.StandardService">

      <!-- A HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
      <Connector port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- A AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
      <Connector port="8009" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- SSL/TLS Connector configuration using the admin devl guide keystore
      <Connector port="8443" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <Engine name="jboss.web" defaultHost="localhost">
         <Host name="localhost"
            autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">
             ....
         </Host>
         <!--Here is where you will set up your hosts -->

      </Engine>

   </Service>
</Server>

Inside the engine element is where you will set up your hosts configuration. Currently there is a host set up for localhost. What needs to be done is that there needs to be a sibling to localhost set up for your new virtual host.

<Server>

   <Service name="jboss.web"
      className="org.jboss.web.tomcat.tc5.StandardService">

      <!-- A HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
      <Connector port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- A AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
      <Connector port="8009" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- SSL/TLS Connector configuration using the admin devl guide keystore
      <Connector port="8443" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <Engine name="jboss.web" defaultHost="localhost">
         <Host name="localhost"
            autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">
             ....
         </Host>
         
         <Host name="virtualhost2" autoDeploy="false"
                deployOnStartup="false" 
                deployXML="false">

             <!-- Add all your aliases here -->
             <Alias>virtual.evolutionnext.com</Alias>
             <Alias>myvirtual.evolutionnext.com<