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JSP Buzz: Vol. III Issue #8

JSPBuzz -- April 30th, 2002

03.30.2002

Table of Contents
  1. What is in a Name?
  2. MS Exec Claims Error on .Net Server Date
  1. The Numbers
  1. EJB Design Patterns
  2. Java Technology and XML Part 3: Performance Improvement Tips
  3. Expand XSL with Extensions
  4. Service Economy Will Web Services Be The Savior of The Computing Industry?
  5. The Story Behind Apache's Quest to Open Up The Java Platform
  6. How to Listen For Printing-Related Events And Directly Print Graphics
  7. Publish Event-Driven Web Content With Jsp Custom Tags
  8. Linux Speed-Start Program Overview
  9. Swing
  10. Working with XML Server Pages in Apache Cocoon 2
  11. Java Digest
  1. JDO
  2. JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL)
  3. Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate #1
News
What is in a Name?
Information Week April 15, 2002 
Oh boy new names, old names, and shuffle them around and confuse everyone. Sun has officially dropped the iPlanet and Forte Names and the products are officially being branded as Sun One. Wait... who is on first, and Sun One is on second and I don't know is on third.... Where are Abbott and Costello when you need them!
MS Exec Claims Error on .Net Server Date
Infoworld April 26, 2002 
Not surprising news, but news to me, .Net Server (the replacement of windows 2000, with .Net integration) has slipped to shipping late this year. Depending on who you talk to,(and when you ask) it seems the real shipping date might be a little later.
Rambles
The Numbers
Casey Kochmer 
How big is the Web server market place? Ever wonder how many sites use ASP, JSP or PHP? How about how many J2EE server implementations are in use? These are difficult questions. In the two years I have been scanning the Internet news for the JSPBuzz, I have yet to come across real numbers. It is something you think would be available. Occasionally I come across interesting tidbits. One tidbit which is an interesting statistic, is that JBoss had 126,658 downloads in January. Even if that means only 1 in 10 downloads results in a server implementation, that is quite a bit of J2EE development on the JBoss platform. Assuming the average project lasts for 8 months and also making the assumption only half of the projects make it to become a final application, this gives a rough number of 50,000 JBoss J2EE applications being developed in a year worldwide.
Hmm now lets look at these numbers in a different angle. In an informal survey of 1400 users of J2EE applications shows JBoss with 38% of the market. The link to the survey can be found at this link.
J2EE Survey
Ok lets do some more math. If JBoss is a third of the market place that translates into 150,000 J2EE applications being built in a year. A large number indeed, but small when you consider there are tens of millions of web sites.
Now the last of the math: lets assume only 1 out 4 JSP projects are based upon J2EE server implementations. So this means roughly 600,000 JSP applications are built worldwide in a year. Does this number make sense? Who knows, I am just basing it on very rough guesses with some very simple data. I would think 600,000 is a bit high but who knows, I have found the JSP market to be surprisingly invisible. JSP works, it runs well, people build sites with little fanfare and move on to build the next site. So it wouldn't be surprising either if the market was that large. I would also guess over half that market is also represented by applications which are not easily seen on the Internet.
So in the end does this mean anything. Not really, I was curious on the size of the JSP market place really. This ramble was an excuse for me to spend some time to use good old fashion back of the envelope techniques I used as a physicist.
The interesting thing about this, is a year or so ago, JBoss was a long way from being a market leader, and yet now, it is rapidly becoming the market leader of J2EE servers. Now the numbers are going to vary depending on how you slice and dice it, and who's survey data you are using. However, I would guestimate that between JBoss, WebSphere and Web Logic we are looking at 80% of the overall marketplace of J2EE servers. That doesn't leave much room for the rest of the pack. I suspect we will see most of the 13 or so J2EE licensed server products to disappear into extreme niche marketplaces or drop out of the picture soon.
My only other commentary on the numbers, are don't be trapped by them. In the end it doesn't make a difference how many sites run JSP or another product. The only numbers we should be interested in are: will the product be around for the life of the application, will there be support in terms of developers for the product, and does the product meet the needs of your application. It doesn't make a difference if JSP is running a million web sites or 5 million sites, what is important is if JSP can do the job. In most cases the answer is yes.
Links
EJB Design Patterns
Floyd Marinescu April 2002 
Unlike any other patterns book, EJB Design Patterns is an in-depth, EJB-centric collection of twenty advanced design patterns. The book also contains best practices on patterns-driven design, development methodology, tips and strategies, Ant Build Systems, JUnit testing strategies, using Java Data Objects (JDO) as an alternative to entity beans, and more.
Java Technology and XML Part 3: Performance Improvement Tips
Thierry Violleau March 2002 
This is a review of some tips for improving performance when processing XML documents, centering around improving the CPU, memory, and I/O or network consumption. Worth reading for anyone who is considering or is in the process of building a XML/Java based application for the first time.
Expand XSL with Extensions
Jared Jackson April 2002 
This is a discussion how to add additional functionality within XSL through the use of extensions. An XSL extension is a method of executing code within the XSL stylesheet. This code is typical written using the same language with which your XSL processor is based upon. However, often times JavaScript can be used as a common underlying scripting language.
Service Economy Will Web Services Be The Savior of The Computing Industry?
Neil McAllister April 18, 2002 
A quick article just talking about Web Services. No technical reason to read the article, other than it is a fun one to read. Of course any article that breifly pokes fun at computer CEO's is usually a fun article to read.
The Story Behind Apache's Quest to Open Up The Java Platform
Robert McMillan April 2002 
As always Jason Hunter does an excellent Job describing how the JCP/JSR process works relative to open source. Well worth reading if you don't understand the Sun and how open source relates to Java.
How to Listen For Printing-Related Events And Directly Print Graphics
John Zukowski April 2002 
How to create a print job is a very common question. This article is related to printing from Java and not from a JSP application.
Publish Event-Driven Web Content With Jsp Custom Tags
Victor Okunev April 2002 
The article summary states the following: "Dynamically generated Web content can sometimes appear relatively static. In that case, the Web server publishes dynamically to serve clients the same unmodified content, all at the expense of resources and performance. This article shows how you can avoid this unnecessary stress on the server. Based on an event-driven publishing approach, you can serve the same content in static document form to magically reflect the data's current state." The article is pretty basic and it starts off well. The example could use some more details with numbers to show how much performance could be improved using such a system.
Linux Speed-Start Program Overview
IBM April 2002 
Accelerate your Linux apps with IBM's middleware for Linux, including WebSphere Studio Application Developer, WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database, and more. Get familiar with IBM tools through this trial Software evaluation kit for Linux. Get evaluation code, free training, and free tech support! IBM will help you learn Linux and get your new app into production quickly. For those of you thinking about Linux, this might be a good way to get some help making the transition.
Swing
JavaLobby April 2002 
A decent conversation about Swing and why it is slow.
Working with XML Server Pages in Apache Cocoon 2
IBM April 23rd, 2002 
The second tutorial of two explaining how to use Cocoon. For those who don't know what Cocoon is, it is a servlet based XML/XSLT processing system. Even better, it is possible to integrate Cocoon into a JSP project.
Java Digest
Java Digest  
A new Java resource site for developers. The site has links to Java articles open source reporting, products news and other resources.
Products
JDO
Sun April 26th 2002 
The final version 1.0 of JDO is almost ready for release. As good as sliced bread and maybe better. This link has all sorts of references and information to help teach a user about the JDO library. Briefly JDO offers an easy way to map objects to relational databases. Of course that is only the start of what the JDO can do for you. Check it out to learn more.
JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL)
Jakarta April 2002 
This is the download of the Beta 2 release of the JSTL reference implementation
The JSTL's Proposed Final Draft
Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate #1
Mozilla April 18th 2002 
The first release candidate of Mozilla 1.0 is now available!
Release Notes

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