Charles McGuire

Ranch Hand
+ Follow
since Jan 18, 2005
Merit badge: grant badges
For More
Cows and Likes
Cows
Total received
0
In last 30 days
0
Total given
0
Likes
Total received
0
Received in last 30 days
0
Total given
0
Given in last 30 days
0
Forums and Threads
Scavenger Hunt
expand Ranch Hand Scavenger Hunt
expand Greenhorn Scavenger Hunt

Recent posts by Charles McGuire

Is it possible to model/use database as immutable objects instead of JavaBeans? In a Javaworld article on idioms, the author says the following in promotion of immutable objects:

From a practical perspective, many widely-used frameworks require application programmers to use JavaBeans (or something similar) to model database records. This is deeply unfortunate, because it doesn't allow programmers to take advantage of the many positive qualities of immutable objects.
John O'Hanley, Javaworld.com, 29 July 2008



So I've been searching (which led me to this thread) on how that could be done. I must be a victim of JavaBean thinking, because I don't know how you can change an object without using setters.
15 years ago

Ah yes, I forgot about google. I remember at some point in my series of interviews with them...



Bear, were these interviews for a job or research for a publication (book, article, etc.)?
Wow. I always thought "well formed" meant a closing bracket for every tag, and proper sequence of the closing tags when nesting the different nodes. The following is the Wikipedia definition:

In web page design, and generally for all markup languages such as SGML, HTML, and XML, a well-formed element is one that is either:

* opened and subsequently closed,
* an empty element, which in that case must be terminated,
* properly nested so that it does not overlap.

For example, in HTML: <b>word</b> is a well-formed element, while <i><b>word</i> is not, since the bold element is not closed. In XHTML, empty elements (elements that inherently have no content) should be closed by putting a slash at the end of the opening tag, e.g. <img />, <br />, <hr />, etc. In HTML, there is no closing tag for such elements, and no slash is added to the opening tag.

Furthermore, if an element has any attributes, each attribute value must be properly quoted.

In a well-formed document,

* all elements are well-formed, and
* a single element, known as the root element, contains all of the other elements in the document.


[ July 16, 2008: Message edited by: Charles McGuire ]
One of the most maddening situations we face when developing browser based applications is the difference in browser behavior. Even though our apps are internal facing, we still have 5 different browsers to consider in our development(when versions are included). We cannot dictate the browser version to our users, even though that would solve some challenges.

We are strongly considering GWT, though haven't gone there. Yet.

Does your book address this challenge in any way? Tips? Techniques?
On the Amazon blurb for your book, you said:

One thing I am a little worried about: with any book of this nature I can virtually guarantee that anyone who reads it will absolutely love some of the chapters and absolutely hate others. We certainly saw that in the review stages with early drafts of the manuscript. However, we also saw that the reviewers couldn't agree on which chapters they loved and which they hated. In fact, a chapter that one reviewer hated was usually another reviewer's favorite and vice versa.



The love / hate thing smells deliciously of controversy. What parts of the book do you expect (or have found to be) most controversial?
Hi Rusty -

I've read the reviews at Amazon. There aren't many; the three are by "professional" reviewers, hardly customers like us (at least not like me). I'm trying to understand for whom the book is targeted.

For example, James Stewart (who was sent a copy of the book by the publisher) said this:

In general I suspect the key audience for this will be IT departments inside large organisations tasked with refreshing or extending an intranet.



Would you agree with that?

To put it another way, I work for a medium sized company in a very small IT shop (only two developers, both of us pretty green). Most of our applications are web apps for internal users. Would you say this book is targeted for someone like us? We have only a few apps on line and are more interested in getting new development done right than refactoring an existing monster code base that doesn't exist (yet).
Thanks for the info!

I was afraid the information was "right under my nose" and just didn't know where to look. I searched all over for this reference and just couldn't find it.
15 years ago
I have this older application that is still on JVM version 1.3. I am told it will be upgraded next year (I hope), but in the mean time I'm stuck maintaining it at this level. I'd like to add some test classes & methods using JUnit, but I can't seem to find any reference that indicates what is the highest version of JUnit that will work on JDK 1.3.

Does anybody know what JUnit version will work on JDK 1.3?

(If you know the answer, please tell me where you found the answer, esp. if a URL).

Thanks!
15 years ago
Does The Ranch provide any sort of forum or page dedicated for service providers of J2EE hosting? Specifically, I'm looking for a Tomcat hosting service. I've found lots through Google, but I really have no way of knowing which ones are any good... or more importantly, which ones are horrible.

I thought I saw something here at the ranch for this, but maybe I was on drugs that day...
15 years ago
Well, I just stepped on a big land mine. iBatis doesn't support auto-generated keys. Ugh.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IBATIS-142
Our development team is considering adopting a Spring MVC + iBatis framework mix. I just finished doing a search on this forum looking for discussions and problems with this combination, but I didn't find a lot of either here. I don't know if it is because it is an uncommon blend, or maybe simply devoid of problems

My search (outside of JavaRanch) let me to an article that states the following:

... the SPring Framework supports several alternative persistence layers...iBatis is generally better suited than Hibernate for the following situations:

  • You need to integrate with an existing database
  • Your DBAs and application developers tend to work separately
  • You have more junior Java developers
  • Your data model is relatively simple


  • This seems to describe us pretty well. We are starting a "proof of concept" pilot to use these two frameworks together in our environment. However, not wanting to trust that we will discover all the landmines in the pilot, I'd like to ask this forum the following questions:

  • What has been your experience with iBatis?
  • What could we expect with an iBatis + Spring marriage?
  • Would you recommend a different tool in place of iBatis?


  • As for the last question, Hibernate is pretty well ruled out. We tried it once, found it to be too heavy for our skill level. It lengthened development time and had performance problems. We do not have the bandwidth to acquire Hibernate guru-level skills that framework seems to require to use well and keep tuned.

    Any help / suggestions / resource links would be appreciated.
    [ March 28, 2008: Message edited by: Charles McGuire ]
    In a meeting this week I told my boss that I took and passed the SCJA exam. I did this on my own time, "under the radar" and paying for it with my own money. I had kept him in the dark. The next exam SCJP exam is more expensive, I said, and would it be okay to expense it (get reimbursed)?

    His reaction just about knocked me off my chair. He could not contain his enthusiasm. Not only would he pay for my SCJP exam, but he also wanted me to submit for reimbursement of the SCJA test I just took.

    This thread topic is "Value of SCJA?" Well, my boss values it more than I knew!
    15 years ago
    I've heard good things about Tapestry, but the one big problem that keeps coming up was the fact the Tapestry re-write broke backward compatibility. To be honest, it kept us from picking it up and trying it out. I directed our limited resources to another framework instead.

    Refactoring is good but breaking code is bad. I wonder if Tapestry will overcome that big skid mark on it's history? Managers think that it happened before, it will happen again.
    [ March 05, 2008: Message edited by: Charles McGuire ]
    I just took the exam this morning, and passed but just barely. I didn't study, didn't review. I took it for granted that this would be a slam dunk. It almost wasn't, and had I not passed, it would have been extremely embarrassing.

    To me, it had value:

    1. It was humbling.
    2. It "shocked" me into preparing better for the SCJP exam.

    I'm not expecting it to get me a better job or a promotion. It is a stepping stone.
    16 years ago
    Sorry Christophe. I don't have the specifics for which you are asking. All the sessions from the conference are on YouTube, but even if we find the specific reference you won't get the detail you're seeking.

    One of the appealing things about GWT is that it insulates the developer from knowing a lot of JavaScript. For example, I work in a small development department and we have to be careful about spreading ourselves too thin over too many technologies. Unfortunately, management makes us support what we create and put into production (the gall of them!)

    Am I correct to infer from answers you've given elsewhere in this forum this week that your techniques (and JS libraries you use) have sort of the same goal, that is, leverage library code and don't become JS Ninjas? Or do you advocate the path to total master of JS to become one with the language?