When I talked about how Context Matters When Discussing Frameworks I intentionally left out naming any picks because the point of that article wasn’t to start a framework debate (neither is this one, but at least it will get isolated in here). In this post, I’ll cover my choice of frameworks.
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As if web framework religious discussions weren’t annoying enough, one thing that I always think is missing from such debates is context regarding the type of application being developed. It’s like discussing the best mode of personal travel without taking the type and size of journey into account. There’s a reason why you walk to the mailbox and drive to the store. You can drive to the mailbox but it will incur costs greater than the benefits. Similarly, you can walk to the store as long as it isn’t too far, you have the time to do so and you aren’t buying much.
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One of the first Seam 3 Modules to appear is the Seam Faces module which provides additional functionality to JSF. While there aren’t many pain points left in JSF, one of the biggest is the issue of data converters for entity objects. This article will take a look at how Seam Faces takes the pain out of writing JSF converters.
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This is the first in a series of articles looking at the conversation scope introduced in CDI as part of Java EE 6. We’ll start by looking at existing scopes and how they introduce limitations for developers and how CDI conversations get around these limitations.
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In part 1, we looked at the basic structure and configuration of the project that is common in all the archetypes. This time we’ll look at the minimal archetype that contains some more functionality and a number of different classes used to implement that functionality. (more…)

Here’s a list of 10 features you might need to implement everyday and how they are performed in JSF 2.0.
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This set of articles will document the contents of the Java EE archetypes for Maven. The archetypes come in four flavors, basic,minimal, sandbox and sandbox demo with each one being based on the previous one. In part 1, we’ll give an overview of the archetypes and the structure and configuration used in all of the archetypes. (more…)

One blog topic that never seems to get old is what makes a good programmer, or how to be a good programmer, or what you can do to be a better programmer. The same activities are often listed as being the path to successful codesmithing, when really it is just the method by which the true magic happens. With programming, like many things, it isn’t what you do, it’s what you learn from it and the only key ingredient to being a good programmer (besides practice) is exposure to programming. Exposure comes in many forms, whether it is through hands-on practice or looking at someone elses code. Here’s a few of typical examples given and how it exposes us to programming.
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DataValve is a free open source library that facilitates the creation of re-usable view and data access components as well as providing a number of features for pagination, sorting and parameterizing queries. This article defines the problems DataValve aims to solve and how it solves them.
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Note : Spigot has been renamed to DataValve.

(Edit : I renamed this post so it doesn’t seem like Spigot is just for Seam, Spigot can be used with different frameworks or without any at all. However, I wrote this post since Spigot is so familiar to the Seam EntityQuery that it should be easy for Seam users to get the idea)

Seam developers should become familiar with Spigot concepts fairly quickly since they are very similar to those found in the Seam EntityQuery which was one of the main inspirations for the framework. If you imagine taking the entity query class and splitting it in two, one part to keep hold of state and the other to actually fetch the data. The stateful part is the Paginator that keeps track of what the current ordering of the data is, what is the current page and how big the pages are. The stateless part takes the Ejbql and the pagination information and returns a subset of the data. Now imaging that the data provider has the JPA pieces taken out and replaced with an abstract fetchResults method. This method is implemented in subclasses for specific data providers for text files, sql queries, jpa queries, native jpa queries, xml files, comma delimited or just an in memory dataset.
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