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Last weekend while pondering the question "Is Scala ready for the enterprise?" I decided to write a simple Java EE 6 app entirely in Scala, without using any Java. I had three main reasons for doing this: one was just to see how easy/difficult it would be to write everything in Scala (it was easy).  Another was to document the process for others journeying down the same road (the entire project is on github).  Finally, I wanted to identify advantages of using Scala instead of Java that are specific to Java EE apps (I found several). Background The specific app I created was an adaptation of the Books example from Chapter 10 of Beginning Java™ EE 6 Platform with GlassFish™ 3. It's a simple web app that displays a list of books in a database and lets you add new books. Although it's a pretty trivial app, it does touch on several important Java EE 6 technologies: JPA 2.0, EJB 3.1 and JSF 2.0.

In this article I'll describe the setup I use to do develop Lift applications. While more heavy-weight than if an interpreted language is used, I find this setup provides fairly decent turnaround times. So, it took a little longer than expected to write this article which continues where the previous stopped. But all good things come to he who waits The software used in the previous article all had major updates in the meantime: Scala 2.8 (2.8.1 is just around the corner) Eclipse 3.6 Scale IDE for Eclipse (though a nightly build is currently needed for Eclipse 3.6) Gradle 0.9 RC1 Lift 2.1 RC2

This article explains how to develop RESTful web services in Java with the JAX-RS reference implementation Jersey. In this article Eclipse 3.5, Java 1.6, Tomcat 6.0 and JAX-RS 1.1. (Jersey 1.1.5) is used.

JSF 2.0, CDI, Scala 2.8 using Eclipse, Maven and Tomcat Tools used: * JDK 1.6 * Maven 2.2.1 * Eclipse 3.5 * Eclipse Scala plugin (I am using nightly build - http://www.scala-lang.org/scala-eclipse-plugin-nightly) * m2eclipse plugin Download the source from here

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog entry lamenting the attitude toward IDEs in the Scala community. A few people told me that the tooling situation was better than I'd implied, so I thought I'd spend a bit of time looking at using Scala (and Lift specifically) in Eclipse. I think the situation is still a ways away from the tooling situation for Java, but it is actually quite good, and I wanted to post a quick tutorial for those interested in developing Lift in Eclipse. Prerequisites This post assumes that you already have Scala 2.8 final and Eclipse 3.6 on your system. For Eclipse, I recommend upping the Xmx setting if you haven't already - I had issues when I had multiple Lift projects imported with Xmx set to 386. Also, this tutorial is going to use Maven, not SBT. SBT may be a better build tool for Scala projects, but I'm not sure how well it works with m2eclipse - I'm going to play with that more later. I also assume you know how to install plugins into Eclipse - I will create a more in-depth screencast for doing all of this if there is enough interest.

There was a recent outburst in blogs on the topic of Groovy and how it compares to Java. Although I respect the youthfull entusiasim of Groovy and Co. working on this little exercise I'm just perplexed by the "WHY?" in this whole discussion. Let me just say again: W H Y ?!?! 1. Practically no one cares about Groovy (let alone Groovy++ strap-on) beyond Grails community. So this language just as "widely accepted" as Ruby (at least for enterprise software development) 2. If you know Java it's equally "challenging" to pick up either Groovy or Scala. Don't let anyone insult your intelligence by claiming that Scala syntax is somehow more complex than Groovy. In both languages you will need to adapt to functional thinking - and that's where you will have to spend a couple of weekends… 3. If you know Groovy - you already know 90% of Scala (different syntax and few extra features can be picked up in the evening) 4. Scala is designed by people who have proper academic background, experience and talent in the area of language design - Groovy has never been that way (and anyone who dares to look inside of Groovy runtime or history of changes in it will attest to that). NOTE: it did come out rather strong - but that's how I feel about it and after some thinking I'll leave as is. Nothing personal to anyone reading it… 5. Scala as a post-functional language is years ahead of Groovy (static typing with best-in-business type inference, highly tuned mix of imperative and functional styles, powerful and done-right generics, etc.) 6. Groovy will ALWAYS be slower than Scala or Java (latest benchmarks put even Groovy++ about 50 times slower than Java) just by its nature unless someone changes the language and rebuilds the runtime from the ground up. 7. Once we get decent integration with Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA for Scala, the Groovy will lose its only serious advantage

"Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools BIRT is an open source Eclipse-based reporting system that integrates with your Java/J2EE application to produce compelling reports. Get started with the newest major release, BIRT 2.6.1. Get started with the latest in the BIRT 2.5 series. Need help with BIRT? BIRT provides core reporting features such as report layout, data access and scripting. Please try BIRT and tell us what you think by filling bugs reports & enhancement requests through Bugzilla as explained on the community page. "

"Eclipse BIRT is free / open source reporting engine for Java. A commercial BIRT Report Server is available from Actuate (the company behind Eclipse BIRT). While Eclipse BIRT does not provide a free/open source reporting server, the BIRT Runtime provides a simple Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer. Eclipse BIRT Web Viewer installation instructions for several Java EE application servers are here. Here I share my own experience installing Eclipse BIRT 2.6.1 Web Viewer under GlassFish 3.0.1 Java EE Application Server :"

"Background processes in Eclipse RCP and Eclipse Plugins This article describes how to use the Job API in Eclipse RCP and Eclipse plugins to perform asynchronous tasks. It also discuss how to update the UI thread. This article is based on Eclipse 3.6 (Helios). "

"Scalaz is a library written in the Scala Programming Language. The intention of Scalaz is to include general functions that are not currently available in the core Scala API. The scalaz-core module depends only on the core Scala API and the core Java 2 Standard Edition API. Scalaz is released under a BSD open source licence making it compatible with the licence of the Scala project. Scalaz 6.0.1 was released in June 2011, targeting Scala 2.8.1 and 2.9.0.1. "

"What is DevOps? DevOps is not a technology problem. DevOps is a business problem. How to measure the impact of IT operations on your business (Part 1) Stone Axes -- the tale of secret development 6 Months In: Fully Automated Provisioning Revisited"

"This chapter introduces the Expression Language (also referred to as the EL), which provides an important mechanism for enabling the presentation layer (web pages) to communicate with the application logic (backing beans). The EL is used by both JavaServer Faces technology and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology. The EL represents a union of the expression languages offered by JavaServer Faces technology and JSP technology."