Holidays already here, so are you ready to celebrate ? Like every year, google celebrate it with a serie of Doodles, numbered 15. As usual we will keep this post updated everyday with the new doodle as it will be available.
OpenXava 3.1 is a framework to develop AJAX Java Enterprise applications in a different way: OpenXava avoids MVC. You provide only simple Java classes annotated with JPA and you obtain an application ready for production.
With OpenXava, you only need to write your model, POJOs and Java 5 annotations. You do not need to write the view, and the controller (for CRUD, printing, etc) is reused. And from that you’ll have an application for CRUD, report generation in PDF, export to Excel, searching, sorting, validations etc. You only need to write a simple Java class, no XMLs, no JSPs and no code generation.
The main new feature of 3.1 is that generates AJAX appplications, in this way if you update to OX3.1, your OX (3.x, 2.x, or 1.x) applications will be AJAX without touching a single line of code. In the other hand, if you application is not OX but you use JPA entities, you can move your JPA code to an OpenXava application and obtain an AJAX portal application easily.
Alexandre Plennevaux pointed us to a jQuery-based online portfolio of the the photographer Lisa Pram. The interface is a specific design approach to online image galleries aiming to produce an integrated graphical product based on the work itself. The result of this search is an “interactive barcode”, generating a unique representation of Lisa Prams work in a non-metaphorical manner, through indexing of her image sets according to four main keywords, which stand for the main areas of her work – Professional, Experimental , Advertising and Editorial.
Clicking on each of them allows the visitor to filter through her image galleries. Each gallery is represented by a line which thickness reflects the number of images it contains – 1 image is 1 pixel width. This simple principle leads to the barcode representation. Clicking each of these lines unfolds its pictures in a continuous strip inside the barcode, thus introducing the user into the colors and contrasts of her work.
Finally, an additional navigation system is laid out underneath the barcode, to ensure that this interface website, although experimental, achieves a good level of usability. The interface was entirely done with progressive enhancement in mind. No Flash plugin was hurt in the making of this website, thanks to the outstanding jQuery javascript library.
I noticed recently at BrainBrench a free certification about Ajax. I decided to pass it this week and got 3.95/5, even that I missed to answer many questions while on phone, or talking with people in my office – I Scored higher than 96% of all previous test takers, which is great, but weak in security and communication, while it’s more my Strengths points. Anyway, that’s what this certification is all about, a series of 40 questions that you have to answer, and you have 3 minutes for each question. Most important that you have to prepare yourself seriously to get a higher score.
First is it interesting to have an Ajax certification in your CV ? Or a more general JavaScript certification ? I personally passed the certification and I don’t think that according to the questions that I have answered, I am qualified to create Ajax enabled web applications. The certification mean that you have the necessary knowledge to create Ajax applications, so it could be good only if you add to your CV some Ajax projects that you have already created. From the website description :
The AJAX test measures knowledge and skills needed to develop web pages using AJAX. Designed for use by web developers, programmers and other IT professionals for whom this knowledge is necessary to perform their job.
Brainbench is ISO 9001-2000, so even if it’s free, I think the certification will have a good value in your CV – for Ajax developers. The same for employers looking for Ajax professionals, a certification will have an additional value to find qualified people for their companies.
As a DBA, I have been asked many times to provide an ER diagram for an application schema. There are many tools that can do the job, mostly expensive CASE tools which have reverse engineering capabilities. There are also some rather exotic freeware tools which are largely unsupported and difficult to find.
Fortunately, there is a software tool ideal for drawing ER diagrams, called GraphViz. GraphViz is a general tool for drawing all kinds of graphs. It was created by AT&T Research specifically for graph drawing and it uses so called “dot” language. The tool itself is available on the following web page: http://graphviz.org
The tool uses rather simple language called “dot”, which would not be a problem to generate by PHP but the task can be simplified even further. It turns out that PHP Extension and Application Repository, known as “PEAR” contains a package with PHP bindings for GraphViz. The home page for this package is http://pear.php.net/package/Image_GraphViz. In order to use GraphViz, one has to install the GraphViz package, highly portable and available for many platforms, both MS Windows and Linux, among others. Installing the PHP bindings for GraphViz with PEAR installer is also a breeze:
#> pear install Image_GraphViz downloading Image_GraphViz-1.2.1.tar ... Starting to download Image_GraphViz-1.2.1.tar (Unknown size) ........done: 23,040 bytes install ok: channel://pear.php.net/Image_GraphViz-1.2.1 #>
Now, let’s see the basic elements of the “dot” language:
