IWebMvc 2.0 GA release available

I couldn't hold it anymore! Spring 3.0 is out, Hibernate 3.5 on the way, the Spring Roo team has posted several release candiates already and JEE6 is finally here (even with a reference implementation). I was risking becoming obsolete right fom the start! And there was still a more important reason, IWebMvc will apply to join the Dojo Foundation in January. I needed something complete to show to the board of members and I wanted to start fresh at this new home (and I'm adventuring here because I don't really have any clue if it will pass vote).

Nonetheless I had many tasks to complete. Several nasty bugs still existed in the final RC (many IE issues, the long-standing RememberMe bug, ...), there was no real documentation and the demo application wasn't really up to date (or working for that matter). In addition I wanted to include last minute features like XSS attack prevention, a revamped chart support based on Google Chart APIs (Dojo charting is more visually appealing but sooo slow)) or RSS feeds. Unfortunately, I had to prune things in the process and the JasperReports support got the axe (I wasn't happy with the end result and it wasn't really useful for anyone).

But everything or at least the great majority of things have been finished or resolved by now (sure, the documentation is still a WiP). But the time for a proper release has come. I've just uploaded the distribution package to the project page. Go, check it out.

Here's a brief list of what IWebMvc 2.0 finally provides:

• A full Java stack (with both client and server side)


• A Spring/JPA/Hibernate robust and reliable backend


• Full AJAX connectivity using DWR


• Dozens of attractive client widgets based on Dojo 1.4


• A model driven approach to development


• CRUD from the start without a line of code


• A lean development experience in line with other modern frameworks

It's been a year of development but the result, in my humble opinion, shines. I'm proud of releasing this software project as is and do it with a clear OSS licence like the ASL2 is.

Nonetheless the development doesn't stop here and I'm already planning v3. See you there.

My TODO list for 2010

It's that time of the year again! A lot of good wishes most of which won't ever see the light of day, of course :-) But no more introduction, here's my task list for next year:

• Spring 3.0
  IWebMvc2 is rapidly approaching a final release (I'm two bugs short). I'm already thinking in features for 3.0 and the new version of Spring tops the list. I'm specially interested in the new @REST/MVC support as I want to test an AJAX approach based on Jackson views.
• JEE6
  Continuing the trend IWebMvc3 will be fully JEE6 compliant. The interesting parts of the specification are the new dependency injection JSR, the new validation model, web fragments, the web profile and (why not?) asynchronous servlets.
• Maven 3 / Spring Roo
  What am I looking for actually? Scaffolding? No, not really. I'm more in the search for a project management tool that works at source level, integrates well with an IDE/third party tools (Hudson, Sonar) and saves me time applying all those things common to any web application like security, logging, testing, validation, you name it.
• Open Source work
  I'm not going to abandon IWebMvc/IWebJTracker development, of course. But in addition I want to extend my commitment with Gmaps4JSF (you like MapSicle?) I may even join Hazem in his new adventure
• Google projects
  Probably the source of most interesting news this year has been hands down, Google. I'm going to closely follow Guava, GAE, Closure, Chrome and may be, just may be, GWT.
• HTML 5
  I'm not sure if next year will complete the transition but obviously you can't miss this train.
• OSGi
  I want to test Glassfish v3 OSGi capacilities. And Spring products as well. A project that has always appealed to me has been classworlds...may this is the time?

So what is yours?

FishCAT testing for v3

Last week the latest installation of the FishCAT program came to an end. FishCAT is the GlassFish Community Acceptance Testing program, that is, a community program run by Sun to QA GF (in this case v3) that gets participants from around the globe ().

I like to join it each time for several selfish reasons. After all, Netbeans + Glassfish is my preferred development platform and if I'm going to use it extensively I want to ensure that it suits my needs. In addition, neither IWebMvc/IWebJTracker nor GMaps4JSF were working in GFv3 back at the start of the program. That, of course, forced me to use Tomcat as my main development server. Fortunately Glassfish shares code with Tomcat so having something working in the later means good news to solve the problem in the former.

The process is really simple, when you find an issue you post a message in the mailing list and after a preliminary revision you're asked to post a bug report in the tracker. Just this initial check was enough to fix the Gmasp4JSF issue (a bug with the application code that traversed the folder structure below /, a subtle difference with Tomcat which wouldn't complain and just set the path to /) so it's a crucial step. There's an obvious commitment with the project and an internal dev is immediately assigned to the issue and you can see steady progress right form the start.

Here's a brief list of pros:

• The people at Sun top the list without doubt. I haven't ever seem a team of such positive and passionate folks. Special thanks go to Judy Tang and Jan Luehe who were always helpful!


• The importance given to the bugs. FishCAT is not a PR project. Sun really wants external devs to participate and puts resources to fix the issues reported. Kudos to the company here. They really understand how to run this kind of activity.


• They helped me as much as I helped them. Yes, I reported several nasty bugs in the deployment and web container components but in the process I got advices and could fix several hidden issues of my applications as well. It was a clear win-win situation for all of us.


• GFv3 will be the first EE 6 implementation available and that's a feat worth some testing.


• Tens of developers from countries as different as Germany, China, South Africa, USA or Spain to mention some


• GMaps4JSF and IWebMVc will fully work in the final release of GFv3!

I have one con though:

• For God's sake, please upgrade the network infrastructure! And that twentieth century issue tracker as well! Some days just posting a bug was such an exasperating task..

All in all, a very positive interaction indeed. I hope to see some of you next year!