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A Guide to Maven 3 Beta

In just over six years, Apache Maven has become one of the most coveted tools for project build and reporting management. It’s been five years since the release of Maven 2, and now the Maven committers have released the next landmark version of the software. 

Incredible Improvements in Little Time

It didn’t take long for Maven to become one of the most respected and desired tools in computer engineering. However, the product only continues to improve as Maven 3 is now available for those needing this extra computing power. 

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Key Takeaways: Adrian Cockcroft’s talk on Netflix, CD, and Microservices

One of the big draws of the O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference was Adrian Cockcroft's talk, "Deliver Faster and Spend Less with Cloud Native Microservices."  Cockcroft is an experienced speaker on the conference circuit and he's well-known as the architect who led Netflix into its new era of unprecedented scale and agility.  

He now works for Battery Ventures, but he still draws primarily on his experiences at Netflix for his talks.  He and his team were the ones behind the greatest success story for the latest trend in software architecture: microservices.

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Develop Web Apps in F# with WebSharper

A New Programming Language Has Grabbed the Spotlight

Programmers universally stand up and take notice when a new programming language takes hold. Sometimes, those programmers are eager to give it a try and see what it is all about. In other cases, they may pan the whole thing as not being the right fit for what they need out of it. 

Either way, there is no question that programmers will at least take a look at what this new language is about and try to determine on their own if it has real value for them or not. Right now, that programming language is F#. 

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What Happened to HornetQ, the JMS That Shattered Records?

HornetQ 2.0 broke records and defeated top-ranked messaging services in benchmark tests. Why wasn't it widely adopted?


Software vendors make all kinds of claims about their products, but what developers care about is proof. When testing a new product, it's important to see how it stacks up against its competition.

For years, researchers at UT Darmstadt have compared the performance of message-oriented middleware servers based on Java Messaging Service (JMS). In 2010, the SPECjms2007 benchmark record was smashed by HornetQ, an open-source enterprise messaging system from JBoss.

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Update on Closures Coming to Java 7

This article was originally published on November 19, 2009.

What People Love About Java

People love all kinds of java, including coffee, but we are more specifically talking about the coding program that is behind so many of the online products that we all know and love. That version of Java is something that people have sincerely taken to heart as something that they can use and benefit from. 

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Top ALM Tools and Solutions Providers

A good application lifecycle management (ALM) package has software that is able to carefully manage and monitor all aspects of software development.  ALM applications provide tools for managing and completing the phases of design, development, testing, deployment, and ongoing enhancements.   With an ALM solution in place, organizations can significantly improve the way they design, build, test, and adapt their software.  Greater customer satisfaction, speed of development, and reduction of cost is the often the result.

Top ALM Tools:

VersionOne

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Apache Harmony Finally Defeated

Some have probably been expecting it for a long time, and this week it finally happened.  Apache Harmony, an open source cleanroom implementation of Java was moved to the Apache Attic, where inactive projects are sent.  The project management committee voted 20 to 2 in favor of discontinuing the project.

One of the votes against moving Harmony to the Attic was PMC chair Tim Ellison, who thought it was too early to deactivate Harmony.  But Harmony was probably already dead and buried once it's primary corporate sponsor, IBM, switched its support to OpenJDK last year.  Android has not gotten invovled in the Harmony project recently because of their ongoing lawsuit with Oracle.

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Apache Aries: Helping Enterprise Developers Build OSGi Apps

the approval of the  blueprint container specification  by the osgi alliance enterprise expert group (eeg) inspired members of the eeg to start an open source project centered around implementing the blueprint spec and other technologies for osgi applications.  in september the  apache aries  project was born in the apache incubator.  the purpose of the apache aries incubator is to create a new community of people interested in building enterprise osgi technology geared toward the application programming model.  for an introduction to the history and the purpose of the aries project, dzone interviewed ian robinson, a distinguished websphere engineer and a member of the osgi eeg.  robinson is at the frontrunner for the apache aries project and has begun using its technology for ibm's websphere application server.

dzone asked robinson about the factors inspired the aries project.  robinson said, "from a standards direction, the work of the osgi alliance eeg was to define a set of specifications that would form part of an enterprise profile for osgi."  he says the eeg has approved several specs for technologies that allow osgi applications to consume existing java ee technologies like jta, jpa, jndi, etc.  "the purpose of the eeg was not to try and define competing specifications but to take what exists already in the java enterprise space and define how those technologies become consumable for applications running in an osgi framework," robinson said.

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AccuRev Uses Rally and Anthill Pro in New Tool Suite

As agile is adopted by more development shops, the demand for integrated tools that cover the whole application development lifecycle is increasing.  Some agile tool vendors try to create the entire suite by themselves, like IBM.  Others will try to bring together popular, battle-tested tools from several different sources and combine them into one offering.  That's what AccuRev has done.  They recently announced their new offering, AgileCycle, which combines Rally Software and Urbancode's Anthill Pro with AccuRev SCM software.

At its core, AgileCycle uses AccuRev Enterprise edition, which includes software configuration management and AccuWork's defect and issue tracking with workflow.  Rally's Enterprise project management software is included in the package along with Urbancode’s AnthillPro.  Rally takes care of story requirements for agile development, while Anthill Pro handles continuous integration along with build and release management.  One area that AccuRev wanted to keep agnostic was testing.  AgileCycle has a plugin architecture to integrate a customer's preferred third-party testing tools.

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Lock-In: Let Me Count the Ways

Vendor lock-in can occur a few different ways


We've all heard the term "Vendor Lock-in," but many don't know about the wide variety of ways in which this stealthy lock-in takes place. Rigidity and frustration caused by this lock-in can mean high costs for enterprises and unhappiness for developers. With new technologies like virtualization and cloud computing, vendors are finding more ways to force users to stay on their platform and purchase their offerings.  The following list describes the different kinds of lock-in that have been seen in the IT industry.