Java

Java EE is not one single specification, but rather a collection of many enterprise oriented specifications.  In fact, the next version of Java EE (7) is comprised of 14 Java Specification Requests (JSRs), and 9 Maintenance Releases (MRs).  On April 29th, the last of the remaining specifications were approved by the Java Community Process’s Executive Committee.  This means Java EE 7 is on its way! No release dates have been set yet, however the Oracle blog states that a new implementation… Read More

In all applications, there are those exceptions, those bugs that no one expected.  Try as we might  to think of every conceivable error, exception, or issue, we developers miss some things.  When this happens on a device “out in the wild” – meaning on a device in the hands of the mobile users – we often don’t know it happened, let alone be able to better deal with the problem in the future. Catching the Unexpected – using the UncaughtExceptionHandler… Read More

All Android developers know and utilize the Android developer Web site – namely developer.android.com. In particular, the API Guides and Reference (a.k.a. Android Javadocs) are well known and heavily used portions of that Web site.  Did you know, however, that these documents can be downloaded and used on your local development machine?  When disconnected from the Web and designing/developing Android code, this can be quite handy.  How do you get them locally? Download the SDK If you don’t already have… Read More

“Applications” in Android are .apk files that hold a collection of loosely coupled components.  Rarely do components have direct communication with each other.  Instead, Intents are often used to trigger these components to start.  Components like Activities and Services also have a lifecycle which is heavily controlled by Android.  Meaning the components may exist one moment and be gone the next depending on what the user is doing (hitting a Back button) and what resources (like memory) Android has available… Read More

advanced I was back in the classroom this week teaching Spring Framework after several weeks of consulting work.   I had the perfect group of students for getting back into the teaching mode.  All my students this week were eager learners with terrific skills.  As they studied the Spring Framework, they had some great questions and were quick to experiment with the vast array of options that exist in Spring. In one particular lab, we were creating a CustomEditorConfigurer (see here… Read More

beginnerTomorrow, I and fellow instructor Jason Shapiro will be speaking at Mobile March 2013.  I believe the conference is a sell out, but if you are attending, I hope you will join us for our talks.  Jason will be speaking at 10:45am on iPhone Core Data.  I am speaking at 3:15pm on Robotium (the Android test framework). Intertech is a Silver Sponsor of the event and I know we’ll have people there to provide you information about Intertech training and… Read More

intermediateOn my recent project, I was asked to replace the backend components of a Java Web application.  The backend JDBC calls and database were replaced with new Web service calls, but, the user interface was to remain exactly the same.  If you have worked on such a project, you know there is a fear that what you will unintentionally break or otherwise negatively impact the user interface or other parts of the application as you work on the new backend. … Read More

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intermediate On my current consulting project, I am creating a Java client that is communicating with a SOAP-based Web service.  Unfortunately, for reasons that I won’t go into here, the Web service does not avail itself to building the client with JAX-WS.  JAX-WS is Java’s high level API for building SOAP over HTTP Java Web services and Java Web service clients.  It is called the high level API since it abstracts away many of the details of SOAP, WSDL, and… Read More

For upcoming Java User Groups go to: http://www.intertech.com/Free-Developer-Training/JavaUserGroup… Read More