GlassFish embeddded, And test driven development

So save anyone the pain of getting this working
Here is our EJB sample that uses GlassFish Embedded and JavaDB for unit testing

https://svn.kenai.com/svn/enerwebsample~source-code-repository/RefSampleEJBApp

main project : http://kenai.com/projects/enerwebsample

Comments , patches , complaints welcome.

regards
Richard.

In a quest to not just complain, but do something

Recently I have been seen on the mailing list on how I could not use GlassFish 3 because my favorite JSF 1 implementation Icefaces 1.x does not work on GlassFish 3 and there are not other stable JSF 2 implementations besides the reference.

I struggled and struggled to get JSF 2 working in NetBeans 6.8 and Maven - using a separated business logic layer and web layer. My company Enerweb is also embarking on a campain to supply sample applications so developers code the same way and projects can be kick started fast.

Enerweb Java Samples was born http://kenai.com/projects/enerwebsample

Another tale of how Richard does JavaEE the hard way

Over the last few weeks I have been hacking away trying to create a nice CRUD of some simple tables. And being a old developer I feel the need to get into the guts of things and do thing the 'right way'.

So I create Entity Beans in NetBeans 6.8
Then create Session Bean facades from the JPA Entity Beans
Then furiously start coding backing beans , afraid of using the create JSF 2 pages from Entities wizard because I think it's going to tightly couple my JSF to my JPA Entity beans.
After digging around , complaining and thinking a whole weekend on how this is going to take a full day to create a simple CRUD for three tables, I decided how I would go about this.

I would create the Entity Beans from the existing Database
Create the Session Beans facade from the Entity Beans
Then create the JSF 2 pages from the Entity Classes.
Then hack the JSF controllers generated by NetBeans to use the facade instead. (Will take half a day)

To my amazement I see the NetBeans 'create JSF pages from Entity Beans wizard' does this all for me. And holy cow it seems to allow for lazy loading, so I can handle my 1.2 1000 million record table. What an amazing pattern!

My hat goes off to the NetBeans people. You saved me so much time!

My JSF 2 quest. Need something that works and looks pretty

I thought I would share in my battle against JSF2.


A bit of background, I've created a few applications with Icefaces 1.x and JSF 1.x in the past and wow they are great.
I've had so many complements from .NET and Python developers alike.
Have a look at these wonderful components http://component-showcase.icefaces.org/

But now GlassFish 3.0 and JSF 2 is here and the Icefaces 1.x components just don't work...
(I understand why, I'm just commenting)

So what is my natural course of action , Download Icefaces 2.0.0 Alpha 1 and wow, what a struggle.
Then I try PrimeFaces 2.0.0 RC, and does not work in GlassFish 3. (I think there is a bug logged)


So I went back to the reference implementation. It works, but it seems missing a lot of bells and whistles and where are the demos to show the components.
All I see is some rough samples that I could never use in a real application.
(Have a look at the IceFaces 1.x show case, compared to the JSF 2 reference samples)

So now I have OpenFaces 2.0 EA2 working.
It works just like the demo on the web site : http://openfaces.org/demo/overview/homepage.jsf


I'm off with my battle axe and OpenFaces, and hopefully I can dazzle a project manager on Monday with Java-EE 6.