jerryjackson.net

Through a combination of hints found online along with some guidance from the instructor at the “Seam Essentials” training course I recently attended in Austin, TX - I figured out how to solve a problem I was having where instance data on the “far side” of @OneToOne and @OneToMany data associations was not staying synchronized with values on the “near side”.

Now that I understand the solution, it becomes clear to me that all the information I needed was out there - just not all in one place with good example code.

For the sake of formatting, I’ve placed the commented code here: http://pastie.org/private/wk2v3rbw892e5vbbenum7g (and I’m NOT claiming this is good example code)

Now I can move on to the never-ending list of other challenges.

Here’s what I have running well at the moment (likely to change over time as needs change):

• JDK 1.6 update 7
• mysql-connector-java (I’m using version 5.1.6)
• JBoss Application Server 4.2.3.GA
  • To make deployment to this application server possible/easier from my non-privileged user account:
    • chown -R jerry:jerry $JBOSS_HOME
  • I am controlling this only from the command line after observing that launching it from within Eclipse causes the load on my workstation to get very high for no apparent reason.
    • cd $JBOSS_HOME/bin
    • ./run.sh
  • Since I’m also using MySQL, I have copied the mysql-connector-java-5.1.6-bin.jar file into my $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/lib
• Seam 2.1.0.GA
  • this Seam Getting Started guide will be helpful - and there’s plenty more good info in the Reference Guide.
  • If you’re serious about Seam development, get “Seam in Action” - it’s available as a PDF file too!
  • I do all the seam-gen stuff from the command line - it’s really easy once you get into the “flow” of doing it this way (and eliminates any issues of doing it from within your IDE). This mostly amounts to only a few commands once you start working in your code:
    • seam explode (to get things started)
    • seam restart (to compile and deploy your latest code changes)
    • As the project grows and evolves, it is likely you’ll end up with customized build and deployment command-line scripts anyway.
• Eclipse 3.4.1 (in my case, eclipse-jee-ganymede-SR1-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz)
  • Nightly build of the JBoss IDE Tools. I am using JBossTools-200810010752-nightly-ALL-linux-gtk-x86_64.zip - however a more recent build should work just as well.
    • Using a recent nightly build solved my problem with the JBoss Tools Palette not working with Eclipse 3.4 as described here
  • Debugging seems to work well (as long as the server is started in “debug” mode from inside Eclipse)
  • JBoss Tools Palette works well.
  • Looks like everything is working for now.

Here’s an important chunk of my .bashrc file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java/latest
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant-1.7.1
export PATH=$ANT_HOME/bin:$PATH

export JBOSS_HOME=/usr/local/jboss/jboss_as/latest
export PATH=$JBOSS_HOME/bin:$PATH

export SEAM_HOME=/usr/local/jboss/seam/latest
export PATH=$SEAM_HOME:$PATH

The “latest” directory in the paths above is the result of my use of symlinks like this:

jerry@localhost
/usr/local/jboss/seam >ll
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 2008-10-23 23:03 jboss-seam-2.1.0.CR1
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 2008-10-24 15:03 jboss-seam-2.1.0.GA
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 2008-10-24 15:12 latest -> jboss-seam-2.1.0.GA/

Thankfully, I won’t need to see this for much longer:

Whenever pair-programming with one of my co-workers, we see this one very often. I am sure their apology is sincere. My favorite part is the “No information has been lost” - when in fact we have seen plenty of instances where there WAS information lost when he couldn’t hit the CTRL-S keys quickly enough. There have been many other strange observations during my recent adventures with the .NET platform.

Soon I will be starting at a new gig where I’ll be using old familiar friends (and some new ones) like:

• Linux (no more Windows!)
• Java
• JBoss related projects such as:
  • Seam
  • Hibernate
  • Tools
  • and probably even JBoss Developer Studio
• GWT and GWT-Ext and Ext GWT
• MySQL
• Vim
• Eclipse
• Subversion or maybe I’ll use Git instead
• plus anything else I need to get the job done, which is very likely to include:
  • C++ - done properly or not at all
  • Ruby and/or JRuby
  • PHP
  • Ant, Maven, buildr as needed to automate and simplify the build/test/deploy processes.
    • while on the subject of automation, the .NET developers out there should take a look at NAnt if you’re suffering with inconsistent and error-prone building and deployment issues. There’s plenty of info on using NAnt with Visual Studio.
  • among others

Of course, this means I’ll probably start writing about the new set of challenges and problems instead of these old ones