The Eclipse Foundation has released Ganymede, the latest annual release this time containing 23 Eclipse projects including the Eclipse IDE version 3.4.

This latest version of the annual Eclipse release contains many new features including:

• Equinox P2 - a system to make installations and updated to Eclipse easier
• JSDT - A new JavaScript editor
• Improved JavaScript support for the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, BIRT
• Graphical database query tools
• Improved support for Java EE 5
• SOA support

and many other features.

Further information, inclusing webinars and demos can be found on the project website .

This new release can be downloaded from the Eclipse web site .

Max Andersen has today announced the release of JBoss Tools 2.1.0.GA.

"JBoss Tools is a set of plugins that enhances and adds support in Eclipse for JBoss.org projects and related technologies such as JBoss AS, Hibernate, JPA, Seam, jBPM, JSF and more."

Since release 2.0, many changes have been made including performance improvements (e.g. approximately 30x speed improvement on Seam Tools startup), usability fixes and bug fixes. The complete change log can be found here.

This release is a drop in upgrade from previous versions, however all users are recommended to try this version.

The tools can be downloaded from SourceForge .

Packt is pleased to announce a new book on Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) that provides understanding and structure in a fast paced, task driven and tutorial style. Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT focuses on the most visible and familiar product built with the BIRT framework, which is the BIRT Report Designer.

BIRT, which stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, is an Eclipse-based open source software project that provides reporting and business intelligence capabilities for rich client and web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE. BIRT is in fact a collection of development tools and technologies used for developing reports utilizing the BIRT runtime framework component on an application server. BIRT has two main components: a visual report designer within the Eclipse IDE for creating BIRT Reports, and a runtime component for generating reports that can be deployed to any Java environment.

This book has a fast-paced, task-driven, tutorial style, which provides understanding and structure, not just lists of steps to follow. The focus is on the most visible and familiar product built with the BIRT framework, which is the BIRT Report Designer. The BIRT Report Designer is an Eclipse plug-in that utilizes BIRT technologies to allow users to design reports in the BIRT document format. Also covered is the BIRT charting engine, which lets you add charts to your application.

Java developers who want to get reporting as quickly as possible will find this book useful. The book is published by Packt and is available now. For more information, please visit: http://www.packtpub.com/practical-data-analysis-reporting-with-birt/book

Pete Muir has announced the release of Seam 2.0.2.GA. For this release he says:

"This release focuses on stability, component updates and documentation improvements. We've fixed over 150 bugs since Seam 2 was released back in November, and, with over 70 000 downloads since then, Seam 2 has had pretty good exposure."

Seam is a compelling framework for developing web applications based upon EJB3, JPA and JSF. Full support for developing Seam applications within Eclipse is provided via the JBoss Tools project and in NetBeans via the Facelets Plugin.

This latest release of Seam can be downloaded from Sourceforge.

Packt Publishing, the publisher of computer related books, announced the release of its new book OpenCMS 7 Development.

OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions.

Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API.

Starting by showing how to set up a development environment for OpenCms work, the book moves you through various tasks of increasing complexity. Some of the common tasks covered are building OpenCms, XML asset type development, templating, module development, user and role setup, and search integration. In addition to these common tasks some more advanced topics are covered such as self-registering users, RSS support, developing custom widgets and extending the administrative interface. All the topics include examples and are presented while building a sample blog site.

The book is for Java developers with a basic knowledge of the operations of OpenCms. No previous experience of developing OpenCms is expected.

More information about the book can be found at: http://www.packtpub.com/opencms-7-development/book

JGAP is a sophisticated Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming package written in Java.

JGAP version 3.3.3 is an extensive release, featuring basically the following:
* The evolution cycle has been revamped and simplified for a better understanding
* A lot of smaller enhancements and architectural improvements, see the change log
* Some bugs have been fixed
* The basic MinimizingMakeChange example was simplified
* Improved grid computing by adding new classes and features
* Javadoc-enhancements
* New JUnit tests

This release can be downloaded here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11618&package_id=48940

For more information visit the JGAP homepage at http://jgap.sf.net

Klaus Meffert for the JGAP team

Geertjan Wielenga has announced a new project hosted on java.net that adds RichFaces support to NetBeans.

The aims of the project are described as:

1. Automatic IDE registration of RichFaces libraries so that the user does not need to download these separately.
2. Web application template extension that lets the user put the RichFaces libraries on the classpath.
3. The necessary entries automatically added to the web.xml file.
4. A basic JSF bean automatically generated into the project when it is created, with related entries in the faces-config.xml file.
5. Tag completion of RichFaces tags in JSP files.
6. JSP file template that includes RichFaces taglibs.
7. JSP Palette with all the common RichFaces tags.

I'd recommend any NetBeans developers using RichFaces (or perhaps Seam) to look at this project. Although the functionality is limited at present, the potential and future of this project looks good.

Further details of the project, including examples can be found on Geertjan's blog.

Apple has finally released Java 6 for the Mac.

The new release adds Java 6 (1.6.0_05) to the Mac platform but does not set it as the default JVM for the machine.

This new release works on Leopard only, so any users of Tiger will not be able to take advantage of the new release. Also, this new release is targeted only at 64-bit Intel Macs.

This will definitely raise a huge sigh of relief to some Java developers out there with newer Macs running Leopard, but what about early adopters of Intel Macs which are running 32-bit Core Duo chips?

What are your thoughts? Do you welcome this release of Java 6 or are you annoyed that your Mac still isn't compatible with Java 6? Or are you using SoyLatte to access Java 6 on your Mac? Leave a comment now and let others know what you think.

Service Oriented Java Business Integration by Binildas C.A. has recently been published by Packt Publishing.

The book is just over 400 pages and is aimed at Java developers and integration architects using JBI and the Apache ServiceMix JBI container. The book is broadly broken down into four sections.

The first section explains the basics of enterprise application integration and discusses different integration architectures such as point-to-point and hub-and-spoke. This section of the book continues to describe the differences between other integration architectures and ESB and explains why we should use an ESB. A description of JBI follows with JSR 208 being described along with the JBI nomenclature ñ e.g. Service Engine, Binding Component, Normalized Message Router etc.. Different Message Exchange Patterns are then described before ServiceMix is introduced. The discussion on ServiceMix begins by explaining the architecture of the product and continues to show how ServiceMix can be installed and tested on both Windows and Ubuntu. A brief description of the different JBI components comprising ServiceMix is given before a sample HTTP service is developed and bound to ServiceMix.

The second section of the book describes binding ñ one of he most important aspects of an ESB. The discussion on binding begins by describing what binding is and giving an example of binding a stateless session bean method to Apache SOAP. Details are provided on how to use XFire for binding and how to bind EJBs, Web Services and POJOs. The relevant JBI packaging and deployment details are given for each of these types of binding.

The next section of the book details web service versioning and enterprise integration patterns in ESB. Nine different EAI patterns including ìContent-based routerî, ìContent enricherî and ìXPath splitterî are all discussed. As is common with the rest of the book, source code examples are provided to discuss all of these aspects.

The final section of the book provides a sample service aggregation and shows how JBI can be used with ServiceMix to aggregate several web services to perform a single business process.

At just over 400 pages this is an excellent introduction to JBI using the Apache ServiceMix product. The author provides plenty of detail and sample code throughout out the book. This isnít a dry textbook on ESB, rather the author provides a good mix of theory and practice with numerous code samples which can be downloaded in their entirety from the publisherís web site. Although this book uses ServiceMix as the ESB of choice, I think this book will be useful to Java developers wishing to gain further knowledge of ESBs and JBI in general. This book is thoroughly recommended to Java developers and analysts who are using or planning to use JBI in particular combined with Apache ServiceMix.

NetBeans have released the Release Candidate of version 6.1 of the popular NetBeans IDE.

NetBeans 6.1 includes many enhancements over the previous release including:

• Performance Enhancements
• Support for RESTful web services
• Support for Spring Framework
  
• JSF CRUD generator
• MySQL support in the database explorer

Full details of all the features in this release can be found at:

http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1218

This release candidate can be downloaded from http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.1/rc/ with the full release of NetBeans 6.1 expected in late April 2008.

The NetBeans Community Acceptance Survey is available for everyone that has used the version 6.1 release candidate. The NetBeans team are looking for feedback on the quality of the release to establish whether the release is stable. If you've tried this release, please log in to NetBeans.org and complete the survey.

Packt Publishing has published a new book on Java Business Integration, titled, Service Oriented Java Business Integration.

The book concentrates on leveraging Java Business Integration (JBI) for addressing real world integration problems with examples. Business level integration in Java needs to address integrating multiple flavors of business components including POJO, EJB, Web Services, JMS, etc. The book explains all the above scenarios, using open source Apache ServiceMix as the ESB framework.

This book discusses:

• Assemble services and port it across containers using JBI
• Expose EJB as WSDL compliant service across firewalls
• Bind remote services onto the ESB to be consumed internally
• Expose local components in ESB like POJO as WSDL compliant services to be accessible externally.
• Provide a web service gateway for external consumers
• Access web services over reliable transport channel like JMS
• Implement web service versioning using ESB
• Implement service aggregation at ESB
• Transactions, Security, Clustering & JMS in ESB

It is aimed at Java developers and integration architects aiming to become proficient with Java Business Integration (JBI) standard, who are expected to have some experience with Java and to have developed and deployed applications in the past, but need no previous knowledge of JBI. The book can also be useful to anyone, who has been having a hard time understanding ESB and how it differs from other architectures and to understand its position in SOA.

More information about the book can be found at:

http://www.packtpub.com/service-oriented-java-business-integration/book

A sample chapter from the book can be found at:

http://www.packtpub.com/files/JBI-Bind-Web-Services-in-ESB-Gateway.pdf