Just saw an interesting post on Matt Raible’s blog entitled ‘Want to use Struts with EJB’s‘. Matt’s blog entry points to project hosted at java.net called StrutsEJB.

At first glance, StrutsEJB looks like a pretty interesting project. It provides base classes and patterns to build a Web application using Struts, EJB and JSTL. I’m sure everyone has a little loose collection of classes and patterns that make up a ‘framework’ or blueprint used for web application development. Mine pretty resolves around Struts for the UI, Stateless EJB for services/business layers with Business Delegates and integration services to connect to databases and other services with a security framework thrown in for authentication, authorization and auditing. StrutsEJB seems to offer pretty much the same stuff plus a few other items. Looks pretty neat – Just downloaded it and will play to see if it’s worth playing with.

While we are talking about blueprint applications, I should plug Matt’s application called AppFuse that’s familiar similar to StrutsEJB.

Links of Interest:

• StrutsEJB Download
  
• StrutsEJB Cookbook
  
• StrutsEJB JavaDoc

It’s been interesting watching the whole Google–Microsoft love affair unfold. I’m not sure but I think Microsoft has Google-envy and it’s not the other way around. Google is the best search engine and so Microsoft wants to buy it or beat it at its own game. I read an interview where Bill Gates admitted to being wrong about not focusing on search. We all know from history on how Microsoft ignored the Internet for so long.

Then Google goes out and buys Blogger and so Microsoft has to create a blog service. I’m sure the fact the blogs in general were becoming mainstream has something to do with Microsoft’s decision to create TheSpoke and Wallop. Just saw http://blogs.msdn.com. I guess Microsoft is serious about RSS – Can’t wait for the RSS vs. ATOM holy war to start again.

Google has a toolbar and so Microsoft has to create their own toolbar.

Now Google enters the social network market with Orkut. Can Microsoft be far behind? Orkut and other social networks like Friendster are pretty interesting phenomenon. Never really looked at Friendster, but Orkut does sounds interesting. Wonder what the guys at Google have cooked up? A couple of my friends did get invites and I guess I am going to have to weasel up an invite.

The Commons Collections team at Apache has just announced the general availbility of the Commons Collections 3.0. The Commons Collections is a library providing implementations, interfaces and utilities enhancing the Java Collections Framework.

Links of interest:

• Website: http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/collections/index.html
  
• Collections 3.0 release API: http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/collections/apidocs-COLLECTIONS_3_0/index.html
  
• Collections – Commons Collections – Users guide: http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/collections/userguide.html
  
• Binary downloads: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/binindex.cgi
  
• Source downloads: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/sourceindex.cgi

Caught this story on Slashdot – The Slashdot story cites a Telegraph stories that claims that Bill Gates is going to be knighted by the Queen of England for “services to the global enterprise”.

As you can imagine, the response from the Slashdot audience is pretty predictable. Whatever you think of Bill Gates and Microsoft, you have to admit that Bill has done a lot of wonderful charity work giving billions of dollars to help the sick and improvised all over the world via. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and William H. Gates Foundation. Cheers to Bill for his philanthropic activities and I wish more people were as generous as Bill Gates. We now return to our regularly scheduled program of Java, J2EE and Microsoft bashing.

I just returned from a 2-week trip to India, my first trip back in almost 16 years and it was an amazing experience. With all this talk of outsourcing and India/China taking all of our jobs, it was nice to see what was really happening in person.

India is an amazing country with very warm, friendly, industrious and hard-working people. But there are so many barriers to them achieving the success that they are capable of. Here are some random thoughts on places, events that stuck with me.

• The population growth is a major problem. Left unchecked, this is going to lead to major problems in the future. I don’t know how you can sustain 1.1 billion people on a landmass that is a 3rd of the size of the United States.
  
• Poverty is rampant and people work so hard for so little.
  
• The adoption of technology is really amazing. Since they don’t really have a lot of existing technology infrastructure investments, it is easy to adopt new technologies. It was amazing to see how many people had mobile phones. It seemed that almost every other person had a cell phone and that’s a lot of phones considering they have more than a billion people. Wish I hadn’t cashed in my NOKIA stock.
  
• There is so much systemic corruption and it makes it so hard for anyone to succeed. I know we have corruption here in the states and EU as well – Please no flames! I know all about Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat and how special interest groups pretty much own most of the senators and congressman here.
  
• The power grid sucks outside of the big cities where power outages during the day are normal.

I think the whole outsourcing issue is really overblown. With Globalization, outsourcing is just a reality and our challenge is going to be figure out how and where we as developers add value and how we position ourselves to be attractive in the new marketplace. I was blogging about this very topic earlier. In fact, I re-read the updated book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman on the flight back. Really great book and helps explain this whole Globalization mess. 🙂

Just wanted to wish everyone in Blogspace a very happy and safe new year. I’m on vacation in India and blogging from there. It’s already 8:34 AM of January 1, 2004 here.. Blogger will probably still apply a different timestamp. oh well — Happy New Year