The next Java Meetup in Amsterdam (February 24th) will be held in the Twee Prinsen on the Prinsenstraat (obviously in Amsterdam). It’s a ten-minute walk from Central Station and located right on the corner of the Prinsengracht and the Prinsenstraat. A cozy bar with heated terrace, just in case you want to stand outside (or if there’s not enough room).
The first drinks will be free and we have lots of people coming already, so if you want to meet up with other Java developers, be sure to join!
Last weekend, my brother finally showed me VMWare. I had heard about it some time ago, but never had the time to actually try this out. After downloading evaluated one of the pre-built virtual machines, using the VMPlayer I decided to download the Workstation edition to go and create some virtual machines myself. So another 80 MB download to go.
Fortunately that’s not so much compared to a Debian install. Everything’s running pretty smoothly. I decided to finally put Oracle on my laptop again, but this time in a Debian virtual machine. I wish I had checked out the requirements for Oracle first, coz’ after I unpacked the distro, it said Debian isn’t supported. Probably there’s a way around it, but I guess I won’t bother and just start the download for one of the supported versions.
VMWare though is a great solution that allows me to continue to improve quality measures for several of the things I’m doing. I’m looking into expanding some of the test suites we run for products such as the Spring Framework and other open source frameworks. Until now, I didn’t have the option to run different versions of databases on one machine and now I have VMWare, I can just install Oracle 9i and 10g on one machine (in two different virtual machines).
Although there is a pretty large amount of setup work to do (I still need to install the new build server for example that I got before I left for a holiday late last year) but I guess this will improve our quality measures even more.
– update: I just noticed somebody blogging about the VMware Player. Here’s a link.
In reply to a comment by Aviad Ben Dov on Arjen’s post on interoperability versus annotations, I originally wanted to reply on Arjen’s blog, but thought it would be better to post a reply on my own blog, since it was going to be rather lengthy comment.
Aviad is specifically asking Arjen’s opinion on frameworks like Tapestry and X2J. I guess he’s asking for the use of annotations in both frameworks and not about the frameworks in general.
Annotations in my opinion are designed to add metadata to Java artifacts (objects, methods, et cetera), One should however think hard about the consequences of using certain annotations because (as Arjen meant in his original post), you might loose agility when overusing annotations for specific purposes.
Say I have a class Contact (directly taken from the X2J website) and I’m using @Element, @Attribute and @PrimaryKey annotations to realise Java to XML mapping and the other way around. The class (at first sight) can perfectly be serialized to a client by using X2J in combination with a web service). Everything works perfectly well, until the requirements for the web service change (with a new version of the schema as a result). Changing the annotation and the schema would of course work perfectly well, unless the old version of the web service interface still needs to be supported (a common requirement). Remember, we’ve changed the mapping at class-level.
If I don’t want to deploy the new version alongside the old version (two WAR files, whatever), I’m kind of screwed.
If we would have been able to somehow externalize the configuration of the mapping, we might also have been able to choose between a mapping, based on an incoming web service request containing a version of the service being called.
@Element
public class Contact {
@Attribute
@PrimaryKey
String getName() {..}
@InnerElement
@ArrayElement(label=false)
Contact[] getFriendOf() {..}
}
If for example I have a class that needs a service to performs its job. Using dependency injection, we can transparently provide the class with its helper. Using Spring we would do this using XML, with other technologies frameworks you can do it using annotations (see the example below).
Whereas with Spring you’re completely decoupling both the location of the service as well as the definition of the service (both contained by the XML file) in the annotation scenario you’ve only decoupled the definition of the service (provided elsewhere in some other configuration), but not the location (it’s still hardcode in the class). This makes it difficult for example to reuse the class outside the environment its intended to live in and where it knows the ‘MyService’ reference is available. Furthermore there’s no way to configure the class twice (with different location parameters) as the annotation is defined at class-level.
public class Helper {
@Resource(name="MyService")
private Service service;
}
** Update
Have a look at Uri’s blog. He’s showing a perfectly valid @Required annotation in my opinion that doesn’t change anything to the behavior of the class and doesn’t impose any difficulties when using this class outside its natural habitat 
.
After the first successful Java Meetup in Amsterdam, held last November 11th, I’d like to promote all this to a quarterly event. That’s why you’ll have to block February 24th in your agenda coz’ from 6 o’clock on, there will be beers again in a place yet to be announced.
Last time we had some drinks in the Wijnand & Fockinck, but since (unfortunately) temperatures in Holland near the end of February are still not high enough to go and sit outside, I’d like to move the meeting to a different bar / pub. I’m open for suggestions!
Oh and by the way, please leave a comment if you intend to drop by.
– Update: the location for this quarter’s Java Meetup is the Twee Prinsen.
People that commented or emailed me and will be attending:
There I am, writing a blog entry while waiting for the owner of the surfshop to return from whereever he had to go. I´m in the middel of Dominical at the moment, a small town on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We (Joost and me) were planning to drive all the way to Arenal (which is still about a 6 hour drive from where we are now), but our plan has been ruined a bit by the surfshop guy because Joost´s passport. We´re getting this back after we return the surfboards so we can´t really leave this town.
I know, I should out in the ocean right now and spend some time practicing my turns, but there´s absolutely no surf right now and apart from that, I´ve hurt my wrist a couple of days ago, which prevents me from paddling hard enough. So there I am, writing a blog entry.
I´ve been having a great time so far. We started out in Tamarindo, the most popular surf destination in Costa Rica. There we stayed in the El Diria resort, which is supposed to be really good. Well, guess what, NEVER GO THERE!. It´s Tico-managed and while that usually results in a good local experience, this is really bad. Services is bad, prices are even worse. Simply don´t go there!
We then went to Nosara, or better: Guiones. This is a place half-way on the Nicoya Peninsula and it´s great. Lars and me where there last year as well and we stayed at the same place this year (Lagarta Lodge, right out of town), which has a wonderful view on the ocean, Boca Nosara and the bay. There´s some really good surf out there (I guess it was the best we had in the entire three weeks of our trip). Harbor Reef is a good place to stay as well, but I still like the Lagarta Lodge better, although Harbor Reef is way close to the ocean (3 minute walk versus a 5 minute drive).
After Guiones, we went to Quepos and Manuel Antonio. We had a great party there and spent some time in a nice local bar that has live music (Banana something it was called). We skipped Jaco this year because it´s way too sleezy for me, but really, Quepos and Manuel Antonio aren´t better in that respect. Too much tourism.
The next stop was Dominical, were we stayed in Buena Vista Villas, ten minutes up the hill. The surf in Dominical usually is pretty good, but this month, it´s been not that good at all. Unfortunately we couldn´t stay in Buena Vista Villas for more than one day (it has a stunning view and great cabins), so we stayed in Biker Brian´s place, right in the Dominical town. Not that great a place, but the bar is good, with gringos hanging out there all night.
Then for the best part of the holiday: the Osa Peninsula. Last year we didn´t drop by at Drake´s Bay (Bahia Drake) because the guidebook said ´there’s supposed to be a road down there but nobody really knows whether or not and when it’s accessible´. So we thought it’d be pretty remote and all. But when we took a left in Rincon and drove for about an hour it showed that the road is actually pretty good (considering Costa Rica roads of course which are littered with potholes and stuff), and Drake’s actually isn’t remote at all. There’s plenty of tourism, some really good places to stay and although the guidebooks say that you really should reserve a long time in advance, we could just stay there at a wonderful lodge run by a American guy crazy about sportsfishing.
The first day we were there we took a boat to Paradise Beach (Playa Osesito or something) and walked for about 15 minutes with our boards to river bay called Rio Claro. There’s a magnificent reef break there, really remote (there’s really no-one there). We surfed there for a couple of hours and went back late afternoon.
The next day we went sportsfishing with this guy called Fred (running the loadge). We caught some 30 or 40 pound tunas (about 10 I guess) and a 4-feet Dorado. It was great eating fish you caught yourself, about one hour after you pulled it off the hook. The blackened tuna this guy makes is awesome. Be sure to drop by there. I seriously hurt my wrist at his place though, but running down the stairs too fast while it was raining a bit. No surfing for me anymore after that.
Then for Carate. After we dropped of the first guy leaving at the Puerto Jiminez airstrip (setting a record-time of 1h20m from Drake’s to Pto. Jiminez) we drove to Bosque del Cabo, a resort at the most southern point of the Osa Peninsula. This resort is GREAT. We had to drop of Roy Toft there, who’s writing a book on the southern peninsula and unfortunately we didn’t get to stay there; they were fully booked. It’s a great place though, although a bit expensive…
So we drove off to Carate where we would have expected to find the Lookout Inn fully booked for the New Years party. To our surprise Terry and Katia had a cabin left still unoccupied and we quickly moved in. Terry’s place is liked paradise on earth. It’s really remote and you really feel like being at the end of the world. There’s a small airstrip that occasionally services some small Cessnas coming in but other than that, there’s nothing really. The airplanes dropping people off even give you more of the feeling of being at the end of the world. The Inn has a great view, the best cook you could ever get over there (my friend Juan Ki) and usually some decent surf (even when there’s a North swell only).
We stayed at the Inn for New Years. Terry always throws a really good party including a really good pig roast over at the beach there, right in the front of the Inn and we had some really fun times.
We stayed for another day doing nothing really (well, Lars and Joost were trying to do some surf and I was reading some books and started drinking a beer at 10.30am .
After having dropped of Lars at Pto. Jiminez this morning at 6 (we left at 4.30 this morning) we drove straight to Dominical and that’s where I am right now. I think it’s about time to check on the surfshop-dude, because if he’s not here now, we’ll probably have to cancel our trip to the Arenal vulcano, which would be a shame…
– Update from San Jose –
Luckily we didn’t have to spend another day in Dominical. The morning after I wrote the first bit, the guy showed up and we got to drive to Arenal, which was surprisingly dissappointing compared to the other places we’ve seen. It’s really touristy and the vulcano was covered in clouds. We did do a canopy tour, which was kind of okay.
After Arenal, we went to San Jose where we met up with some people we knew over there. We went to a couple of bars and clubs. The best place we’ve seen so far is El Pueblo, quite a big Centro Commercial. It’s supposed to be a bit dangerous there but we didn’t really notice anything in particular. Another area we went to was Escazu, supposedly the most posh neighborhood in Costa Rica. We went to a restaurant there, which was quite okay (Toku it’s called).}
Okay, in about 2 hours I have to catch my flight back to Holland. Back to the cold. The last I’ve seen is that it’s just below freezing 
.
– Update from Utrecht (NL) –
Finally arrived back home. After having travelled for about 40 hours, I finally arrived this afternoon. Unfortunately someone ran into the air traffic control tower in San Jose causing a three hour delay. This made me miss my connection to Amsterdam so I had to wait for an additional 24 hours in Houston of all places. Then I arrived in Amsterdam and due to an accident with the trains, I had to wait for an additional hour or two before I got to go home. That’s it as far as holidays are concerned for the next months…
Here are some links to interesting places you might want to consider.
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