Final words on the book

[norman richards]

Before the week ends, I thought I'd say thanks to everyone who came to stop by. I'm sure many of you just came for the chance to win a free book, but I hope you've been intrigued by XDoclet.
If you use XDoclet, or are thinking of using it, do consider getting the book. We cover the basics of code generation in a very approachable way. Of course, we rapidly move into XDoclet and demonstrate each of the major builtin tasks. Most of the book follows the development of weblog application, and we apply XDoclet to each of the tiers. If you want to see XDoclet used across an entire application, this is a great example. If you use XDoclet for EJBs, but are curious what else you can do with it, there's a lot for you.
After all of that, we have a nice section on custimizing XDoclet and doing your own in-house code generation. That's a topic worthy of an entire book, but I think we did a good job with it in the space we had. Finally, we touch on IDEs (Eclipse and Intellij IDEA) and XDoclet related tools (AndroMDA and Middlegen).
We also did a very thorough reference section. It's more complete than even the website. If you are constantly fumbling around searching for the tags you need, then you will really appreciate the reference material.

The book went to print a couple weeks ago and we are actually expecting the first copies any day now. If they haven't shipped out already, it won't be more than a couple more days. If you ordered directly from Manning, you will be the first to get a copy. (the ebook is available right now) If you ordered from Amazon or some other online site, it will take a couple weeks before they get their copies and are ready to ship.
The best price I've seen is from bookpool. ($27.50) Amazon has a good price too. If you order from Amazon,
use this link to support JavaRanch. It won't cost you any more and will help make sure the site can keep providing forums like this for everyone to use.
As a final comment, if you do get the book, please take the time to review it at Amazon. That's probably the single best thing you can do for any author. (though direct feedback, including criticism, is very helpful too)

[Craig Walls]

What he said.
Thank you all very much for the good questions and discussion. I didn't know what to expect coming into this, but it turned out to be very fun. I hope we answered the questions to your satisfaction.
I'm a bit surprised that some topics weren't at least brought up in passing. For example, did you know that XDoclet can generate struts-config.xml and validation.xml files for your Struts-based projects? We didn't even touch on message-driven beans. What about what XDoclet can do for those of you working with JMX? Anybody here ever heard of JSR-168 (the portlet API) and did you know there's a module for generating portlet.xml? There's still a few hours left before we sing "Happy Trails" and ride off into the sunset...anything else you want to discuss?
Of course, I intend to linger here at JavaRanch for awhile after this week is over, so if there are any more questions please post 'em and I'll try to get back with you. I also encourage everyone to get the book and let us know what you think. I'd also be very interested in hearing any unique ways you may be using XDoclet.
Thanks again for welcoming us to JavaRanch and thanks to Ajith for the kind review.

[Lasse Koskela]

Thank you guys for hanging around! And do continue doing just that
Regarding Craig's note about questions left unasked, I think the reason for the lack of interest is due to either
1) Configuration files are not that many (or "easy enough" to write manually)
2) Relatively few developers actually work with JMX or other "niche" technologies, and if they do, they're probably using their $$$ IDE which has all sorts of wizards for the particular portal server, for example
Disclaimer: I'm not bashing JMX. I've used it once, thought it was cool, and would love to meet a suitable requirement for using JMX again...
[ December 12, 2003: Message edited by: Lasse Koskela ]

[norman richards]

Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:

Disclaimer: I'm not bashing JMX. I've used it once, thought it was cool, and would love to meet a suitable requirement for using JMX again...

I know you were just using JMX as an example here, but I thought I'd mention
that JMX has become a pretty important part of the J2EE development on the project I'm working on now. We are trying expose all our new components as managed services now. It is VERY nice.
The problem is that very few people really understand what JMX can do. I don't really, but I was inspired by the JBoss uses of JMX and tried to understand the way they do things. I really wish someone would put out a good JMX book. All the JMX books out there focus on the technology - this is a standard MBean this is a dynamic MBean, etc... But, after having read more than one JMX book (cover to cover) I stood scratching my head. "What exactly can I do with it? How can I use this in my application?" There's really NOTHING out there that gives you that view. If I thought I had enough of a background, I'd consider writing a book on it myself.
To relate this back to XDoclet, the JBoss JMX tasks are VERY nice. Those JBoss service files can be tricky, and XDoclet generates them like a champ.

[Lasse Koskela]

Sounds very interesting. Could you consider writing a short piece on your architecture?
The point about "here's a standard MBean, that's a dynamic MBean, we're done here" is very true and would certainly need some patching up to do. (if someone picks up the lead, I hereby announce my willingness for being an in-progress reviewer )

[David Harkness]

Same here regarding JMX. I read a few web pages, delved into the WebLogic docs, and scanned a book, but I'm left with the same thought of "Wow, this could be really useful if I could find a good use for it!"
As we've just begun a QA cycle, I'm putting more time into planning the next release, and redoing some of the architecture is high on my list. For one, it would be nice to have more things be run-time configurable (# of attempts for optimistic concurrency before tossing an exception, maximum # of downloads, logging levels, etc). The trick is that none of the source of information provided any hint of a "best practice" or pattern -- they simply described the API (which is tiny and simple as far as MBeans are concerned).
There are other topics I'd love to touch on with you guys (and thanks again for doing this), but I haven't even dipped my toes into some of them, and I prefer to at least get to a point where I have a few good questions to ask rather than asking, "Can you give me some good pointers on where to start?"
Anyway, kudos on the book. I look forward to its arrival at my desk.

[Craig Walls]

Just an FYI--Norm and I just got an e-mail indicating that our publisher has received their first copies of the printed book. This means that it is shipping and should be on its way to Amazon, Bookpool, or a bookstore near you. Get yours today! (I hear that they make great Christmas gifts!)

[Lasse Koskela]

(Starting to sound like meaningless drivel)
Are you going to sit down and read the hardcopy, first thing? I haven't published anything but I bet I would be a nervous wreck before having read the actual printed book (maybe a few copies of it, just to make sure...).

[Craig Walls]

Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:
(Starting to sound like meaningless drivel)

Yeah, but it's Friday afternoon...everything I do on Friday afternoon is meaningless drivel!

Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:

Are you going to sit down and read the hardcopy, first thing? I haven't published anything but I bet I would be a nervous wreck before having read the actual printed book (maybe a few copies of it, just to make sure...).

I'm not nervous at all. We've reviewed the typeset PDFs to death. I know that the book isn't perfect and that some people who live to gripe will find flaw in it. But on the whole I think it's a good book and most people will find it to be a great resource to a great tool.
I can't wait to get it in my hands because then I'll know that I'm finally done!

[norman richards]

Originally posted by Craig Walls:


I can't wait to get it in my hands because then I'll know that I'm finally done!

I just got my copies this evening. Wow...

[Lasse Koskela]

Congratulations!