Morgan Bath

Simple question, probably a no brainer, but I couldnt find anything on the search so here goes:

I use JDeveloper 99% of the time. I use it to develop, build and deploy. However I can use Ant within JDeveloper to build .... but why would I?

I know very little about Ant because quite frankly I have never needed it. Thats strikes me as a bad excuse to avoid learning about another tool so I need some motivational ass kicking comments about how and why Ant is useful compared to JDevelopers built in build and deploy functions To be honest I am just itching to go on Amazon and start ordering new books to read and new areas of competance to add to my CV and figured Ant might be the thing to focus on for a few weeks.

I tried searching for any posts with JDeveloper and Ant in it and got only two hits, neither of which discussed pros and cons.

Originally posted by Solveig Laura Haugland:


Hi Mario,

I think The Big Picture would be a great book for you and your group. As long as you aren't rigid about your books containing no humor. ;>

I should avoid this book. People think I am geeky enough after laughing my ass off all the way through Head First EJB. Bosses tend to assume you cannot be working or learning anything useful if your smiling, and therefore give you more work and start looking closely at your expense claims.

RELATED TIP: When your boss comes in make sure you were looking miserable, but smile and beam when you see him and look like he is the best thing to happen to you all day. Try to let him not leave as if you would do anything other than the work you were doing. He will avoid you like the plague, assume you are working hard, and usually sign any expense form just to get away from you!

Sorry I agree with your manager If its working don't try to fix it.

IF (big IF) you need to change it at a later date thats the time to think about changing the architecture imho.

But for the sake of argument lets assume I agree with you that it needs to be changed. Justifications I would use are:

1) EJBs are simple to add now with modern IDEs and EJB 2.0 local interfaces. If you use JDeveloper 10g you can have a basic Entity bean collection for a simple DB up in about 5 minutes, the session bean structure (without business logic) in another 5. It will be fine grained and some purists will go mental, but there ya go. **nontech talk :SIMPLE, LOW DEVELPMENT TIME

2) They produce an elegant OO interface on top of the database, with a nice session facade and good use of resource locator pattern any programmer with a basic java knowledge can use. He can forget JDBC, prepared statements, SQL etc etc. **nontech talk :EASY TO UNDERSTAND, IMPROVE MAINTAINANCE COSTS / TIME

3) EJBs are not PL/SQL stored procedures. PL/SQL is ugly. It is not sexy and we hate it lots. We don't care if its efficient and powerful. Its not Java and therefore we hate it. **nontech talk : PLEAAAAASEEEEE LET US DO IT!

4) Even oracle are getting Java barmy so perhaps we need to get ahead of the rest and get comfortable with the new thing **nontech talk :ADVANCED, J2EE, MODERN

Thats what id try, but ill lay odds your boss will go: Anyone paying us to change it? Anyone (and by anyone I mean anyone paying us cash) complained about the existing system? Anyone except you give a rats ass about elegant code? Ok, go bring me coffee!

morgan
[ July 20, 2004: Message edited by: Morgan Bath ]

What are the big differences in the 2nd edition? I mean is it worth shelling out the cash, or is it just a matter of a few details changed?

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

For you, I really dont think how certs. can help you. Maybe you need a more specialized field of study, say, if you have shift to finanical areas, maybe you need a CFA, or if you have shift to accounting, you need ACCA, I dont think IT certs can really help you a lot in your case.
Nick

Who said I needed em? I just cant stop wanting them .... its like if they created a certification for fish juggling and released a free book on how to pass it, id be doing it! I cant stop! Help me .....

I got a masters degree, 13 years of experience ,7 of them in IT, certification falling out my ass, and Im a great dancer .... I have the CV from heaven and yet I dont have a job at this moment A guy I helped with a reference and a rewrite of his CV doesnt even know the difference between a JSP page and a JSP document and he is working as a J2EE web developer.
The man can't even dance!!!
So why do I go for certifications if it isnt helping? Its something to do I guess Beats going back to working as a school teacher *shudder*!
On the plus side, I have now seen every episode of star trek ever made

My name is Morgan and i am a cert-aholic

Is there a known disorder where you suddenly want to win books so that you have an excuse to take another certification?
Id pretty much decided to take a few months off certifications and play some counter strike or do something radical like sleep, and then I get an email about book promotions. All of a sudden I realise I have to pass the 484 exam. I mean I absolutely MUST have that certification. I just know I wont survive without it!
The only thing I have to do first, is find out what the hell 484 certification is.... I mean it must be something right? There is a book about it apparantly

They let you take scbcd without scjp?

Originally posted by Claus Ibsen:

Yeah what was the correct english term for doing development in the far east - outsource?
Well anyway it was in China.
/Claus

Guess it depends where you are To me you are the off-shore worker!

My girlfriend just said "Lets hope its not an April fools from Sun!" .....
*blink*
Im going to dump my girlfriend!

Off-shore?

I have to thank a lot of people but especially George, Ken for keeping me from going insane and Max for his book. I got a not so good score, dropping points on Locking: 80 44 & Network Server: 40 17 . I have no idea why as im fairly (99%) sure they were fine. But I got full marks on the other areas and a pass is a pass I guess
Thankyou thankyou all. Im off for a drink!
oooh i get to change my profile now
[ April 01, 2004: Message edited by: Morgan Bath ]

Originally posted by Max Habibi:
I think it's just a matter of how you use it: have a speech ready. If they raise an eyebrow and ask 'SCJD?', have a little shpil ready about what you did, what technologies you dealt with, how such-and-such problem was approached, and how you've been enriched by the experience.

Yeah I know, and im not trying to drum down business for your book here What Im really saying is that something needs to be done about the industry awareness of this certification. Very few in the industry get past "Sun Certified" when reading your CV. It wouldnt matter if you had programmer or developer certification to them. They really dont know the difference.
Its actually a deeper problem than just SCJD. I had one intervue where I told them I was ready to sit the SCBCD exam next week, and was expecting a score in the 90s. Ten minutes later he asked me if I knew much about enterprise java beans. The intervuer was the head of a department who did nothing but j2ee development.
Rule of thumb:
"I am fully conversant with all aspects of Business Component and Web component development on all major enterprise edition compliant servers." = BAD for CV
"Me know EJB, JSP, Servlets, J2EE, Java real nice!" = GOOD for CV
Whats worse is im guilty of encouraging this. Ive proof read CVs for friends and encouraged them to add these buzz terms. One guy had written one JSP script in his three years in a company and I had him put JSP web component developer as one of his major roles during that time .... cos the job he was looking at was looking for JSP people He didnt even deploy it himself! But now he is a J2EE developer because of it.

If an entity bean is in the middle of a transaction why would the container want to passivate? How would that effect the transaction? I mean we are talking CMT here so it must be in the middle of a method and therefore doing something currently (or uber-badly programmed). It sort of worries me that mid way through changing a field on an entity the container just throws it back to the pool. What happens to the transaction? Does the pooled entity bean retain its lock on the database row?