10 posts tagged “neumont”

With the quarter finally over, I am concentrating on some of the things I have been trying to accomplish personally. As with most things, I don't have much time. What is likely to show up in the future? My personal website is in the process of development to which I hope to complete within the next two or three days. This site will not necessarily replace this blog, but will provide a location to release the projects I intend on releasing. Of course, more posting is required. I haven't put forth enough effort as of late to this blog, and I apologize to my readers. We will see how things go.

Differences Between Java 5 and 6

Abstract

    This article contains information about the differences between the Java 5 and Java 6 frameworks. More specifically, it highlights the new features added with the latest release of Java 6. The article covers security, gui, speed, and problems found with the current release. It discusses opinion on the subject as well as attempting to provide fact about the latest Java technology. As our projects gear towards Windows applications, so does this article.

    With the new Java 6 emerging, developers all over the world cringe with the questions of compatibility and upgrade. Others are optimistic about chance to tinker with new API's and tool sets. Although there are a decent number of changes in this update, this article is aimed to expose only the ones we found interesting or important. If we miss some, there is a full list of changes linked at the end of the document. Java 6 appears to be a bunch of small updates packaged as a new release. This is a good thing for those worried about the scope of an upgrade. For those interested in tinkering with new features, the scripting engines and graphical add-ons should suffice. Although there aren't near as many updates as compared to the Java 4 to 5 upgrade, there are definitely some interesting new additions to the new framework.

    First, lets talk optimization. With an expansion of any API or system, slowing down is always a primary concern. However, a large portion of the new Java enhancements are actually speed related. How Java handles desktop applications is now more optimized with faster loading times and double buffering. The adaptive optimization system does even more things to optimize your code upon compilation and runtime. This also applies to split byte code verification which is now done partially at compile-time and partially at runtime. As a note, byte code verification was originally done right when it was about to be used, which slows things down. With all these speed increased, did they mention security features?

    This security section starts with an interesting little tidbit about Web Start Applications. Sun appears to be heavily pushing Java 6 with what they call “Security Versioning.” It states that Java Web Start applications not identifying themselves with the latest version of Java will require users to explicitly give permission before executing a particular Java Web Start program. This seems mildly annoying but apt in moving development to newer versions. The site says that signed Java Web Start applications are not affected by the change. Another main security feature added is GSS/Kerberos integration and a certificate request framework apparently working under a large number of protocols. Java added support for a numerous amount of new encryption types. Some little features include SSLParameters class that encapsulates the configuration of SSL connections and new parameters and options for some of the security related classes. The changes even filter down to the socket level. Socket read timeouts are now fully supported where as before, there were inconsistencies. So if you are treading into socketland, you will be happy to know that the libraries are still being supported very well. Networking updates don't end at the low level however.

    Web Services have a wonderful set of updates as well. Cryptography directly on XML is an awaited feature on the enterprise side of development that made it into this release. Support for .NET web services is another interesting feature added to the new implementation allowing ease of interoperability when designing large systems. This feature is documented, although we have not tested it ourselves. The XML libraries use STAX for message processing, and have 2 new tools to aid in development and deployment. They also included a few new classes to make connections and publishing more simple then ever before.

    Developers Developers? Yes indeed. From the text above, you can see that Java 6 caters to the developer (as they should since they are writing a development language). And it doesn't stop there. A developer can now compile code directly from other code within a Java application. What about if the code breaks? All the debugging information including warnings, errors, etc... get sent back to the application so the application can handle things properly. Code generation now seems more powerful then ever. There are also a few more neat little tricks like developers attaching to an existing JVM for more in-depth debugging. Don't laugh .NET developers, we know you can do that already.

Away from the enterprise server side of things, the User Interface updates are definitely of note. For a Windows developer, these updates have not come fast enough. True double buffering is one notable feature which buffers every window instead of every application. Another nice feature is baseline/gap API's and text-component printing. They even are nice enough to throw in a custom splash screen that can be used with a swing application for those lengthy load times. Sun seems to finally understand that desktop GUI's look different depending on the operating system. They have designed the latest version of swing to look different based on the graphical engine running the swing code. Before, this required special code during the Jframe instantiation. For native look and feel, the features include: GTK Native Look and Feel, Avalon Look and Feel, as well as a number of Windows based fixes. These updates are rumored to speed up the graphical side of things quite a bit as previously stated. To add a few more flavors of icing on the cake Java applications have the ability to access desktop applications, they have live updating on window resizing (finally), and some miscellaneous hardware acceleration tweaks are involved. All in all, I would say Java now has a pretty powerful forms application development library. What more could you ask for?

    As for miscellaneous features, Java has implemented a nice way to integrate scripting languages in with Java source code. The actual Sun site directly comments on merging JavaScript, Ruby, and Python into custom scripting engines which allow different team members with different backgrounds to integrate code. This framework allows scripting languages to access internal parts of your application with a small code base as the scripting engine. We didn't spend an extensive amount of time delving into this feature although it is something worth exploring in the future.

With all of these cool new API upgrades, there are some things that confuse us. For example, some of the speed specification documentation is missing from the Sun website. The whitepaper for Java 6 performance redirects to a page simply saying “Coming Soon.” Also, they have appeared to add some features that the community was directly against even though this release was set on community action and involvement. A small scale HTTP server was added to Java 6 which is based on a bug report sent by someone in the community. Every person commenting on the particular bug deemed it unnecessary. As well, a few data types were added to the framework that appeared to be fairly meaningless. The double sided queue was one of those data types. One man's bloat is another man's godsend though; I hope people find use in the new types. The most immense bother is the one to one relationship still required by the JVM to launch desktop applications. We are hoping this problem will be dealt with in the near future. The need for a separate JVM for interpreted language was fixed with .NET, and users don't enjoy the lengthy load times associated with launching two applications for every one application. We won't mention the memory waste.

    Despite the issues, every developer knows that ironing out problems takes a lengthy amount of time. This especially applies to replacing production code which many developers currently rely on. With that said, don't expect things to be perfect any time soon. The emergence of Java 6 brought some new possibilities in development to the table which everyone loves, although we didn't see many things catering to our love of coding to robots. There are only a few complaints about the new framework, and none of them seem to hinder the framework enough to justify not upgrading (this especially applies to those interested in Web services and those affected by “Security Versioning”. These new features are essential as this language makes an effort to stay on top.

References

Java SE 6 Release Notes http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/features.html

Bruno, Eric (2006, February 27) Java SE First Impressions: A Desktop Winner

http://www.devx.com/Java/Article/30722

Java 6 Security Enhancements

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/enhancements.html

Mullan, Sean (2006, February 15) Mustang Beta is out! Here's what's new in security.

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/mullan/archive/2006/02/mustang_beta_is_1.html

vivekp (2006, December 12) Webservices in JDK 6

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/vivekp/archive/2006/12/webservices_in.html

After my break in Michigan to which I didn't post anything, I am back in school. The classes are decent, and this quarter appears to be better then last. *shrugs* We will see what it has to offer.

As for TorrentVolve? The project has sort of exploded. There have been many downloads since I went on break, and vancottt has posted some nice updates. We were going to try and have a full time team dedicated again this quarter, but it didn't work out for now. However, I will be personally placing more requested features into the system and so will the current developers. Look for more and enjoy what is there.

Fortunatly, throughout all of the commotion of classes, I did manage to complete a project. Although it has been kept pretty much under wraps, I finally released the software alpha to the world today. Projects class brought the opportunity to develop my own open-source project. So I put together a great development team, and 7 weeks later TorrentVolve emerged. It is hosted at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/torrentvolve

What TorrentVolve is:

TorrentVolve is an open-source, multi-user, bittorrent client written with PHP. The intention was to make a web based torrent client that was really fast and supported any torrent client that users would like to use. We definitely accomplished that. The torrent client ships with a server version of Azureus so downloads can start immediately. If you would like to use a different client, we have a couple of interfaces to implement so the system knows how to use your particular client, drop it in the torrent modules directory, and select it in the admin page.

TorrentVolve Development Team:

• Matthew Kruskamp
• TJ Van Cott
• Daniel Galloway
• Charles Pence
• Adam Nielsen
  

The XNA game that I mentioned in previous posts was uploaded thanks to Dusda. Although the movie looks fairly choppy, I can assure you that it is not when you actually play it. Simple and elegant... actually, we only had 2 days to work on it so I think we did a pretty good job considering it was our first endeavor with XNA. I'll post again soon with another personal update. Until then, have fun viewing our game :P.

Watch the video:

Recap. Yesterday was a fairly long day. I took my CS360 final that covered: COM+, Remoting, Message Queuing, Web Services, routing, and WSE3 Security policies. did alright on the written part, and got a 100% on the coding portion. Then I did a demo of mine and dusda's XNA assignment to our DirectX professor. That went pretty well also. The cool part, however, was the insane amount of feedback from the students when we let people play it in the student commons. Fortunately, we actually made a game that people replayed and switched off with one another. The remainder of the day was spent with my car. She was running poorly so I cleaned up the engine bay, changed the oil, swapped out some spark plugs, and fixed all the warning lights. Then another long night... this time for packing for the trip to Michigan.

Today was my final final. Mathmatics is not my strong suit although I am very interested in it. I just haven't done enough. So I was happy to get a 100% on the exam and finally end this quarter. What is ahead? 26 hours of driving.

Well exams have kicked off, and I am pleased with the result of my DirectX exam. Partially because I'm pretty sure I obtained an A, and secondly, because my DX professor's exams are humorous. I think all school exams would be much more effective if they kept you in a relaxed frame of mind while you were taking them. Nothing relaxes a person like laughter and snickering. Our professor entered the room this morning with an announcement of a "pop quiz." even though we had been reviewing for this final for some time now. The exam started out with all 80 people in the DirectX room doing the wave while making noises for 1 point of extra credit as long as everyone made a noise, and the wave went across the room and made it back. Then, once the exam started, every multiple choice question had 5 or more choices, but the 5th or 6th choice on the exams were not your typical answers.. Here are a few examples from previous tests:

Question concerning attenuation in DirectX lighting:
    "e. It doesn't do anything. DirectX is stupid and anybody that teaches a class in DirectX is an absolute idiot."
Question concerning capturing mouse states:
    "e. Your mouse is broken. Pick it up and stare into the laser underneath it to see if you can figure out what is wrong."
Question about camera rotations:
    "e. My camera is not an ambiturner. It can only turn left."
Question about the ControlPan member of the BufferDescription class:
    "e. Allows you full control of both frying pans and sauce pans. Both types of pans can be used to create different types of sauces used in numerous tasty and fulfilling goodies."
A choice on a vertexbuffer question:
    Chuck norris was annoyed with the verticies and kicked them with infinite velocity.

So although the jokes were a little senseless, the material covered was fairly intensive and complicated, and it was nice to chuckle while completing the exam. I'm definitely looking forward to another class with this professor. Learning is even more fun when you have people with a sense of humor. It is nice to get away from the abundance of people around that take things a little too seriously.

Ack, it has been a while. This would be mostly because of the insane amount of school things I have been doing and partially because... well I just forgot. Anyways, I purchased a 360 to develop XNA for, and I now have made it my life's goal to consistantly have a greater gamer score then Dusda has. Also, any arcade games that he plays, I must beat his high-score. Other than that, Neumont, Neumont, and more Neumont. I am on a schedule of sorts that doesn't make any sense in order to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish before the quarter is out.

Ack! My proceeding commitment to goals, health, and more importantly, sleep, has made me unable to endure long nights like I used too, (As in a month ago). I stayed up late with Dusda working on a mesh rendering class for game development last night, and I was so tired by the time it was completed, that I failed to turn it in. It is alright though. I’m fairly certain I near aced both the trigonometry  and game development exams I took this morning. We will see how my algorithms assignments turn out.