Interview with Dan Allen on Seam, Part 1 available on the TechCast

I just published an interview with Dan Allen on the Seam Framework on our Chariot Tech Cast.  Give it a listen if you're curious how Seam differs from other application frameworks.  If you're developing on Java EE 6, you should consider Seam alongside of other platforms such as Spring and Grails, due to the way it helps provide the glue to make developers more productive in various APIs.

One thing interesting that Dan said is that the approaches of Seam and Spring differ in one major way.  Seam essentially provides access to the APIs of interest, while putting together the plumbing to make it easy to use them the way they were intented.  Spring, on the other hand, simplifies access to most other APIs by wrapping them.  I thought this was a great way of contrasting the approaches.

Listen to Episode #23 here.  You can subscribe to the TechCast on iTunes or via the RSS Feed.

Chariot TechCast

Interesting Post: Java EE 6 Overview on TSS

I've been so engrossed in Spring and Grails that I have ignored Java EE and the movement to enhance and simplify it. Reza Rahman posted a great article on TheServerSide.COM on the coming changes to Java EE for version 6.  JSR-316 (the Java EE 6 Specificaion JSR) defines the changes being made. Apparently there will be some 'pruned' libraries, such as JAX-RPC, EJB CMP, and some deployment and management JSRs.

Also new in the platform will be profiles. The first non-full profile deployed will be the 'Web profile', which sacrifices JMS and a few other APIs so that an enterprise app will run within a web container (including a "Lite" version of EJB, but not including JMS).  

On first glance, the pending WebBeans 1.0 specification looks like a standardized web component framework, similar to the Seam Framework, and allows EJBs and associated JPA entities to exist and easily wire directly into the EL notation on the JSF page.  Reza claims that WebBeans is inspired by Seam and some DI frameworks (Google and Spring) but that it is not a mirror of them.  Should be interesting times once this is delivered for the Seam framework.

There is a call for participation at the bottom of the article, as well as a ton of well-placed links to more information in the JSR and other places.

Read the Java EE 6 Overview article at TSS