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New OpenJDK projects: Compiler Grammar and Type Annotations
The OpenJDK community has announced the approval of two new projects, Compiler Grammar and Type Annotations. The Compiler Grammar project's goa il "to develop an experimental version of the javac compiler based upon a grammar written in ANTLR." Meanwhile, the Type Annotations project is implementing "a Java language extension that permits annotations to be written on uses of types. One example of the new syntax is generic type arguments, as in List<@NonNull Object>. The type annotation syntax is also known as "JSR 308"."

An Introduction to Real-Time Java Technology: Part 1, The Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR 1)
The SDN has posted an edit of a white paper by Brian Goetz as An Introduction to Real-Time Java Technology: Part 1, The Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR 1). "Real-time computing is often associated with high speed, but this is only one part of the picture. At its core, real-time computing is about predictability -- the knowledge that the system will always perform within the required time frame. The deadlines involved need not be very short -- though they sometimes are -- and the consequences of missing a deadline may not be dire -- though they sometimes are. The key to whether an application is a real-time one has to do with whether its requirements include temporal constraints."

NetBeans # 1 in InfoWorld's Review of Ruby on Rails IDEs
InfoWorld Test Center compares nine IDEs for Ruby on Rails Development, in Lab test: Climb aboard Ruby on Rails, with NetBeans 6.1 taking top honors with a score of 9.0 out of 10. Author Martin Heller awards NetBeans the article's only "Excellent" rating, saying "NetBeans has long been a strong Java development environment. It gained Ruby and Rails support in the last year. With Version 6.1, NetBeans is a seriously good Rails IDE."

Weblogs

Thoughts on Rich Internet Applications
Obviously the Internet can do a lot more than the Web and I think it's a shame that the Web Browser takes up so much of the mindspace of using the Internet that we think the Internet has to be limited to the capabilities of the Web Browser. — David Herron

Hudson now available in IPS package
In addition to Debian, OpenSUSE, and FreeBSD packages, Hudson is now available as an IPS package for users who run on OpenSolaris, and here is how you can use it. — Kohsuke Kawaguchi

Sun Java System Mobile Enterprise Platform 1.0 is Available!
I've spent the last year working on a new product at Sun called the Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP), which enables mobile access to enterprise data. Using MEP, you can easily develop mobile applications capable of synchronizing data between Java enabled mobile devices and corporate back-end EIS systems. — Ryan Shoemaker

Forums

Feasibility of JavaFX (vs Flash). Wanting a third opinion
As JavaFX has appeared on the Java scene, it seemed that could be the best solution, since the existing architecture is all-java and the team of developers at ease with java as with any other programming environment. However, at its current stage JavaFX seems as visually unattractive as its applets and much slower than Flash and difficult to embed seemingly onto websites. Is it only my perception, or could JavaFX look as nicely as Flash counterparts (Ajax in some case possibly) without requiring a significant effort (such as hard-coding nice custom elements), be nearly as fast, and allowing easy being plugged in into HTML without popup webstart annoyances and long download time? —

Re: My feedback on Update 10 and wishlist for the future
But there is one thing that is clear about dynamically loading JARs... class instantiation is S-L-O-W! I have found that once the first class is downloaded, each subsequent instantiation of a class from within that same dynamically loaded JAR takes forever. It's as if the JAR is not being downloaded in full but that each class is downloaded separately and thus incurring the overhead of an additional IO. Is this possible? —

Re: Running Java Applications as a back-end batch processes
Personally, I use Quartz (http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/). I have a servlet that is initialized when my app starts up. The servlet sets up my schedules and starts up the scheduler. It has worked well for me. The only problem I have is when trying to shutdown the app server while doing a long-running job. Since Quartz uses its own thread pool, there are occasionally times when I have to forcibly stop Glassfish. —

Is the source for Java Web Start available?
I've spent a few hours Googling and searching through the OpenJDK webpage, but I can't seem to find a place to download the source for Web Start (javaws.jar, deployment.jar). Was Java Web Start released as open source yet? (or close source but still viewable?) The reason I'm interested is I'm having an issue with the version of Java Web Start included in 1.6 update 7. My application worked fine with update 6, but Web Start consistently crashes (before my application starts) without any errors, logs, or dump files generated with update 7. —