Roland Barcia

My JSF article series and Meet the Experts appearance on IBM developerWorks received a lot of feedback. I would have to say, the most common question or feedback came along the lines of comparing Struts to JSF. I thought it would be a good idea to compare JSF to Struts by evaluating various features that an application architect would look for in a Web application framework. This article will compare specific features. Those on which I will focus include: Maturity Controller Flexibility/Event Handling Navigation Page development Integration Extensibility Certainly, there are other places in which you might want to do a comparison, such as performance, but I'll focus on the set I just mentioned. I'll also spend more time on the Controller and Navigation sections because they are the heart of the frameworks. Performance of JSF is specific to the vendor implementation,... (more)

Build and Deploy Procedures

This chapter, "Build and Deploy Procedures" is excerpted from the new book, IBM WebSphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration, authored by Roland Barcia, Bill Hines, Tom Alcott and Keys Botzum. © International Business Machines Corporation 2005. ISBN 0-13-146862-6. To learn more, www.phptr.com/title/0131468626. In the last chapter, we provided you with a quick start to WebSphere Application Server (WAS) by configuring and deploying the Personal Trade System. The deployment was simple and straightforward, using the WAS administrative console to do most of the work. With small ... (more)

Examining the Programming Model Extensions

Back in version 4 of IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS), IBM released the Enterprise Edition of WAS. In version 5, IBM continued to release the Enterprise Edition (later renamed IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundations in v5.1) with even more functionality. In version 5, the heart of the Enterprise Edition functionality was process choreographer, a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based workflow engine. However, the Enterprise Edition also contains a slew of other technology sometimes referred to as the WAS Programming Model Extensions (PME). The goal of these pr... (more)

Developing Java and Web Services Applications on Rational Application Developer V6

In this article, WebSphere consultant Roland Barcia answers questions on developing J2EE and Web services applications on IBM Rational Application Developer V6 and deploying and testing those applications on WebSphere Application Server V6. Topics include using the various wizards, perspectives, and tools in Rational Application Developer to develop different types of J2EE applications, using the new Service Integration Bus Messaging Platform in WebSphere Application Server V6, differences from V5 of WebSphere Studio or WebSphere Application Server, using the default WebSphere ... (more)

AJAX Requests – Data or Markup?

AJAX Requests – Data or Markup? I just got back from the Real World AJAX seminar in NYC on Monday.  Pretty good event with lots of good stories.  One issue that caught my attention was the issue of how the back-end returned the data to AJAX applications.  Most of the speakers preferred data, except for David Hansson from Ruby on Rails seemed to favor markup as the return type (at least that is what I understood him to say).  This debate is pretty interesting.  From an Enterprise Java standpoint, the decision I believe has implications to the usage of the JSF, Struts, and Port... (more)