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)

Building SOA Solutions with Service Component Architecture

In the previous article (part 1 in WebSphere Journal vol: 3. iss: 4) we began to build an SCA project in WebSphere Process Server. Here in part 2 we pick up the discussion. To see the associated images, please view the article online at www.ibm.com/developerWorks/websphere. d.  The business object is defined using standard XML schema type. You can open the business object using an XML editor to see it. (You can open the business object in a text editor by right clicking it and selecting Open with => and the editor of your choice.) e.  Save and close the Business Object Editor. f. ... (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)

Building SOA Solutions with SCA - Service Component Architecture

You may be thinking, oh great, not another programming model. What about Web services? What happened to Enterprise JavaBeans? Well, Service Component Architecture (SCA) is not meant to replace or compete with any existing programming models. Instead, SCA gives you a model to define interfaces, implementations, and references in a technology neutral way, letting you then bind these elements to whichever technology specific implementations you choose. For example, we can define our interface in Java, and our implementation can be applied as a BPEL process, or we can have my interf... (more)