Tony Murphy

SVG is cool

2006-05-20T18:17:00.000+01:00

Have a look

Adobe SVG examples.

You'll need to be running Firefox 1.5 or install Adobes SVG viewer for Internet Explorer.

Can recommend a recently purchased book - "SVG Programming: The Graphical Web", good book written by Kurt Cagle.

Microsoft don't seem to be planning on supporting SVG natively in Internet Explorer 7, think it's a huge mistake as Mozilla will drive Intranet based SVG uptake, further isolating Internet Explorer. Also with the internet fast moving to mobile devices, SVG will become more and more popular.

To request Microsoft support SVG click here

Unit Testing Struts Actions

2006-05-14T19:30:00.000+01:00

StrutsTestCase is really good for unit testing Struts Actions. It's based on JUnit. Highly recommended.

Javascript Unit Testing

2006-05-14T19:27:00.000+01:00

Have worked with jsunit, its a impressive piece of code for unit testing javascript based web applications. It's nicely integrated with ant for automating testing.

Javascript logging

2006-05-10T20:50:00.000+01:00

Sick of having to use alert('.. some rotten problem..); when developing and debugging javascript? well then check out this article for details of a log4j-ish type approach to logging for javascript

Top class Web Application Tester

2006-05-10T20:28:00.000+01:00

Came across an excellent Web Application Test Tool. It's called Selenium. It comes with a firefox extension. Check it out, you won't be disappointed

Netbeans gets serious

2006-02-22T12:10:00.000Z

Verison 5.5 supports UML and SOA. Very Impressive!

http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/55/

Audible Browser

2006-01-26T12:46:00.000Z

Found a website which supports Audible browsing and a tool which provides the speech

BT Research Site

Browse Alound

Javascript Cheat Sheet

2006-01-10T10:18:00.000Z

here

Getting started with UML

2006-01-09T13:47:00.000Z

Free and Open Source UML Tools

A free version of the Visual Paradign UML tool can be found here, the functionality provided is a subset of that available in commercial versions of the tool.

I searched the wikipedia for other free / open source UML tools. I visited some of there websites. Of those sites which looked half decent and had Windows XP installations, I downloaded and quickly evaluated. These include ArgoUML,Fujaba and StarUML. ArgoUML is in the early stages of development by the looks of things. Fujaba seems to be more advanced, but I wasn't mad about the user interface, but it was decent enough. StarUML is impressive enough, but IMHO, usability could be improved. For example, its much easier to edit class diagrams, add attributes and methods using Visual Paradigm, but then again, the community version of Visual Paradigm doesn't generate source code, or have reverse engineering capabilities, unlike StarUML. Deployment diagram didn't work in StarUML for me, and when I closed all diagrams, I couldn't do anything. I had to reopen the project. So I'd say there are some bugs in there yet.

Learning UML

I found some really good UML based articles on IBM's The Rational Edge Ezine website. I have tried to summarise some of the UML diagram types and where they might be used based. But, I'm not saying that I've made a good job of it. Please read the articles linked to for a more comphrensive and more correct version.

For a proper introduction to UML click here

UML has 2 basic categories of diagram, Structural and Behavioural. The purpose of structure diagrams is to show the static structure of the system being modeled. They include the class, component, and or object diagrams. Behavioral diagrams, on the other hand, show the dynamic behavior between the objects in the system, including things like their methods, collaborations, and activities. Example behavior diagrams are activity, use case, and sequence diagrams.

Class Diagram
Developers can use class diagrams to design and document the system's coded (or soon-to-be-coded) classes. It can specfy the classes, enumerations and interfaces used, attributes and methods and relationships between classes.

Use Case Diagram
A use-case diagram is typically used to communicate the high-level functions of the system and the system's scope.

A use case illustrates a unit of functionality provided by the system. The main purpose of the use-case diagram is to help development teams visualize the functional requirements of a system, including the relationship of "actors" (human beings or processes who will interact with the system) to essential processes, as well as the relationships among different use cases. Use-case diagrams generally show groups of use cases -- either all use cases for the complete system, or a breakout of a particular group of use cases with related functionality (e.g., all security administration-related use cases).

The presence or absence of use cases in use case diagrams indicates what the system does and doesn't do.

Sequence Diagram
The sequence diagram is used primarily to show the interactions between objects in the sequential order that those interactions occur.

One of the primary uses of sequence diagrams is in the transition from requirements expressed as use cases to the next and more formal level of refinement. Use cases are often refined into one or more sequence diagrams.

Activity Diagram
In projects in which use cases are present, activity diagrams can model a specific use case at a more detailed level. However, activity diagrams can be used independently of use cases for modeling a business-level function, such as buying a concert ticket or registering for a college class. Activity diagrams can also be used
to model system-level functions, such as how a ticket reservation data mart populates a corporate sales system's data warehouse.

Because it models procedural flow, the activity diagram focuses on the action sequence of execution and the conditions that trigger or guard those actions. The activity diagram is also focused only on the activity's
internal actions and not on the actions that trigger the activity in the first place.

Sequence diagrams can protray the same information as activity diagrams, however, some people perfer activity diagrams for modeling business-level functions. Activity diagrams show all potential sequence flows in an activity, whereas a sequence diagram typically shows only one flow of an activity. The activity diagram is less "techie" in appearance, and therefore less intimidating to business people.

The Component Diagram

Components are considered autonomous, encapsulated units within a system or subsystem that provide one or more interfaces. Although the UML 2 specification does not strictly state it, components are larger design units that represent things that will typically be implemented using replaceable modules. The idea is that you can easily reuse and/or substitute a different component implementation in your designs because a component encapsulates behavior and implements specified interfaces.

In component-based development (CBD), component diagrams offer architects a natural format to begin modeling a solution. Component diagrams allow an architect to verify that a system's required functionality is being implemented by components, thus ensuring that the eventual system will be acceptable.

The Statechart Diagram
The statechart diagram models the different states that a class can be in and how that class transitions from state to state.

The Deployment Diagram
The deployment diagram shows how a system will be physically deployed in the hardware environment. Its purpose is to show where the different components of the system will physically run and how they will communicate with each other.

Ruby and MySQL Tutorial

2005-12-27T10:59:00.000Z

Instructions on how to install Ruby and MySQL + a Graphical User Interface for working with MySQL (costs some money - but there is a 30 day free trial)

Get Ruby on Rails and MYSQL

This is an amazing tutorial on what Ruby on Rails can do. Check it out today.

Ruby and Eclipse

2005-12-24T16:07:00.000Z

I've just started to work with the Ruby programming language. I found, installed and am running a plugin for eclipse which appears to work very well. It can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubyeclipse

As for learning Ruby, check out the following book http://www.rubycentral.com/book/intro.html

Java and the Eclipse IDE

2005-12-24T16:01:00.000Z

Had been using Netbeans for the past year, but have since switched to Eclipse. The migration was simple. Overall Eclipse is by far the better IDE for developing Java Web Applications, although Netbeans does have some very nice Wizards which should not be ignored!

Eclipse.org's WTP plugin is essential for developing Web Applications

An excellent plugin for Visual sourcesafe can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/vssplugin/

Need a UK 0870 Telephone Number?

2005-09-17T17:52:00.000+01:00

Highly recommend YAC

Flock Browser

2005-09-17T17:48:00.000+01:00

Looks like a new browser is about to make its debut

New Scientist Article

Struts Web Application Framework

2005-09-17T17:34:00.000+01:00

For some time I wrote web applications using Servlets and JSP, while doing so, I experienced lots of difficultly with page navigation, internationalization and error handling.

I then stumbled on Struts and it proved highly efficent in helping me overcome these problems. Web applications were easier to build and maintain and improved user experience.

I'm looking forward to the next generation of Struts which will be called Shale as it will introduce JSF capabilites.

Logging in Java

2005-09-17T17:23:00.000+01:00

If you write code in Java, then you should be using Log4j . It is a highly configurable logging utility. Log data can be written as formatted text (incl XML) to files , can be emailed, can be sent to instant messaging, can write a socket etc.. There are also powerful filtering capabilities. No one should use System.out.println for logging or write custom libraries.

Also highly recommend the use of chainsaw with log4j. Graphical interface for viewing streaming log data in real time check out chainsaw

Social Bookmarks

2005-09-16T20:38:00.000+01:00

Great website http://del.icio.us/ allows for users to share their bookmarks. Comes complete with RSS feeds.

For a list of my bookmarks, check out http://del.icio.us/tony_murphy

JMS - Message Queues

2005-08-31T08:23:00.000+01:00

Great introduction from IBM Website

AJAX Introduction - RIA

2005-08-31T08:17:00.000+01:00

A new approach to web applications

As ever Wikipedia provides some excellent coverage and links on AJAX

Oracle's Java Developer Site

2005-08-28T20:24:00.000+01:00

Excellent site for all things Java (and some database stuff as well!)

Java Servlet Filters

2005-08-28T19:45:00.000+01:00

If you develop web applications using Java Servlets, you should be using Filters. They were added in version 2.3 of the Servlet API.

Read this article from SUN The Essentials of Filters

and have a look at these examples from ONJava.com

Understanding XML

2005-08-18T19:46:00.000+01:00

Highly recommened website about XML and the future of the web

SVG

2005-08-18T19:38:00.000+01:00

This is a cool technology which is going to have a major impact on the web.

This document is an excellent read

Adobe have a list of very useful links

About this blog

2005-08-18T19:35:00.000+01:00

This blog is primarily about web application development.