Thursday, February 27, 2014

CLOJUG - February 2014: Adopt a JSR + WildFly 8

Hello all! This is a small update about what we did at the Cali (CLO) Java User Group - CLOJUG during February 2014.

We run our regular meeting on 15-FEB-2014 at Universidad del Valle. We had the opportunity to learn about the JCP, JSRs, the Adopt a JSR program, etc. Why they are important to Java developers and to the Java community. We also had the intervention of other JUG leaders from soujava (Brazil), GuadalajaraJUG (Mexico) and LJC (London) who shared with us their experiences with the program and gave us advice about how to start and keep moving Java forward. Special thanks to +Bruno Souza +Guillermo Munoz +Jim Gough
The hangout can be found at: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/chti5e646pta0i3vaebmf5a6hd8

During the same meeting we celebrated our first birthday, ate cake and had fun sharing stories from the last year. Here are some pictures from the event:





We also had another meeting where +Arun Gupta introduced us to the new WildFly 8 which is Red Hat's Java EE 7 compliant open source application server. The main features are:

  • Lightweight : It starts in about 2 secs, light disk/memory footprint, loads containers on demand
  • Centralized Administration and Management: Starts in standalone or managed domain mode, provides multiple options to manage using CLI, REST, Admin Console, Ruby, PHP, Java, and others
  • Feature rich: Java EE 7 compliant, polyglot, role based access control, highly optimized new web server

As always, Arun's presentation was very informative and attendees were glad to have another JavaEE7 compliant application server and are eager to download and start playing/using WildFly 8. The event can be found at the following link, but it was not created as a "Hangout on Air" so there is no replay, only links to the slides: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c11afovo5qj0de1n1evis609gls

Here are some pictures of this event:




Stay tuned for our events and if you live in Cali-Colombia, come to our meetings and become a member of our great community! http://www.clojug.org/

see ya

Monday, February 24, 2014

GlassFish Extension for JDeveloper 12c Go live!

Hi all, I just wanted to share with you that the Glassfish Extension for JDeveloper 12c is available now. As noted in my previous post, this extension is based on the source code provided by Shay Shmeltzer. You can learn more about his GlassFish Extension for JDeveloper 11g in the following post:


The source code for the extension can be found at the ADF-EMG GitHub repository, so you can help to enhance the extension and further develop it.
While the extension is deployed and hosted on Oracle's servers, so you can download it via JDeveloper's menu: help->check for updates, you can follow these steps in order to do a manual installation:
  1. Download the extension here: Glassfish Extension for JDeveloper

  2. Open JDeveloper and go to: Help->check for updates


  3. Select Install From Local File and browse for the file that you downloaded in step 1 (a .zip file)


  4. JDeveloper will show you a summary before installation, press the Finish button and will restart itself to complete the installation


  5. Once the installation is complete, yo can find a new section in the toolbar and inside the Run menu with the Glassfish Extension buttons




  6. Before you can use the extension, you should configure the paths to your Glassfish server installation, you do that in: Tools->Preferences->Glassfish Preferences




That's it, now you can control your GlassFish server from inside JDeveloper 12c.

see ya!

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

ADF Entity Track Change History Attributes and MySQL Database

Hello all.
Oracle ADF can be used with other databases vendors rather than Oracle, however some out-of-the-box functionalities may not work properly and you'll find yourself looking for workarounds to make them work. Today, we are going to see how we can use the Track Change History properties (CreatedBy, CreatedOn, ModifiedBy, ModifiedOn) of a Business Components Entity when using MySQL.

What you need
JDeveloper 12c
MySQL 5.6.4 or higher

Before we start, you need to know the following:
  • In MySQL 5.5 and higher, InnoDB is the default storage engine. The benefits of this are: ACID Transactions, Referential Integrity, and Crash Recovery.
  • Previous versions of MySQL do NOT store fractional seconds (milliseconds) into columns of any temporal data type. More info on this, here.
  • From version 5.6.4, MySQL stores fractional seconds (milliseconds) into columns of any temporal data type. More info in this, here.
  • You can define how many milliseconds to store from 0 to 6.

To start, execute the following script in MySQL database:

CREATE  TABLE `Player` (
  `idPlayer` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
  `name` VARCHAR(150) NOT NULL ,
  `age` INT NOT NULL ,
  `created_by` VARCHAR(50) NULL ,
  `created_on` DATETIME(3) NULL ,
  `modified_by` VARCHAR(50) NULL ,
  `modified_on` DATETIME(3) NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`idPlayer`) )
;


You can see that we are creating a table with an autoincrement primary key. We have seen before, a workaround about having autoincrement columns in MySQL to work with ADF, but we are not using it in this post. 

Also, notice that we are defining that the DATETIME columns will have 3 milliseconds. Once you have executed the script, go to File->New->Business Components From Tables and follow the wizard to create an Entity of the table Player, a default ViewObject and an Application Module. Remember to configure the SQL Platform as SQL92 and Data Type Map as Java:



JDeveloper will map the DATETIME columns as Timestamp fields in the Entity, which is fine since we want to store milliseconds:



Configure each history attribute as one of: Created On, Created By, Modified On, Modified By and notice that when you configure an attribute as a Track Change History Attribute, JDeveloper will select default values for other properties:






Once all the Track Change History Attributes are set, you can run the Application Module in order to test the functionality. However, you may find the following error when trying to commit to the database:


Current time is not available from SQL statement "select sysdate from dual".: Unknown column 'sysdate' in 'field list'...



This is happening because the Application Module tries to get the current date from the database using Oracle's statement: "select sysdate from dual", which is not valid in MySQL. In order to change that, go to your Application Module and edit the LOCAL configuration:




A pop up opens, go to the Properties section and look for a property called: jbo.sql92.DbTimeQuery



We need to change the value of that property to something that works on MySQL. There are many DATE related functions in MySQL, here we are going to use NOW(). So, change the value of the jbo.sql92.DbTimeQuery to:

select NOW() from dual


Click OK button and save your changes.

CAUTION: At the time of this writing, JDeveloper is using mysql-connector-java-commercial-5.1.22-bin.jar as the default MySQL library. However, when I tried the above configuration using that library, it didn't work because no milliseconds information were being stored into the database. The solution is to update the MySQL driver. You can find the official MySQL connector drivers at: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/

If you don't update the MySQL driver, you may experience the following error when trying to modify a row (this is the so called Phantom Error):



The following picture was taken when using the default MySQL library, notice that there is no milliseconds information saved into the database:



And here is the picture after using the latest MySQL connector, notice the milliseconds information:




When you have downloaded the new version of the driver, you have to remove the default MySQL library from your project and add the new jar. Go to your project Properties:



Run the Application Module again, create or modify rows and this time it should work.

That's it, with the above configuration you are now ready to use the Track Change History functionality when using MySQL database.


see ya!


References


MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual :: 12.7. Date and Time Functions. MySQL [online].
Available on Internet: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/date-and-time-functions.html
[accessed on February 09 2014].

MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual :: 11.3.6. Fractional Seconds in Time Values. MySQL [online].
Available on Internet: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/fractional-seconds.html
[accessed on February 09 2013].

MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual :: 14.2.1.1. InnoDB as the Default MySQL Storage Engine. MySQL [online].
Available on Internet: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-default-se.html
[accessed on February 09 2013].

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Whizlabs Discount

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They sponsor my Java User Group (www.clojug.org) and have allowed me to extend the promo code that we get as members of the JUG to everyone that reads my blog. So, you can get 7.5% off on your next purchase by using the following code at check out:



Visit http://www.whizlabs.com/ for a complete list of their Certification Preparation Solutions.

see ya!