Play!, a promising java web framework

Recent years we saw a lot of java web frameworks coming to the scene and gaining popularity.Each of them brings features to ease web development or claim to address the problems with traditional java web frameworks like struts or spring. The common aim is to reduce the complexity and increase productivity. Play is a framework which claims a framework for the developers providing the best tools to ease the development and increase productivity. Here are the features which distinguishes it from other frameworks.

1) Simple stateless mvc architecture
2) Based of REST principles
3) The framework compiles your sources and hot-reloads them into the JVM without the need to restart the server.So you can edit and reload the changes immediately.
4) Aimed to provide developer's productivity
5) TDD support with UI driven testing using integrated selenium .
6) Improved exception messages
7) HTTP to code mapping
8) Full stack application framework with support for common web application needs
9) Efficient templating engine
10) JPA with hibernate support.

Another remarkable point is good documentation and developer support through forum.I tried play with the sample application given in documentation and felt easy and developer friendly .Play comes with inbuilt server where you can deploy the application or import as a war file and deploy in another server. An interesting point is it breaks some java traditions in terms of packaging and MVC modeling.So it is time for playing your app.

Deep and invisible web

It goal of a search engine is to index as much information in the web as possible. But is it possible to index the whole web with a highly powerful search engine given unlimited processing power?. It is not! There are various reasons. The web that can be indexed by search engines is called surface web. The web which is not part of the surface web is called deep web or invisible web. It is estimated that deep web is much more larger than surface web (In fact more than 10 times larger, even though the estimates vary). There are different reasons why the whole web is not indexable by search engines.
As per wikipedia deep Web resources may be classified into one or more of the following categories:

• Dynamic content: which are returned in response to a submitted query or accessed only through a form, especially if open-domain input elements (such as text fields) are used; such fields are hard to navigate without domain knowledge.

• Unlinked content: pages which are not linked to by other pages, which may prevent web crawling programs from accessing the content. This content is referred to as pages without backlinks (or inlinks).

• Private Web: sites that require registration and login (password-protected resources).

• Contextual Web: pages with content varying for different access contexts (e.g., ranges of client IP addresses or previous navigation sequence).

• Limited access content: sites that limit access to their pages in a technical way (e.g., using the CAPTHAs , or no-cache Pragma HTTP headers prohibit search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies).

• Scripted content: pages that are only accessible through links produced by javascript as well as content dynamically downloaded from Web servers via flash or ajax solutions.

• Non-HTML/text content: textual content encoded in multimedia (image or video) files or specific file formats handled by search engines.

There are various approaches taken by the search engines to index the deep web. For eg. Google’s approach to the Deep Web is to find HTML forms, send input to these forms, and index the resulting HTML pages.Yahoo made a small part of the deep Web searchable by releasing Yahoo! Subscriptions. This search engine searches through a few subscription-only Web sites and the user will be asked to login to access content. Kosmix instead, for any given search query taps into html forms in real-time through API calls, evaluates the results and organizes them into a topic page. Research is going on different approaches to tap this deep web ,but it is sure that large part of the web will be still invisible by search engines.

It is high time to move to Linux!

I really started working on ubuntu recently by installing Ubuntu karmic koala .I enjoy working in linux platform and feels that it is an OS for the developer by the developer and of the developer. I remember the days started with the linux while studying for the PG course(2001-2004) , the struggles to play music and video files ,try to understanding and editing of configuration files etc. The impression those created prevented me in getting deep into linux for a very long time.In fact I installed ubuntu 9.4 some six months back with wubi installer(I was afraid to touch my windows OS) and played around for some time.But I didn't feel that great about ubuntu that time and it got corrupted after few days and I abandoned ubuntu thereafter.What made me to have another experiment with ubuntu this time is some articles comparing ubuntu karmic koala against windows 7 soon after the release of karmic koala.I hadn't seen such a great comparison betwean ubuntu and windows before and decided to have another experiment with linux.Even this time I started with wubi installer(Installing ubuntu inside windows as a windows service without creating a separate linux partition).soon got into problems again as erlier understanding its limitations.But this time I really loved experimenting with Ubuntu and felt very comfortable getting into it.I enjoyed the weekend I started working with ubuntu and in fact I abandoned windows for next two weeks!.Within few hours of installing I had the set-up equivalent to what I had in windows with a much more simple interface fast response and enjoyed good quality music and videos.
I faced little difficulty only in getting installed java and Java ides such as eclipse and netbeans other than that it was a breeze.And the good thing is ubuntu have a good online documentation (http://ubuntuguide.org)and will get good support from online forums and sites.So if you haven't tried Ubuntu till I recomment this is high time to experience that!. I will be sharing my experince in starting Ubuntu in my future posts .

CIO Resolutions for 2009 by Gartner

Gartner the leading information technology research and advisory company presents CIO resolutions for 2009 in the context of current economic downturn and uncertainty.Gartner says it will help CIOs excel and deliver better personal and team outcomes beyond their core IT agenda.John Mahoney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner says
"In time of a recession, organisations have more time for introspection that identifies what the deep needs are and also creates demand on what IT can do.t brings the opportunity for businesses to exploit the technology they currently have to create something new."

Gartner formulated all the ten resolutions for 2009 into four strategic themes.

1: Reinforce enduring strengths and assets
Start building an alumni network.
Stop being the exception that enforces the rules.
Start scouting for key talent.
2:Prepare for the next change, sooner than you think
Start preparing for the unexpected.
Start using social systems yourself.
Start taking cloud seriously.
3: Survive in 2009 without collateral damage
Stop ignoring people and opting for soft targets.
Start offering your vendors a free lunch.
Stop fearing the future; start driving it.
4 : Newer technologies to get experience of in 2009.

Reference
Gartner Presents CIO Resolutions for 2009

Nokia towards go green

It is a good sign that globally corporates are joining hands in the go green campain. In India too companies started adopting the environment friendly policies .This should be seen in the context of companies going for cost cutting measures in the period of economic slowdown. Companies found that efforts to save energy and avoiding wastages will not only save earth but will benefits the companies in the long run. A good move along this direction by nokia is worth noticeable.Nokia announced a plan to take back old handsets and declared that a they will plant saplings for each hand set returned.This is an appreciable move in the context of growing mobile markets in india and its result of alarming quantity of e-waste due to abandoned mobile sets. Also it is predicted that more people will leave their old handsets to buy new onces once the 3G services will come into effect in one month. Let us all join nokia to go green.