Years ago I read a book called "Designing With Web Standards" by Jeffery Zeldman. One of the things it got me excited about was a semantic web, where the HTML in web pages describe the data or content, not the layout. The layout is completely removed from HTML, and done entirely with CSS. CSS Zen Garden is a great example of how a single HTML file can be rendered hundreds of completely different ways using CSS.

I think this is every web programmer's vision of perfection, but unfortunately it doesn't happen a lot. Tight schedules, lack of time to fiddle with CSS, differences between how browsers handle CSS, etc.

Back in October 2006, I remember eagerly awaiting the final release of the NetBeans 5.5 IDE as I do today for 6.0. Only days before the final release there was an announcement about a new pack for NetBeans – Visual Web Pack. Sun Java Studio Creator was being turned into an addon pack which would enable developers to create JSF web applications visually while taking advantage of the features of NetBeans 5.5. I downloaded the technical preview and have been using it ever since.

Sun has been working very hard on the NetBeans IDE and have been doing a phenomenal job, especially in 6.0. I thought that they might appreciate some constructive feedback from someone who uses Visual Web Pack frequently. I sent a rather long email to Winston Prakash from Sun, who is one of the architects of Visual Web Pack. He was pleased to read my feedback and had a lot of interesting things to say in response.

At Java One this year I met a lot of Eclipse users. Almost everyone I talked to was using either Axis or XFire for web services. I couldn't understand why more developers aren't using the Java EE standard JAX-WS which is extremely simple to use, fast, powerful, and now seamlessly inter operates with .NET (WSIT). Have a look at this SOAP Stack Comparison chart from XFire's website.

The JBoss application server uses Axis, and so does Apache Geronimo. MyEclipse IDE uses XFire, and likely most of the other IDEs based on Eclipse do too. I think IDE support largely influences what people use. My initial theory was that XFire and Axis are popular because the trend seems to be "avoid Java EE standards at all-cost". Make your customers spend big bucks on BEA WebLogic, then use as if it were the Tomcat servlet container by not using any of the Java EE features.

Today I figured it out! I was reading a thread in the MyEclipse forums where someone brought up this exact subject. One person's response was that most developers haven't been able to use JAX-WS because they are still using Java 1.4 and old application servers. Axis and XFire works for those developers. BEA WebLogic and Apache Geronimo only recently announced support for Java EE 5, almost a full year after the spec went final. That hasn't been a problem for me because I use Sun products such as Sun Application Server 9.x (Glassfish) and NetBeans 5.5 which fully support Java EE 5 and WSIT.

According to the thread I was reading, MyEclipse has plans to add JAX-WS support in their upcoming 6.0 release. BEA WebLogic 10 now uses the JAX-WS and JAXB implementation from Glassfish.

One of my more recent challenges at work has been to secure the web service communication between two servers that live behind a firewall. I wanted the communication to be encrypted, and to require some form of authentication. I also needed to provide access to a specific method from one of the web services to several third parties who's servers are also behind the firewall. These third parties were using Java 1.4 on a BEA WebLogic server, and Apache/PHP on the other. In this entry I will discuss the solution to the problem with exact command line and source code examples.

Web service security was new to me and I explored many avenues before arriving at transport layer SSL and HTTP BASIC authentication. Initially I was looking at using Sun Access Manager to do message level end-to-end security. Later I looked at using the new WSIT (Web Service Interoperability Technology) and it's corresponding NetBeans plugin. These are both very impressive and powerful technologies that are useful in situations where you may want to do single sign on, federated identity, LDAP, etc. I had the opportunity to have a lengthy conversation with three of the WSIT engineers at JavaOne about my scenario. They helped me realize that I don't need this level of sophistication for my simple requirements.

I found an amazing video on YouTube that helps explain the Web 2.0 buzzword on a deeper level. It's not just about a technology like AJAX, it's about data. Check it out.

An other one that isn't so abstract is this one from ZDNet.

Wow all of this is making me realize how behind the times my current blog is. I don't even have RSS, or the ability to add comments! Well, that will be solved once I switch over to JRoller. Sun, where is my Solaris 10 DVD? I'm waiting....