Expertaya

A short reminder of small issues I had with deploying Apache CXF web service I built on linux server (CentOS in my case):

yum install tomcat5 went really well and then I had to add webapps and manager packages with separate commands.

tomcat5 package depends on jdk-1.4 so in case you haven’t already installed a more recent version of java you’ll get this one.

I used the tutorial from http://www.jroller.com/gmazza/entry/web_service_tutorial to set up the options for deploying to tomcat using maven and that went well, but jdk-1.4 was causing spring context loader to throw:

SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of
class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.springframework.core.CollectionFactory
at java.lang.Class.initializeClass(libgcj.so.7rh)
...

and the actual error displayed when I tried to access the service from the browser was:

threw exception javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactoryConfigurationError:
Provider org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl not found  at
javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance(Unknown Source)  at
org.apache.cxf.helpers.XMLUtils.newTransformer(XMLUtils.java:118)

This was solved by installing open-jdk 1.6 devel package with yum, but then another, trickier error appeared:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/xml/serializer/OutputPropertiesFactory
at org.apache.xalan.templates.OutputProperties.(OutputProperties.java:82)
at org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerIdentityImpl.(TransformerIdentityImpl.java:86)
...

At several links (here and there) I figured it out that it has something to do with xalan.jar which was unavailable to my service deployed on tomcat. A command:

yum list xerces* xalan* | grep installed

showed that I already had xalan-2.7.1 in my /usr/share/java so I tried with copying it to CATALINA_HOME/common/endorsed but that didn’t fix the problem. I also tried symlinking xalan.jar to that file but that didn’t work either.

In the end, at the link which appeared to be some forum’s archive I found that someone had problems similar to this and was advised revert to xalan-2.6 version. I’ve tried with jar in http://archive.apache.org/dist/xml/xalan-j/binaries/xalan-j_2_6_0-bin.zip and it worked.

Yeee “me happy”

Java, Links, linux cxf, deploy, linux, tomcat5

Even if not being a “regular” warez user it would be good if you stay informed about what is happening inside warez community.
One reason would be finding really popular and valuable programs by browsing warez sites. This is better than searching through regular download sites because programs found on these kind of sites are often more relevant to the field in which they belong. One reason could be this - If somebody put an effort to crack a piece of software then that software has some value for sure :).

I use: http://www.area51warez.info/ and http://softarchive.net/.

General, Links community, resource, software, warez

Smashing magazine is a weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers. Its great because of its overview of interesting stuff for each month. Their published content is a must read if you want to become a good web developer or a designer that follows web design trends.

General, Links blog, design, development, link, resource, web

Pushing-pixels by Kirill Grouchnikov is a dynamic blog on GUIs with a special attention to swing. It has weekly digest on popular swing links and is good place to start when searching for news in that field.

Java, Links gui, Java, link, swing

http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/ - A really good advanced javascript tutorial.
If you want to be able to understand the code below, than this tutorial is the right thing.

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// The .bind method from Prototype.js
Function.prototype.bind = function(){
  var fn = this, 
  args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments),
  object = args.shift();
  return function(){
    return fn.apply(object,
      args.concat(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments)));
  };
};

Javascript, Links advanced, Javascript, tutorial

If you are an active member of some programming community you won’t probably need any of existing freelancing sites since your friends usually have enough jobs to pass to you…

But in case you still want a recommendation for a freelance site then here it is: Elance.

You can however find more jobs on others but at rates that are usually significantly lower than on Elance.

Happy freelancing.

General, Links community, freelance, recommendation

If you are a programmer you probably do follow at least a single newsletter. What is your recommendation?

Considering job I have been doing for the past few years I found that I am totally satisfied by receiving emails from InfoQ.

Please comment if you have any other to recommend. The post will be updated with your recommendations but it won’t contain more than 3 different newsletters.

General, Links infoq, newsletter, recommendation

Ok, lets recommend resources in following categories: ebooks, blogs, forums.

Ebooks:

The JavaSeries is supported, endorsed, and authored by the creators of the Java technology at Sun Microsystems, Inc. It is the official place to go for complete, expert, and definitive information on Java technology. The books in this Series provide the inside information you need to build effective, robust, and portable applications and applets. The Series is an indispensable resource for anyone targeting the Java 2 platform.

Actually this quote is 100% true.

Blogs:

The recommendation goes to Artima.

Artima Developer is an online community where developers learn from experts in the software industry as well as interact, share information, and learn from each other.

Forum:

Javaranch - In two words - great forum. There are lot of interesting discussions at all levels (from beginner to expert). Nearly 200,000 members. Book writers are frequent forum visitors.

Java, Links blog, ebook, forum, Java

Site: http://gigapedia.org

Requires free registration.

Contains over 20000 ebooks.

(tip: you can search ebooks only when you are registered and you’ll receive relevant results when you select item search instead of default Google Ebook Search)

Links ebooks, forum