Java Weekly #2: JPA 2.1, Java8, JSR 351, Eclipse Luna and more...

Java EE

Steven Gertiser showed a great example on how to use a JPA Type Converter to persist the new Java8 DateTime classes. This example shows again how powerful the type converter feature is. You only need a few lines of code to define how a class gets persisted to the database.
If you like to read more about Type Converter and other new features of JPA 2.1, have a look at my JPA 2.1 related posts.


Normally, I try to ignore the Spring vs. Java EE discussion, but I found a good posting by Nmpallas this week. He is a long time Java EE developer and gave Spring a try for a recent project. His main reason was, that an application server offers much more features than he needed. But after some time, he decided to migrate the application to Wildfly 8.0.0. Read about his reasons and what he thinks about the standard Spring arguments in: It’s not Spring anymore is the summer of JEE7, ready riding the wave?

Java 8

Java 8 introduced the two default methods forEach(Consumer action) and spliterator() to the Iterable interface. While this looks good in the first place, Stephen Colebourne is not as happy with it. He describes in his blog why this change reduced the number of use cases of the Iterable interface: Java 8 - Iterable woes

I do not see a huge issue in this change. But what do you think? Is this really a drawback of the new Iterable interface?

Java Identity API (JSR 351)

Abhishek Gupta had a closer look at the Java Identity API. The primary goals of this JSR are to define a representation for an Identity in Java and to provide a high level programming model and API to interact with identity/attribute repositories. This JSR is still work in progress and Abhishek gives an overview of the current state.

Javadoc

OK, Javadoc is not new and not the most interesting part of Java. But I found two interesting links on twitter this week. Have a look at these articles, if you like to bring your Javadoc to the next level.
Michael Scharhag wrote a tutorial on how to use Markdown to write your Javadoc comments. And if you prefer to use AsciiDoc, you should have a look at this post by John Ericksen: Write Javadocs in AsciiDoc with Asciidoclet. write it.
Both approaches provide you the option to write a documentation and not just a short comment in your Javadoc comment.

IDEs

Eclipse Luna was released this week and it is packed with new features.
Ian Bull created a very detailed description of his 10 favorite new features in Eclipse Luna. Some of them are RCP and RAP improvements, Sirius, SnipMatch, Split Editors and of course Java 8 Support.


The JBoss Tools team released with 4.2.0.Beta2 a new version based on Eclipse Luna. You can find a description of the new features in Max Andersens Announcement and the JBoss Tools documentation.
And if you like to provide some feedback and influence the development of JBoss Tools, have a look at the JBoss Tools Community Acceptance Test.


If you prefer to use NetBeans, you are also asked for feedback. Have a look at the NetBeans IDE 8.0 Satisfaction Survey. It contains only 12 questions and is quick to answer.

This and that...

Eric Jiang wrote a great post about NodeJS and why not everything is as perfect as it seems in other articles. If you like to read why performance, concurrency and leveraging existing JavaScript expertise is not as beneficial as it seems, have a look at: The emperor’s new clothes were built with Node.js


Making salaries a secret is common in most of the companies. Jappreet Sethi created a nice write up why salaries should not be a secret anymore and how this improves the employees trust in the company. 

I do not want to say too much about this. But dear companies, if you want your (good) employees to stay with you, make sure that they trust in you and get a fair salary.

Done!

That were the most interesting Java related resources I found this week. I hope you find them useful.

If you read this far, you should subscribe to the blog and follow me on twitter to not miss the next issue of Java Weekly.

If you think I missed something, please post a comment with the link. I will check it and include it in the next issue of Java Weekly.