September 2003 Archives

Using XPath with SOAP uses Jaxen to demonstrate how to frob SOAP stuff with XPath.

XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, used most commonly by XSLT. There are various APIs for processing XPath. For the purposes of this article I will use the open source Jaxen API. Jaxen is a Java XPath engine that supports many XML parsing APIs, such as SAX, DOM4J, and DOM. It also supports namespaces, variables, and functions.

XPath is useful when you need to extract some information from an XML document, such as a SOAP message, without building a complete parser using JAXM (Java API for XML Messaging) or JAX-RPC (Java API for XML-Based RPC). Moreover, the loosely-coupled nature of web services suggests that the use of dynamic data extraction is sometimes better than using static proxies like the ones produced using JAX-RPC.

In the article I'll show a JAXM Web Service for calculating statistics and a generic JAXM client that uses the service, demonstrating the use of XPath for generic data extraction.

CM Today is trying to revitalize itself and is looking for CM geeks to participate.

Starting today (as in CM Today :-) ), we are gearing up for a greatly expanded CM Today, one you will find compelling, interesting, and hopefully even a little controversial. We hope to begin to share our new ideas and content with you in the coming weeks and months, so please check back often.

And we want you to participate. We are looking for people to participate in CM Today both as contributors and maintainers. If you have an opinion you want to share, we want to hear it and give you the reach of CM Today to make sure others hear it, too. Please contact Alex Neihaus (alex@cmtoday.com) for information on how to participate.

Once again, thank you and stay tuned.

ShiftOne Java Object Cache is yet-another cache library. Seems nice, small and focussed.

JOCache is a Java library that implements strict object caching.

Java Binary Enhancement Tool from Network Associates is surprisingly licensed under a BSD-esque license.

The Java Binary Enhancement Tool (JBET) is a general Java program analysis and manipulation tool. Existing class files can be disassembled, reassembled, or edited programmatically through the JBET API. JBET can also be used to create new Java class files from scratch. JBET uses a convenient internal representation of all the contents of Java binary (.class) files, allowing the user to edit the classes easily, in a structured manner.

Continuous Integration is the topic in this month's Crossroads News.

With the growing acceptance of rapid development techniques in many development organizations the notion of continuous integration of changes has also become commonplace. Continuous Integration involves an automated process in which developers changes are either continually or on a periodically introduced into the application as they are checked into the source code repository.

Talk Like A Pirate Day is September 19.

However you got here, stick around an' get yerself ready for September 19 - International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

More like 15, since I lose a day in flight, but just a reminder that my lovely wife and I will be in Amsterdam from the 30th of this month until the 13th of October. So, if you want to chat about drools, werkflow, groovy or anything else of interest, or you're arriving early for the JBoss Bootcamp, let me know and let's hook up for a chat. I won't be attending the actual JBoss Bootcamp due to scheduling conflicts.

Warren Zevon has passed. My thoughts go out to his friends and family. I never got a chance to see him perform live, but I have had the pleasure of hanging out with his cousin Larry.

Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon died yesterday (September 7) after a much-publicized fight with lung cancer. The 56-year-old musician died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles while taking an afternoon nap.

BPMN, the Business Process Modeling Notation, has been released by BPMI. BPMN is a graphic notation for workflows and choreography.

The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) today announced the release of the public draft for the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 1.0) providing a readily understandable, royalty-free notation designed for both business process design and business process implementation. As an amalgamation of best practices within the business modeling community, BPMN provides a simple, standardized means of communicating process information to other business users, process implementers, customers, and suppliers.

Velcro is the matron of the household, rounding out about 8 years now, I think. She's pretty much permanently attached to my desk, hence the dedicated cat pillow. Thank your lucky stars that I'm not tossing all 6 cats on the blog.