Java SE

This category will hold articles for Java SE and Eclipse.

I think Java can be a lot of fun, since it already delivers a lot out of the box.

People who develop Java APIs usually give it a lot of thinking and work.

 

Java EE in comparison to Java SE can be described as a huge collection of Frameworks and API developed around Java SE.

Java EE is not a stand-alone programming language, but based on Java SE.

In case you want to quickly develop a XML parser in Java I recommend using JAXB. It creates Java classes from xsd schemas and vice versa automatically.

Set up Eclipse for JAXB

Since I am often working in an environment where I cannot use just any software I need, it is interesting to know what needs to be done in Eclipse before you can start using JAXB.

It is pretty simple. All you need to do is installing the plugins under category "Web, XML, Java EE and OSGi Enterprise Development" available in the release repository of your current Eclipse version.  

To do so select Help -> Install New Software... from the eclipse main menu bar.

In order to display a TreeView representing a file sytsem as shown below, I had to extend the TreeItem<T> class of JavaFX.

Just for fun I added an HTML Editor as well and separated both controls using a SplitPane.

If you have to determine the last row in a Microsoft Excel file you will face some trouble.

For whatever reason there is no reliable method available in Excel VBA to retrieve the last row with data. Since Microsoft developers seem to have decided to treat formatting and data the same way when it comes to determining the so called UsedRange in a worksheet, we are officially screwed.

Here is what POI developers are stating in their API docs regarding this problem :0).

"Gets the number last row on the sheet. Owing to idiosyncrasies in the excel file format, if the result of calling this method is zero, you can't tell if that means there are zero rows on the sheet, or one at position zero. For that case, additionally call getPhysicalNumberOfRows() to tell if there is a row at position zero or not." 

Found at http://poi.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/poi/hssf/usermodel/HSSFSheet.html#getLastRowNum()

I fully agree: Excel's core implementation and resulting behavior is nuts many times.

Subcategories

This category provides articles regarding JavaFX as well as e(fx)clipse as this seems to be a good start to deal with JavaFX.

JavaFX has been around for some time now and Oracle is currently triying to enforce it as new standard for Java Rich Client Applications.

Regarding to a developer I know it has had some improvements over the years and it looks like it is going to be a try out worthy successor of AWT (Java), Swing (Java) and SWT (IBM).

However Oracle is trying to push this somewhat new technology into the market for some time now, it has not yet been accepted by the Java community.

Root cause for this seem to be the following reasons.

  • Companies are not asking for Rich Client Applications, but there is a trend for developing Web Applications. Therefore motivation to use anything like AWT, Swing, SWT or JavaFX is low except for private purposes. However JavaFX supports Mobile Applications, which is a big market. Since integration with mobiles is asked by companies as well for web applications and older technologies not supporting it, I can understand Oracle not wanting to provide support for it anymore.
  • Programmers are lazy. If you give them something completely new to learn, it takes quite an effort to get to a stage where you are as fast as using already known technologies. The standard platform for Java development, eclipse is still not providing the same comfortable "what you see is waht you get editors" for JavaFX as it is providing for the older technologies. Until eclipse is not deprecating support for Swing and older technologies like SWT and AWT they will be used by programmers.

I did some research one the internet regarding JavaFX so far but I will try to write more articles in the future about it as I intend to write little tools for myself in Java. For this I of course do not want the hustle of maintaining a JEE server all the time. Therefore JavaFX is intersting for me but I am far from beeing an expert, so try it yourself.

Groups articles regarding eclipse SWT.

A category to collect articles around Apache POI.

Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) provides a fast and convenient way to bind XML schemas and Java representations, making it easy for Java developers to incorporate XML data and processing functions in Java applications. As part of this process, JAXB provides methods for unmarshalling (reading) XML instance documents into Java content trees, and then marshalling (writing) Java content trees back into XML instance documents. JAXB also provides a way to generate XML schema from Java objects.