The Joys of Spring

I have to admit, I've barely done any Python programming since I started my new job. Though, oddly enough, my Java skills and J2EE knowledge have been steadily growing. In fact, lately, I can honestly say I've been enjoying doing Java/J2EE stuff. I can probably thank Eclipse and Spring.

I've had a few personal forays into Java web programming-land in the past (namely Velocity-Struts-Hibernate, and WebObjects). WebObjects I gave up because of the uncertain future and the lagging standards compliance. (I haven't tried WO 5.3 yet though.) Velocity-Struts-Hibernate was just a pain to set up. Plus I didn't like the fact that I had to edit a number of XML files just to add a new action/form...

But apparently, I'm a glutton for punishment because I just recently assembled a skeleton web application consisting of Hibernate (for the persistence layer), Spring (for management of the business layer), Struts (form validator and controller), and Velocity (template engine). Now, either I've become tolerant of editing lots of silly XML files (Spring adds at least one more file to edit), or Spring actually makes it easier to integrate everything.

I'm thinking it's a combination of both... and the fact that I just love Eclipse (which I was introduced to at work). It just makes editing Java so easy. After trying out the refactor feature, I don't think I can go back to using "just" emacs.

Anyhow, I recently deployed CAS as my single sign-on service on kalahari. It currently uses the blog.flup.org user database to authenticate against. (And the development version of blog.flup.org has already been modified to use CAS.) But, as long as I keep the momentum, the first Velocity-Struts-Spring-Hibernate application I deploy will be an account manager. (Providing registration, password changing, & password reset services.)

Hopefully with an SSO service in place, I can deploy more services that I developed but never finished a long time ago. Poor kalahari. It's running 3 different types of application servers, sometimes multiple instances of a particular type...