Spring technology is an alternative to EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) for Java development, but an upcoming Java version will enable combinations of established Java platform technologies with Spring, the founder of the Spring Framework said on Tuesday.

Interviewed at the WebGuild Web 2.0 Conference & Expo, Rod Johnson, founder of the Spring Framework and CEO of SpringSource, anticipates accommodations with the enterprise Java platform once Java Platform, EE (Enterprise Edition) 6 is released. This is expected to happen sometime in 2008, according to a Java Community Process Java Specification Request focused on Java EE 6.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Spring provides an alternative to EJB — I recently blogged about how requirements for Spring skills have overtaken requirements for EJB in North America — I don’t think that necessarily means Spring is in opposition to Java EE as a whole, given that Java EE 6 is introducing the notion of profiles,” Johnson said.??

Java EE 6 could allow for standardized combinations of technologies without the legacy of the traditional, full Java EE platform, Johnson said. “We could combine our technology with the various standard technologies we support,” he said.

Focusing on the enterprise, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) tools vendor Zend Technologies is shipping Tuesday version 3.6 of its Zend Platform application server for PHP as well as Zend Studio for Eclipse, an IDE for PHP based on Eclipse open source technology.

The two products “take [Zend products] to another step toward enterprise-readiness,” said Andi Gutmans, Zend co-CTO. PHP, meanwhile, runs around 40 percent of the Web, he said.

Featured in Zend Platform 3.6 are capabilities to monitor HTTP, Apache, and Java events; expanded performance alerts; and better diagnostics through the debugging of production problems on development servers. These improvements are part of Zend Platform’s “PHP intelligence” functions for monitoring PHP application performance.

Zend Platform monitors PHP applications in real time, reporting on script errors, database and performance issues, and other matters. Downtime is reduced by recording the full context for reported problems to enable root cause diagnostics and short time to resolution, Zend said.

Also highlighted in version 3.6 are automatic output compression to save bandwidth and enhanced job queues for deferred and offline processing. An improved download server optimizes delivery of large content and media files. Version 3.6 also features expanded options for caching content, with support for file or URL-based caching, client-side caching, and in-memory or disk-based caching, Zend said.

In this day of age where many applications need to communicate with web servers you need to make a simple HTTP call to the server. Usually There are two types of calls you’ll need to make an HTTP GET or HTTP POST. So instead of blabbing words, here is a code sample of how you do it.

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Looking to make Web development easier for Java developers, the Apache Software Foundation began offering this week Apache Wicket 1.3, an open source component-based Web framework.

Formerly housed at SourceForge, the Wicket project moved over to Apache last year; version 1.3 is the first release bearing the Apache nameplate, said Martijn Dashorst, chairman of the project and a senior software developer at Web application development firm Topicus. Enhancements have been made in areas such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and portal support.

“The purpose [of Apache Wicket] is to make development for Java developers simple as a possible,” Dashorst said. “We use a component model for that.”

Developers can create components with plain old Java and HTML, Dashorst said. Apache Wicket 1.3 is downloadable here.

Just as Microsoft was brushing aside claims that Volta, its latest .NET programming toolkit, is a Google Web Toolkit (GWT) clone, Google has disclosed how it plans to open the gap on rivals with the next release of its popular AJAX toolkit.

GWT 1.5, due in the first quarter of 2008, will produce “better” JavaScript code than manual programming by the industry’s best and brightest - in terms of speed, size and manageability of code. GWT 1.5 is also expected to improve compilation of Java code.

GWT co-creator Bruce Johnson told a small gathering of press at this week’s GWT Conference in San Francisco: “Based on our testing now, I’d say it [GWT 1.5] produces better code than JavaScript experts can produce by hand”.

Johnson called performance a “paramount” issue as networks remain the “weak link” when connecting to online applications and services. One focus for Google is speed of code compilation. “Having smart protocols between the device and server is one area where we could focus more engineering effort,” Johnson said.

However, Google is taking a more hands off approach when it comes to building GWT widget libraries. With GWT licensed under Apache, Google expects the community to build most libraries. Google will instead focus its efforts on “the most complex libraries, where we can draw on Google’s expertise in the internet.”

The team behind the Jasypt Java encryption tool is rolling out Jasypt 1.4.

Jasypt is a Java library that enables developers to add basic encryption capabilities to their projects with minimum effort and without having to know much about cryptography, developers involved with the project said.

Jasypt, also known as Java Simplified Encryption, is an open-source project hosted on Sourceforge.net. New features in version 1.4, which was announced Nov. 23, include encryptable properties files and Spring Framework integration, encryptable Hibernate data source configuration, new command line tools, Apache wicket integration for URL encryption and upgraded documentation.

According to the Jasypt documentation, the technology can be used for encryption tasks associated with applications, such as encrypting passwords, sensitive information and data communications, and creating sums for integrity checking of data.

Google’s Android software gives Sun Microsystems’ Java technology a starring role–but not the version of Java the rest of the mobile phone industry has been developing since the 1990s.

Instead, Google struck off on its own in an attempt to improve performance and openness for the software used in the Open Handset Alliance phones. That means programmers will have a new variety of Java to reckon with–offset somewhat by Google’s $10 million code contest to draw developers in.

One difference is Google’s development of its own core Java virtual machine (JVM) technology called Dalvik, the software that actually executes Java programs on an Android phone, which Google says means Java programs run fast even on the constrained hardware of mobile phones. But a more significant departure than just using an in-house JVM is the fact that Android isn’t part of the Java Community Process that Sun established in 1999 to oversee the development of new Java features.

The JCP governs Java by codifying new features as application programming interfaces (APIs), so programmers can have a standard way of calling upon new technology such as Bluetooth support or 3D graphics. But that existing Java realm wouldn’t accommodate the developer freedoms Google thought were important in Android.

With the first anniversary of open-source Java coming up November 13, a Sun official believes the project could bear a sought-after fruit in the Java community: The porting of Java to the Apple iPhone.

Apple has not made Java capable of running on the popular device. But Sun’s Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for the Java mobile and embedded community, believes Apple’s plans to release an SDK for iPhone in early-2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME winding up on iPhone.

The Eclipse Foundation will make available Monday Eclipse RAP (Rich Ajax Platform) 1.0, an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) server for building and deploying rich Internet applications.

Leveraging the Eclipse component model that based on the OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) standard, RAP 1.0 is suited for enterprises and enables development of component-based applications that can integrate with existing systems. RAP 1.0 is freely downloadable.

With RAP, developers can build AJAX applications “completely in Java,” said Jochen Krause, project leader for RAP at Innoopract.

Sun Microsystems has issued patches for several vulnerabilities in its Java Runtime Environment that leave users on Windows, Linux and Solaris wide open.

By our count, there are 11 separate vulnerabilities plaguing versions 6, 5, 1.4 and 1.3 of the JRE, Sun said on its security blog.

Miscreants could use the “highly critical” bugs to read or alter sensitive information stored on a vulnerable machine, bypass security restrictions and compromise systems, according to an alert from Secunia.

Sun is announcing Monday the release of the GlassFish version 2 open-source application server, which features enterprise-level capabilities for running large-scale applications.

The company also will offer a beta release of the upcoming open-source NetBeans 6.0 IDE, which accommodates scripting languages.

While the first version of GlassFish was intended for developers, the follow-up release due Monday is intended to place GlassFish in the vein of an enterprise-level application server. Highlighted capabilities include clustering, data replication, and centralized administration of server clusters.

Improved interoperability between Web services hosted on Java and Microsoft also is featured as part of a Web services stack dubbed “Project Metro.”

MySQL plans to launch alpha and beta versions of several new free and open-source software products in September, including a release candidate of the latest version of its database software.

“We’re always announcing new open-source products, but this month we just happened to have a lot coming out all at once,” said Zack Urlocker, the Uppsala, Sweden-based company’s executive vice president. “This includes a release candidate of MySQL 5.1, our core open-source server.

This new version has row-based replication, events, partitioning and disk-based cluster storage as well as faster performance. And there’s some new scalability enhancements with the InnoDB storage engine.”

Company officials said four new products—MySQL 5.1 Community Server, the Falcon Database Engine, MySQL Proxy and MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.1—are scheduled to be available for download by the end of September.