Is this thing on ?
EdC here. Wow. With so much exciting stuff happening here at WaveMaker and in the Developer Community, it can be difficult just to keep track of it all.
First, a number of people have asked about the fate of the Developer Newsletter. Apparently far more people both read it and liked it than I would have ever guessed. In these blog postings, I’ll talk about the technical tips and tricks they said they liked in the newsletter. The newsletter archives are also available if you really miss the old newsletter.
The first thing I want to talk about this week is some of the questions from last week’s Democratizing Development newsletter. In the announcement of the New Edition, Derek stated: “It’s a whole new way of using WaveMaker - and we think you’ll love it.” Some WaveMaker developers wondered if the new edition would require migration or re-working of existing applications. I think that is a legitimate question. Everyone has been through that dance at one time or another, or just too often. The good news is that the new edition is not one of those situations. If you’re currently working with an application using 4.0.2, fear not. The new edition is very cool. It provides new options for both development and deployment. It is not a beta for a 5.x version requiring standing on one hand to migrate existing applications. My guess is that most developers working with 4.0.2 will:
-Take the beta out for a test drive
-Think it is way cool
-Return to using the current ‘edition’ with visions of new possibilities dancing in their heads.
Is that the “Dance of the Sugarplum Widget” I hear? Tune in next week for the beta launch and all the details.
There’s a bunch of new stuff over in the dev community to check out these days. So much that we needed a landing page to help keep things organized. The wiki continues to grow in breadth and depth. Recent additions to the wiki include Lenny’s CSS de-mystification and the Application Showcase, where we have running examples of developers handiwork. Got an application you’d like to see in the showcase? Send it in!
Developers really are doing ever increasingly cool stuff with WaveMaker. Let’s take a look at a few of the techniques and topics being discussed on the dev community.
Sometimes, with data driven web applications, seeing the data is just not enough. We want to save it, print it, chart it, hold it or maybe send a copy to the boss. Sometimes we need reporting. Fortunately, with just a little java and/or javascript, developers can integrate leading third party reporting packages into their projects. Since developers are sharing and posting those integrations with the dev community, we all benefit from the collective effort. Recent integrations include exporting to excel, and importing JasperReports into a project to generate PDFs via JasperReports.
Don’t like the error message from database or webservice service call? Mavirroco shared his customized error message trick.
Oh, the things one can do with dialog boxes, also known as pop up windows. Recent examples include having one modal dialog launch another, and setting values on the main page from a modal dialog.
Want to increase the performance of your application? Try the JRockit JVM. Blueseas318 reports twice the performance over Sun 1.5 and a 50% improvement over Sun 1.6. He has posted the details his comparison and more. Thanks for that Blueseas318! No, WaveMaker has not tested this configuration. But with performance gains like that…
We’ve got some other things in the werks, but let’s save that for next time.
Until then, keep those questions coming and keep on posting your tips and tricks, but most of all, keep riding the Wave.