Alex Shatalin and Vaclav Pech discuss several language workbenches features - type system, dataflow, VCS, refactoring, debugging, and others - with examples based on JetBrains MPS. By Alex Shatalin, Vaclav Pech

Steve Sanderson demoes creating a web application with a dynamic UI using Knockout.js - a MVVM JavaScript library. By Steve Sanderson

This hands-on introduction shows you how Spring Data makes it relatively easy to build applications across a wide range of new data access technologies such as NoSQL and Hadoop. Through several sample projects, you’ll learn how Spring Data provides a consistent programming model that retains NoSQL-specific features and capabilities, and helps you develop Hadoop applications across a wide range of use-cases

Four luminaries in the Java community have been selected as new Java Champions. The are Agnes Crepet, Lars Vogel, Yara Senger and Martijn Verburg. They were selected for their technical knowledge, leadership, inspiration, and tireless work for the community. Here is how they rock the Java world: Agnes Crepet Agnes Crepet (France) is a passionate technologist with over 11 years of software engineering experience, especially in the Java technologies, as a Developer, Architect, Consultant and Trainer. She has been using Java since 1999, implementing multiple kinds of applications (from 20 days to 10000 men days) for different business fields (banking, retail, and pharmacy). Currently she is a Java EE Architect for a French pharmaceutical company, the homeopathy world leader. She is also the co-founder, with other passionate Java developers, of a software company named Ninja Squad, dedicated to Software Craftsmanship. Agnes is the leader of two Java User Groups (JUG), the Lyon JUG Duchess France and the founder of the Mix-IT Conferenceand theCast-IT Podcast, two projects about Java and Agile Development. She speaks at Java and JUG conferences around the world and regularly writes articles about the Java Ecosystem for the French print Developer magazine Programmez! and for the Duchess Blog. Follow Agnes @agnes_crepet. Lars Vogel Lars Vogel (Germany) is the founder and CEO of the vogella GmbH and works as Java, Eclipse and Android consultant, trainer and book author. He is a regular speaker at international conferences, such as EclipseCon, Devoxx, Droidcon and O'Reilly's Android Open. With more than one million visitors per month, his website vogella.com is one of the central sources for Java, Eclipse and Android programming information. Lars is committer in the Eclipse project and received in 2010 the "Eclipse Top Contributor Award" and 2012 the "Eclipse Top Newcomer Evangelist Award." Follow Lars on Twitter @vogella. Yara Senger Yara Senger (Brazil) has been a tireless Java activist in Brazil for many years. She is President of SouJava and she is an alternate representative of the group on the JCP Executive Committee. Yara has led SouJava in many initiatives, from technical events to social activities. She is co-founder and director of GlobalCode, which trains developers throughout Brazil. Last year, she was recipient of the Duke Choice's Award, for the JHome embedded environment. Yara is also an active speaker, giving presentations in many countries, including JavaOne SF, JavaOne Latin Ameria, JavaOne India, JFokus, and JUGs throughout Brazil. Yara is editor of InfoQ Brasil and also frequently posts at http://blog.globalcode.com.br/search/label/Yara. Follow Yara @YaraSenger. Martijn Verburg Martijn Verburg (UK) is the CTO of jClarity (a Java/JVM performance cloud tooling start-up) and has over 12 years experience as a Java/JVM technology professional and OSS mentor in a variety of organisations from start-ups to large enterprises. He is the co-leader of the London Java Community (~2800 developers) and leads the global effort for the Java User Group "Adopt a JSR" and "Adopt OpenJDK" programmes. These programmes encourage day to day Java developer involvement with OpenJDK, Java standards (JSRs), an important relationship for keeping the Java ecosystem relevant to the 9 million Java developers out there today. As a leading expert on technical team optimisation, his talks and presentations are in high demand by major conferences (JavaOne, Devoxx, OSCON, QCon) where you'll often find him challenging the industry status quo via his alter ego "The Diabolical Developer." You can read more in the OTN ariticle "Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg." Follow Martijn @karianna. The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. Congratulations to these new Java Champions!

In looking at ways to improve the resilience of software based services engineers are now turning to monkeys and the chaos they introduce.

Some TheServerSide users are already aware of our new product, Batoo JPA - the new JPA implementation that runs over 15 times faster then the leading JPA provider, built with Performance on mind yet with the least possible diversion from the JPA specification itself. After its debut with the announcement made on TheServerSide, we have also published an article on HighScalability.com that explained the story behind Batoo JPA Project. As the Hibernate team was so much eager to jump to the conclusions "I don't care these CPU optimizations I prefer FEATURES!", inherently they released benchmarks that proves applications switched to Batoo JPA can run 35% to %100 faster.

Election season is here once again, with candidates battling it out for the public’s votes in order to secure a position of power.  And no, we’re not talking about Obama and Romney, but Java’s equivalent in the Java Community Process. The runners and riders are all vying for seats on the JCP Executive Committee, the steering group who guide the direction for Java. This year, there are four ratified candidates vying for election, and nine candidates (representing themselves, companies or communities) fighting it out for the two available elected seats. As part of the JCP’s ongoing renovation (with a new merged Executive Committee and a push towards greater transparency high on the JCP’s agenda), candidates running this year will only serve a one-year term if elected and will have to stand again in 2013, in line with the JCP 2.9 process document. Voter turnout is still a concern with the JCP Executive Committee Process. Despite having over 1,000 voters registered in October 2011, only 23% cast their votes. With new guidelines designed to increase transparency being introduced in 2013, the JCP will be hoping for a greater turnout this time round. This year, the ratified and elected candidates will appear on the same ballot, with all ratified candidates receiving seats if they each receive a majority of ‘yes’ votes  . There are four proposed ratified candidates: Cinterion Wireless Modules (Thomas Lampart), Credit Suisse (Susanne Cech Previtali with Victor Grazi as alternate), Fujitsu (Hiroshi Yoshida) and HP (Scott Jameson). The elected section is once again fiercely fought, with nine elected candidates battling it out for just two open seats. The London Java Community (Ben Evans with Martijn Verburg as alternate) are seeking re-election and looking to continue their work, 18 months after pledging “to improve the openness and transparency of the Java Community Process”. Co-lead of the LJC, Martijn Verburg, told JAXenter that “the LJC stands for active developer participation in standards, openness and transparency, promotion of F/OSS implementations and has no direct commercial interests in any proposed standard. We have initiated global programmes (Adopt a JSR, Adopt OpenJDK) directly involving developers in standards, improving them for the entire ecosystem.” Interestingly, another Java user group have thrown their hat into the ring this time round - MoroccoJUG. Inspired by the LJC and SouJava, the User Group are keen to help represent “the African and Arabic Java Community in order to improve their picture and prove that those communities are also contributing to the Java ecosystem and not only consuming the Java technology.” Badr Elhouari of MoroccoJUG told JAXenter: “The most important [thing is] to see the LJC reelected, since they have done a great job and they deserve to continue their efforts and good presentation of JUGs. MoroccoJUG want just to enforce this presentation and help to make the voice of African and Arabic community inside JCP”. Also standing are the company behind the JRebel tool, ZeroTurnaround, in what they call “an experiment.” CEO Jevgeni Kabanov stated that ZeroTurnaround were running for the JCP seat to find out how much they can “impact the standard organisation to be friendlier to small companies and to be able to attract the heart and minds of the next generation.” North Sixty-One, who lead 14 Java ME JSRs (and then license related Technology Compatibility Kits), told us that they want to help bridge “the gap between Java ME and Java SE/EE” with the merger looming. CEO Kimmo Löytänä added that North Sixty-One wanted to “promote open, transparent and open source implementation friendly environment in the Java Community Process.” Liferay, the open source portal specialists, are running for the second year in a row, having come second to the LJC in last year’s election. Software engineer Neil Griffin is their representative and he told us that he was “honoured” to be part of the Java community for so long. He continued: “Liferay’s participation on multiple JSR Expert Groups has provided us with insights into the positive and negative aspects of the processes whereby JCP standards are currently formulated. Our desire is to bring these experiences and the lessons we are learning within the Liferay community to the JCP to strengthen open and transparent processes and to support Java’s continued worldwide adoption.” Other candidates looking for election include platform-as-a-service vendor CloudBees (Steven Harris), networking device vendor Cisco Systems (Michael Enescu), independent candidate Giuseppe Dell’abate and enterprise solution vendor Software AG. (We attempted to contact these candidates for statements, but not all replied by our deadline.) Further information on all those looking for election to the JCP Executive Committee, be sure to check out the Nominations page, featuring statements from most candidates on why they should be elected by the community. If you’re registered to vote in the JCP elections, remember to cast your vote by Monday 29th October. Image by FutUndBeidl.

Java 7 introduced a number of useful features to the language, including a new I/O file package which offers finer grained control over file system functionality, particularly for POSIX based systems. This article will first introduce the new API, and then explore it in more detail using an example of a web-based file manager project, called WebFolder. By Dmitriy Rogatkin

In this interview recorded at QCon NY 2012 Conference, Spring Security project lead Robert Winch discusses the new features of Spring Security 3.1 version and design strategies for multi-tenant cloud applications. By Robert Winch

You may have seen the adverts for the big-budget film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel On the Road, but the most exciting road trip of this winter is that of Java evangelist Stephen Chin. Beginning this Sunday, Chin will be donning his leathers for a pan-European journey of self-discovery, interviews and, of course, hacking - with his motorcycle as his only companion. On the way, he’ll be stopping off at London, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and DevOxx in Belgium. Chin will be broadcasting his adventures live on Ustream, which will include interviews with the likes of Martijn Verburg, Adam Bien and Russel Winder. Of course, he’ll also be tweeting from @steveonjava and monitoring the hashtag #nighthacking. If you want to get even more interactive, and are based somewhere on Chin’s map, you can use a form to suggest that he attends a meetup in your own town or city. Before he embarks, Chin will be interviewing the father of Java (and “the original nighthacker”) James Gosling today (October 24th) at 11AM PST. It’s sure to be a great watch, Chin promising that it will last “until we run out of interesting things to chat about”. As he’ll be arriving (and leaving) via JAXenter’s home of London, we’ll try and grab a word with Chin as he passes through. Watch this space.

SpringSource have been an advocate backer of the Groovy-powered Gradle build system for some time. Now that the development of 3.2 is nearing completion, it appears that a casualty of that decision is to stop generating OSGi metadata for the Spring framework. By Alex Blewitt

Unsynchronized access to java.util.WeakHashMap may cause …an endless loop. See method java.util.WeakHashMap#get: public V get(Object key) { Object k = maskNull(key); int h = hash(k); Entry[] tab = getTable(); int index = indexFor(h, tab.length); Entry e = tab[index]; while (e != null) { if (e.hash == h && eq(k, e.get())) return e.value; e = e.next; } return null; } Although it seems unlikely, it actually happens. One day we found a majority of worker threads stuck with the following stacktrace: "httpSSLWorkerThread-32470-8" java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at java.util.WeakHashMap.get(WeakHashMap.java:355) at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.populateDescriptorsMapIfNecessary(UIComponentBase.java:147) at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.(UIComponentBase.java:142) at javax.faces.component.UIOutput.(UIOutput.java:119) See you at Java EE Workshops at MUC Airport (March 25th-28th)! Real World Java EE Bootstrap and Effective Java EE Bootstrap Workshops [Airport Munich]