Here are the candidates.

• Installing MyEclipse for Spring Early Access
• MyEclipse for Spring - Scaffolding Tutorial
• MyEclipse for Spring - Spring Web Flow Part 1
• MyEclipse for Spring - Spring Web Flow Part 2

As I have noted in previous posts, lately I've been exploring GWT.  In particular I've been studying the Model-View-Presenter pattern prescribed by Ray Ryan.  I've been disecting the Large scale application development and MVP tutorial and associated sample project.  I don't get to look at it everyday, but over time I'm starting to get my hands around it.  I've also been interested in how MVP and the new UIBinder feature of GWT 2.0 fit together.  In an earlier post I shared some code that implements View of the MVP sample project using UIBinder.

While digging through code is fun, I'm more of a visual kind'a guy....that's just the way I'm wired.  I really wanted an architecture diagram that summarizes the GWT Model-View-Presenter pattern.  Particularly since I can only spend a few hours here or there on GWT, I felt I needed I an architecture diagram that summarizes what I've learned by digging through the tutorial and code.  That way when I have a few more hours to spend on GWT, and I can back up to speed quickly.  I also find that I can develop faster if I have a visual representation of the archicture to refer to.  My first choice was to find something created by someone else, but I didn't find anything either on the GWT site or through a web search.  So I embarked on creating it myself.  Hopefully others will find this helpfull.  If you find any errors or ommissions, please don't hesitate to drop me a comment.  Feedback is always welcome.

[DIAGRAMS INCLUDED]

About a week ago I posted the following question on GWT forums.

"Does anyone have an MVP sample project (Contact) that is implemented using UIBinder?  I'm starting to get my head around MVP and UIBinder, but I'm struggling with the best way for using both.  A sample project would be really helpful."

[SOURCE INCLUDED]

Here's a short video introducing MyEclipse for Spring.

For the last two years the race has been one of my major photography events.  Here's a flickr slideshow of my photos from the 2009 race.

1. Skyway Builder extension for GWT – spring4gwt and GWT event buses
2. Skyway Builder GWT Extension – High-level Implementation
3. Skyway Builder GWT Extension – Detailed Implementation
4. GWT RPC with Spring Extension – Download, Install and Use

• Skyway Builder extension for GWT – spring4gwt and GWT event buses
• Skyway Builder GWT Extension – High-level Implementation

Before I get too caught up with working on the next release of Skyway Builder, I wanted to personally share the Skyway Builder 6.3 announcement with my family, friends, colleagues and followers.  I'm very proud of this release.  Whether you are a Spring guru or want to learn Spring, Skyway Builder will save you a lot of time.

Here's a copy of the announcement.

Skyway Software announces the general availability (GA) of Skyway Builder Community Edition (CE) 6.3, an open source, code generator for the Spring Framework. Version 6.3 of Skyway Builder CE is available for immediate download.  This major release of Skyway Builder CE includes:

• Enhanced Spring MVC scaffolding capabilities for generating Spring-based, Java CRUD applications from new or pre-existing domain models.  Watch demo
• Updated Spring DSL for improved package parity between Spring DSL and Spring/Java code
• Enhanced code generation customization for generating Spring MVC and Spring Web Flow solutions that adhere to your own coding standards
• Enhanced graphical Spring Web Flow editor, including usability improvements and better integration with Spring DSL
• Enhanced Spring code generation tags for use with JET templates
• Improved documentation, tutorials and sample projects
• Over 400 bug fixes and enhancements

Skyway Builder Enterprise Edition (EE) 6.3, the commercial edition of Skyway Builder, is also now GA and is available for test drive.  New commercial features in Skyway Builder EE include:

• Integration with IBM Rational Software Architect 7.5.2 to transform UML into working Spring applications. Watch demo
• DWR (JavaScript/JSON) support for accelerating RIA development using Spring services
• Support for project-level customization of code generation templates using JET

I figured I'd also share links to the Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview Series that I did.

• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #1 Enhanced Spring MVC Scaffolding
• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #2 Model Packages
• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #3 Spring DSL Enhancements
• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #4 Configurable Spring Code Generation
• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #5 Custom Spring Templates using JET
• Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #6 Spring Services via Javascript/JSON using DWR

In my quest to to learn GWT, I found a series of videos from Voices That Matter - Google Web Toolkit Conference.  The conference was in late 2007, which under normal circumstances might mean that the content is WAY out-dated.  I haven't watched them all in full, but I've seen enough to know that the content is still mostly relevant.

The full series is available from this YouTube playlist.  If anyone knows of any other similar resources, please let me know.

• A collegue of mine at Skyway Software is pretty gung-ho on GWT.
• There are Skyway Builder community members that are using GWT along with the Spring DSL in Skyway Builder.
• I want to provide GWT developers with more concrete guidance and support in regards to integrating with Spring MVC.
  
• The next release of Skyway Builder will include some new accelerators for DWR enabling Spring Services, and I'd like to exploit the new feature for GWT development.
• There's a lot GWT reference material available.
• I find the compilation of Java to Javascript very intriguing.

So there we go.  That's why I decided to learn GWT.  My goal isn't to be a GWT expert, but I would be very happy being an intermediate GWT developer.  I don't know how long it will take until I've reached intermediate status, but I'll be blogging about my status.  As I find interesting stuff, I'll be sure to share.

This Spring DSL project will be available for download when Skyway Builder 6.3 is released.

• Releases of both Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE)
• Inline invocation of Java Steps
• Spring Web Flow support
• Visual Editor for Spring Web Flow
• Enhanced Spring MVC support
• Enhanced Groovy integration
• Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) support 
• JPA Query options
• Improved Model to Code Linking

  Skyway Builder 6.2 was released a few days ago, so check it out.

Morrissey - 01 Something Is Squeezing My Skull (BBC Radio 2)*

Morrissey - 02 Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed (BBC Radio 2)*

Morrissey - 03 Black Cloud (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 04 This Charming Man (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 05 I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 06 Best Friend On The Payroll (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 07 That's How People Grow Up (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 08 Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself (BBC Radio 2)*

Morrissey - 09 The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 10 One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 11 Reader Meet Author (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 12 Seasick, Yet Still Docked (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 13 I Keep Mine Hidden (BBC Radio 2)

Morrissey - 14 I'm OK By Myself (BBC Radio 2)

* Niel's Favorites

• Facebook Application Platform (Post #1)
• Overview of Facebook Application Development (Post #2)
• Setting up a Facebook Development Environment (Post #3)
• Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4)
• Facebook Authentication - Overview(Post #5)
• Implementing Facebook Authentication (Post #6)

There are a few changes to the new project, but nothing major.  I don't plan on updating the original posts, but I will outline some of the changes (from memory):

• Conversations changed to Models
• A few URL mapping changes (hide implementation)
• Request parameters are read from groovy step in starthere action
• index.jsp goes away
• callback url is now http://127.0.0.1:8080/myfacebookapp-Web/fbController/fbModel/starthere

If your interested in Spring MVC scaffolding/generation or Spring MVC sample applications, check out SkywayBlog.

I orignally thought about sharing the entire document on my blog, but I wasn't completely comfortable with that.  There's a lot of personal information, so I decided against it.

There is however a brief passage regarding the origination of the Eyde name that I thought I'd share.  Eyde is certainly not a common name, so this will help explain where it came from:

"The Eyde name, according to the historical references I have consulted, is not even that common in Northern Ireland, from whence the immigration to the United States began for the Eyde’s. According to one etymologist, Eyde was originally a Norwegian last name and spelling was Eide, a common family name in Norway. When the Norwegians immigrated to Ireland, the name was somewhat anglicized to Eyde." - Albert Eyde

Anyway...congratulations Scott Dixon on winning the 2008 Championship.  He definitely earned it.  After what he went through last season losing to Dario in the last quarter lap of the last race of the season.  He picked up where he left off last season, and won it all.

How about the fact the Dario will be Scott's teammate next season.  Wheldon is leaving for Panther Racing, and Dario is jumping to Dan's spot of Target Chip Gannasi.  That will be a very formidable team.  Even though Wheldon is a St. Petersburg resident, I don't really care for the guy.  However I'm glad the Panther Racing dumped Vitor Meira.  I really hated that Vitor.  I don't know why....but I just didn't like him.  I was always glad when he got a DNF...which was pretty often.

Andretti Green Racing is still my favorite team, but they didn't do much this year.  It'll be interesting to see if there's going to be any changes. 

In Facebook Authentication - Overview (Post #5) I gave an overview of Facebook authentication. In this post I’m going to show exactly how to implement this using Skyway Builder CE, and I will be augmenting the project that I started to create in Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4).  At the end of this post there’s a link to download this Eclipse Project for Skyway Builder CE.

Okay….I think I’ve covered enough introductory content (see post #1, post #2 and post #3).  Now it’s time to get down to some code.

I’m going to implement the sample Facebook application using Java.  More specifically, the application is going to utilize the Spring Framework and Spring MVC.  By leveraging Spring I can deploy the Facebook application to a variety of JEE configurations.  I can deploy it to a JEE-lite environment that consists of Apache Tomcat, or I can deploy it to a full JEE application server utilizing both a web container and EJB3 container.  For the sample Facebook application, I’m going to produce a JEE web application (war) for Tomcat.  I’m not going to persist any data, so there won’t be a need for a database.

While the application is built on top of several Spring frameworks, I’m not going to really dig into Spring development.  I’m going to use Skyway Builder CE, a domain-specific language (DSL) for generating Spring-based applications.  Skyway Builder CE is open-source and runs inside of Eclipse.  Skyway Builder will generate the Spring beans and wire them up into a Spring application.

Download Skyway Builder CE from here.  I recommend downloading the RCP version of Skyway Builder.  You will also need a sandbox, a runtime environment for testing the applications Skyway Builder generates.  There is a sandbox setup guide that will guide you in setting up Tomcat and MySQL.  However since I’m not using a database for this example, you can skip the database setup section of the guide.

Once you have Skyway Builder running and your sandbox ready to go, the following steps are for creating the most minimal application that will be integrated into Facebook.  Let me warn you that this application won’t do much yet.  At this point we’re only concerned with integrating something (anything!!!) with Facebook.  In the next post we’ll cover building out some logic for accessing Facebook data.

1. Right-click on the Skyway Navigator to create a new Skyway project.  You can name it whatever you want, but I’m going to call it “myfacebookapp”.
2. Right-click on the WebContents folder, and select New–>JSP.  Name the JSP “index.jsp”.  From the “Select JSP Template” wizard step, select “Skyway JSP File (html)”.
3. From the Skyway Page Designer enter the text “Hello Facebook Users” between the body tags in the JSP page.  Save the JSP.

We’re done with development.  Now let’s deploy the application.

1. From the Servers tab right-click on the “Tomcat v6.0 Server at localhost” and select “Add and Remove Projects”.  Pick your project from the Available projects list and add to Configured projects list.  Click Finish.
2. Right-click on the “Tomcat v6.0 Server at localhost” and select Start.

We’re done deploying.  There is now a war file located in Tomcat, and the application is initialized and ready to run.  Now let’s run the application.

1. Right-click on the index.jsp page and select Run As–>Run On Server.  You should see browser window open up in Eclipse with  “Hello Facebook Users”.
2. Take note of the URL in the browser (http://localhost:8080/myfacebookapp/index.jsp).  You will need this URL shortly.  This URL will be your Facebook Callback URL.

We’re done.  Now let’s integrate the application into Facebook.

1. Assuming you already added the Facebook Developer application, select the “Setup New Application” option.
2. From the New Application page, you must agree to the terms of the Facebook Platform and specify the following:

• Application Name: My Facebook App
• Developer Contact Email: your email address (should be prepopulated)
• User Support Email: your email address (should be prepopulated)
• Callback URL: the URL of your application (i.e. http://localhost:8080/myfacebookapp/index.jsp)
• Canvas Page URL: http://apps.facebook.com/nielfacebookapp/ (the url must be unique, so pick a url that isn’t already being used)
• Use FBML / Use iframe: Use iframe

Your Facebook should now be accessible from your Facebook application’s Canvas Page URL (i.e. http://apps.facebook.com/nielfacebookapp/).  Copy the URL into your browser, and you should see the Facebook page, and your application embedded in the page.

Tada!!  You have completed your Facebook application.  So now what?  Well…you probably want to do something just a bit more interesting.  For example, let’s say that you want to list all of your Facebook friends birthdays.  That’s what I’ll do over in the next few posts.  I’ll cover Facebook authentication and the Facebook API.

This post is one of a series of posts relating to developing Spring-based Facebook applications using Skyway Builder:

• Facebook Application Platform (Post #1)
• Overview of Facebook Application Development (Post #2)
• Setting up a Facebook Development Environment (Post #3)
• Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4)
• Facebook Authentication - Overview(Post #5)
• Implementing Facebook Authentication (Post #6)

As I was familiarizing myself with Facebook, I scoured the web for information relating to the deployment of Facebook applications.  One of the first articles that I read indicated that Facebook applications must be hosted on a public server to be integrated with Facebook.  While this generally makes sense for acceptance testing and or production instances of an application, the article also indicated (or at least led me to believe) that you had to do this for development as well.

This of course was a bit troubling to me because I’m accustomed to working in a rapid build/deploy environment.  I like to make incremental changes to my application and deploy to my local server to see the results.  This process must be easy and very fast.  I don’t want to be waiting for my application to be compiled, deployed and initialized, and ideally the whole process takes less than a minute.  It would be extremely annoying if after every change to my Facebook application I would have to push my application to my host provider, just to see it running within Facebook.

Well it turns out that my concerns were only partially true.  Going back to what I covered in post #2 (Overview of Facebook Application Development), there are two options for integrating your application: FBML and IFRAME.

If you select FBML, your application is proxied through Facebook servers.  Essentially Facebook servers are making calls to your application.  In order for Facebook Servers to reach your application, your application must be hosted on publicly accessible server.  As you may recall from the previous post, I decided not to use FBML.  This deployment requirement is one of the reasons why I decided against the FBML option.

On the other hand, the IFRAME option doesn’t have the same problem.  IFRAME applications aren’t proxied by Facebook.  Instead they are embedded into the Facebook UI using an IFRAME, which makes an independent call from the end-user’s browser to your application.  It bypasses Facebook altogether.  In my opinion this approach is more ideal.

So when using the IFRAME option the only difference between a development environment and a production environment is the Callback URL.  In a production environment the Callback URL points to your public host provider (www.myhost.com).  In a development environment the Callback URL is pointing to your local workstation (localhost).  As you access your Facebook application (through Facebook) from your workstation, the Callback URL will point to the Facebook application running on your workstation.

So here’s the summary of my Facebook development environment:

1. Eclipse + Skyway Builder CE
2. Apache Tomcat 6.0
3. MySQL 5.0

I have registered a new application in Facebook using the Developer application.  The Callback URL is pointing to the application that I created and deployed locally.  But wait…I haven’t covered creation and deployment of the Facebook application yet.  I guess I’ll cover that in the next post.

This post is one of a series of posts relating to developing Spring-based Facebook applications using Skyway Builder:

• Facebook Application Platform (Post #1)
• Overview of Facebook Application Development (Post #2)
• Setting up a Facebook Development Environment (Post #3)
• Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4)
• Facebook Authentication - Overview(Post #5)
• Implementing Facebook Authentication (Post #6)

This is the second in a series of posts sharing my experiences with building a Java/Spring Facebook application using Skyway Builder Community Edition. In the first post I laid out the general plan, and in this post I will give an overview of Facebook application development.

I won't spend any time introducing Facebook, which is described on their front-page as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you". I presume you:

1. know what Facebook is
2. have used Facebook
3. have a Facebook account
4. have added at least on Facebook application

In exploring Facebook, you may have discovered that there are many available Facebook applications. Some are provided by Facebook itself, but most are 3rd party applications that are integrated with Facebook. You can find applications in the Application Directory, but the most common ways of finding applications is from your Facebook friends. Last year Facebook launched the Facebook Platform, which provided developers a way to build and publish their own Facebook applications. The Facebook user community can install these applications into their Facebook account.

If you are interested in developing a Facebook application, then you must add the Developer application to your profile. This application is provides developers with a variety of resources, including news, status, and a discussion board. This is also where you can setup a new application.

I won't cover all the application settings at this point, however I do want to focus in on the Canvas Page URL setting. There's two parts to this setting. The first part is where you specify the Facebook url for accessing your application. Every Facebook application has a URL that starts with "http://apps.facebook.com/", and for each application you append a path to the URL to come up with a unique Facebook application URL (i.e. http://apps.facebook.com/myapp/). The second part of this setting is the FBML/IFRAME selection, and your selection will depend on how you want to integrate your application into Facebook. This setting is specifying the markup language of your application and subsequently the Facebook/application interaction model.

I wanted to build my Facebook application as a Spring-based JEE web application (war) and deploy it to a light-weight JEE stack consisting of Tomcat and MySQL. While the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) alternative offers some conveniences, I wanted to produce a web application that uses standard HTML. So I selected the "IFRAME" option. The resulting interaction model is also a benefit. As opposed to the FBML option which requires that Facebook proxy all calls to my application, the IFRAME option carves at a portion of the Facebook UI for my application that is loaded directly from my servers.

Another setting of a Facebook application is the Callback URL. I'll describe this setting in more detail in subsequent posts, but this URL is essentially the URL that Facebook will use to embed your application in the IFRAME.

This diagram describes the association between the Canvas Page URL, Callback URL, and the resulting interaction model:

#1: The end-user of the application makes a call to the Canvas Page URL for your application. The URL is a Facebook URL that, among other things, points to a Facebook server.

#2: The Facebook server generates and returns the HTML associated with the requested page. The page includes an IFRAME that has a URL pointing to the Callback URL.

#3: The end-user's browser makes another call to the Callback URL. This URL is pointing to your deployed Facebook web application wherever it may be hosted.

#4: Your Facebook application generates and returns the HTML associated with your application's functionality. The HTML is embedded into the IFRAME section of Facebook page (from #2). Stayed tuned for part 3.

This post is one of a series of posts relating to developing Spring-based Facebook applications using Skyway Builder:

• Facebook Application Platform (Post #1)
• Overview of Facebook Application Development (Post #2)
• Setting up a Facebook Development Environment (Post #3)
• Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4)
• Facebook Authentication - Overview(Post #5)
• Implementing Facebook Authentication (Post #6)

So I've recently spent some time exploring facebook as an application platform.  I've been using Facebook for a while now.  In addition to staying in touch with friends and reconnecting with old friends, I have been really enjoying the various ways that you can customize your facebook profile.  While there are all kinds of gadgets (applications) that you can add to your facebook page, I figured the ultimate facebook customization would be to create your own application.

So I embarked on learning about the Facebook application platform.  Once I figured out what it takes to develop a Facebook application, I proceeded on implementing an application of my own using my favorite platform (Java and Spring) and my favorite application development tool (Skyway Builder).  While I'm not ready to share my application with the Facebook user community quite yet, I have achieved alot in a very short period of time.  Currently I'm the only authorized user of the application.  I still need to do a little more testing and polish up the user interface a bit, but soon enough I will make the application available to all Facebook users.

In the spirit of community, I figured I would share with you (Yes you!!  There's only one of you, and I appreciate you reading my blog dad.) over a series of blog posts the whole process from beginning to end.  While this blog posting is merely the introduction, it's also a commitment from me to get it done.  (Kind of like my commitment to mowing the lawn before cracking open a Heineken Light....okay enough with this foolishness).  By creating this blog post and communicating my intentions, it will force me to keep the commitments to you (dad).  Although I reserve the right to procrastinate just a bit.

This post is one of a series of posts relating to developing Spring-based Facebook applications using Skyway Builder:

• Facebook Application Platform (Post #1)
• Overview of Facebook Application Development (Post #2)
• Setting up a Facebook Development Environment (Post #3)
• Facebook application using Spring Framework (Post #4)
• Facebook Authentication - Overview(Post #5)
• Implementing Facebook Authentication (Post #6)

At the end I will provide for download a Skyway Project for Eclipse that will encompass all the items discussed in my posts.  It will be built completely using Skyway Builder Community Edition, a free and open source development tool for building Spring applications.  You can download and use the project as the starting point for your own Facebook application.  Stay tuned!

Here's the trailer:

And just for the hell of it, here's the trailer to the original War Games:

So I had to take the Flip for a test-drive.  As you can see, I mean that literally.  I recorded various video clips that I strung together into a little video using Windows Movie Maker.   The results have been uploaded to YouTube.  The results in YouTube aren't representative of the real video quality of the Flip, but you'll get the general idea.

Wall-E Down To Earth from Anthony Meadows on Vimeo.

Too bad I'm not eligible for the $25K development contest (Skyway Cup), or perhaps I would submit the blog project as a contest entry.

"I'm the Community Manager for Skyway Software, and we're looking for java developers that would be interested in participating in a new community for a free and open source product called Skyway Builder. In order to drive awareness and encourage participation in the Skyway Community, we are hosting a development contest related to Skyway Builder CE. Skyway Builder is an Eclipse-based tool that implements a DSL and modelling environment for building web applications and services based on Java and the Spring Framework. First prize is $25,000 for either the best web application built with Skyway Builder CE or the best extension to Skyway Builder CE (extensions are built as Eclipse plug-ins). This is an ideal contest for JEE developers because you're already familiar with the JEE architecture. Experience with the Spring framework is not required. If you're interested, please go to www.skywaycup.org for more information."

Last week I attended a boot camp for new dads, and I received an email with link to some new dad resources, including the holy grail tip from class for getting a baby to stop crying......the Baby Squats.

Skyway Software Announces "Skyway Cup 2008" Developer Contest

Tampa, FL – May 1, 2008: Skyway Software, the experts in simplifying software delivery, announces today the Skyway Cup 2008 (Skyway Cup) developer contest. The Skyway Cup will showcase how Skyway Community members use Skyway Builder Community Edition (CE), a model-centric JEE development tool, to serve their specific needs in the following categories:

• Best Rich Internet Application (RIA)
• Best Skyway Builder CE Extension

Read the entire press release here.

Visit the official Skyway Cup website (www.skywaycup.org).

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The IndyCar Series will return to the city by the bay through 2013.

Representatives from Andretti Green Promotions and the City of St. Petersburg announced a four-year extension of the current contract for the racing weekend through 2013. The promoters of the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg also announced tentative agreements for multi-year extensions of partnerships with American Honda Motor Company, on behalf of its Honda and Acura brands, and the IndyCar Series pending approval of the City Council.

"We have a saying here that 'It's another great day in St. Pete,' '' St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker said. "It doesn't get much better than this."

The Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was the first non-oval event for the IndyCar Series in 2005, and the event has quickly grown into a "destination event on the IndyCar Series schedule," according to Indy Racing League founder and CEO Tony George said.

"Mayor Baker and all the people of St. Petersburg are wonderful hosts and have done an incredible job embracing this event," George said. "We are pleased that the city and AGP are continuing with this picturesque event."

Dates for the 2009 Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on the 1.8-mile, 14-turn circuit will be announced later, though Kevin Savoree, managing director of Andretti Green Promotions, stressed date equity. The event has offered on- and off-track entertainment – from the IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights races to daily concerts, air shows, a family fun zone and commercial displays. Savoree said attendance for the first two days was up significantly from 2007 and expects another large crowd for race day at the fan-friendly venue.

"We had a very big vision for this event when we first presented it to the city in 2004 and to be able to announce this agreement today is not only a milestone for our organization, but a great day for racing fans in the St. Petersburg area," Savoree said. "At Andretti Green, we look at this event in St. Petersburg as a franchise.

Baker, who grew up in Indianapolis, attended his first Indianapolis 500 when he was 9 years old. This year, the race weekend coincided with the city's annual Festival of States celebration, which dates to 1896. It was named the Festival of States for the 48 tourist societies, which seasonal tourists organized by their home states, participating in the annual parade.

"(The Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg) is becoming, more and more, a tradition that is part of the fabric of our city," Baker said. "As children growing up become race fans, as people throughout the city get to know the sport, they see it as an improvement to the quality of life of our city. It's for that reason that I am thrilled to be able to say that the folks at this table have agreed that we think the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg should continue to come to St. Petersburg for the next five years."

Baker said the city will work with Tampa Devil Rays management regarding the proposed construction of a ballpark in the middle of the racing circuit. There are preliminary site plans to replace Al Lang Field, spring training home of the club, with a ballpark that could impact the current course configuration along Bayshore Drive.

"The community is discussing right now whether that stadium is going to be built or not," Baker said. "If it is going to happen, it would be subject to a referendum vote by the voters this November. While we are very much for the success of our baseball team, if that project is to go forward it has to go forward in such a manner as to ensure that the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg continued to succeed as well."

There is a lot of talk now about Domain Specific Languages and their use to simplify the delivery of software. There are many reasons why DSL’s are getting attention, but the primary driver is simply that the world is full of generic languages which are being used to solve increasingly specific problems… over and over again. A part of this movement stems from a strange dichotomy that has arisen over decades now in the Software Modeling space. The basic idea is that for some, the software model is a way of communicating and documenting business requirements. For this set of people, the model is most useful for abstracting out the most fundamental pieces of the business requirements. Since the business abstraction is focused at the business concepts, it is not well suited for generating software.....MORE

1. Abdel's example deliberately didn't have an object model. I implemented a Skyway Data Type called 'Person' that has the four attributes from Abdel's example: name, age, city and phone.
2. Abdel's example was doing data access in his servlets using custom jdbc to oracle. I created a Skyway Data Store, which is an abstract representation of a database used within models to implement persistence. When I deploy the application, the Data Store is associated with a real database (in my case I used MySQL). I didn't need a ddl to create the tables, because Skyway uses the hibernate framework for persistence, and hibernate is configured to automatically derive and create the database schema from the object model.
3. Each of the servlets were implemented as Skyway Actions. I have included screenshots of their implementations. The entire server logic was cummulatively implemented in nine Skyway Steps (the stop steps don't count; they exist just for readability) You'll notice from the project hierarchy (in Skyway Navigator) that the Actions are contained in a Skyway Web Conversation and subsequently a Skyway Web Controller. The Web Controller is used to map web requests to Skyway Actions, I configured these actions to map to the same request URLs that Abdel specified in his Ext application.

I was very pleased with the excellent results of this experiment. The only changes I need to make to Abdel's Ext application (application.js) was to change the form field names to match the variable name I used for my Person data object. If Skyway integrates well with Ext, it's reasonable to assume that Skyway will integrate well with most AJAX frameworks.

If anyone is interested in a copy of this Skyway project for Eclipse, please drop a comment on this blog post.

Here are some key things to point out:

1. Skyway Builder is now an entire set of Eclipse plugins.  Skyway 6 is the first version that's integrated with Eclipse.
2. Skyway Builder is an instantiation of the Eclipse EMF and GMF frameworks, and it's focussed on building web applications and services using a model paradigm.
3. The modelling environment blends seamlesly with custom code....and vice versa.  The code generated from the models can be very easly integrated with your custom code.  You can do as much or as little modeling (and coding) as you like.
4. You extend Skyway Builder in many ways, including building your own modeling steps using the Eclipse plug-in architecture.
5. Skyway Builder produces application using Spring the framework.  It can be thought of as model-driven spring.
6. It's all open source.  You can use it for free, and you download all the source code.

I know this post is brief.  Now that Skyway Builder is open source, I intend to post a lot more about it.  I'm at EclipseCon this week (you can find me at the Skyway booths), but next week you can expect a bunch of new content from me on this blog.

If you're interested in trying out Skyway Builder, please go to the Skyway Community (www.skywayperspectives.org) site which also went beta this week.  You can download the RCP version or access the Skyway update site to add Skyway Builder to your existing installation of Eclipse 3.3.

As a Gold Sponsor at EclipseCon2008, the official annual conference for Eclipse users, Skyway Software will demonstrate the Eclipse plug-in capabilities of Skyway Visual Workspace at its booth in the Skyway Playzone (the exhibit hall's foosball and basketball developer play stations). Read more at www.skywaysoftware.com/lp/eclipsecon2008.php.

Skyway Software announced that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation. Skyway Software joins the Eclipse Foundation as an Add-In Provider member to support the continued growth of Eclipse's development platform.

"We are pleased to welcome Skyway Software as a member of the Eclipse Foundation. Skyway Software's usage of several Eclipse frameworks and projects has enabled them to cost-effectively develop their runtime-independent end-to-end modeling capabilities," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. "We look forward to Skyway's participation in the rapidly growing modeling ecosystem at Eclipse."

Skyway Visual Workspace includes Skyway Builder (a development tool to prototype, design, and build solutions) and Skyway Director (a deployment tool to generate and deploy solutions). Some of the world's largest enterprises rely on model-based Skyway Visual Workspace, and our iterative, enabling methodology Skyway Collaborative Software Delivery, to facilitate collaborative development and deployment of SOA-based JEE applications more quickly and more accurately than ever before.

"Today's announcement marks another milestone in Skyway Software's ongoing effort to simplify the software delivery process for our customers using open standards," said Jared Rodriguez, CTO and Co-Founder of Skyway Software. "The Eclipse and Skyway Software partnership is a great match since our Skyway Visual Workspace plug-in will rely extensively on the Eclipse Modeling Framework, the Eclipse Modeling Project, and the Data Tools Platform. And by doing so all within the Spring Framework, we facilitate a seamless blend of hand-coding and modeling to help enterprises deliver fast, accurate JEE solutions."

1. Select the File / Import and Export... Menu option.
2. Select "Import from another program or file" and click Next.
3. Select "Comma Separated Values (Windows)" and click Next.
4. Find the desired CSV file (INDY2008.csv) and select "Do not import duplicate items" and click Next.
5. Select Calendar and click Next.
6. The next window will have a title that says 'The following actions will be performed:' above an option to 'Import "INDY2008.csv" into folder: Calendar.
7. Check that box and and click on 'Import "INDY2008.csv" into folder: Calendar'
8. Then Click Finish

Experience what it feels like to fasten yourself into a real IndyCar and take it for a ride. After you arrive at the event you will go through an orientation program then put on a race suit, gloves, and helmet. Then you will strap into the IndyCar and be instructed to follow a certified instructor around the course. The cars are real IndyCars that competed in the Indianapolis 500!

IndyCar Series

 2007 IndyCar Series - Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

 This is the IRL

Indy 500 Films

1. excellent integration between Zune player and Zune software
2. podcast directory on Zune Marketplace (tons of choices, but you can podcasts manually too)
3. ability to seemlessly sync podcast titles and/or subscriptions with zune player
4. non-native formats are automatically transcoded by Zune software
5. Media Center recordings can be synced to Zune (right-click)
6. Firmware 2.x upgrade significantly improves Zune interface
7. DRM free music from Zune Marketplace
8. wireless sync - no need to hook up to computer
9. for it's size, the display is very adequate for watching videos and tv shows
10. includes FM Radio (for listening to local sports)
11. better than expected battery life
12. audio/video output makes it's very easy to integrate with entertainment system
13. ability to convert DVD movies for playing on Zune

"Software development will change to a wider use of code generators. Forget about heavy frameworks, regardless of what programming language you use. In a simple case, use some XML style sheets combined with the metadata that describes your application objects to automatically generate the code for these objects. On a larger scale, the entire application may be described using metadata and XML, and an appropriate code generator will do the job. So programming will change from writing tedious code that requires lots of coders to describing the metadata and writing custom code generators."

I'm a very big proponent of code generation, and I really hope this prediction is true. As the product manager of Skyway Software, I'm intimately familiar with code generation. Skyway Visual Workspace is a development solution that converts application meta-data (that's modelled) into a deploy-ready JEE application, including UI, business logic, and data access. Over and over again I've witnessed the benefits of this approach to development, particularly related to productivity (time and effort).

However I'm curious about Yakov's prediction. Why does he feel code generation will become vogue? He didn't really share his reasoning for his predictions. That would have been particularly interesting to me.

I was curios if the music was any good, so I listened to a few mixes. It's not bad.....not bad at all. Here's one of my favorites, which I can legally post on my blog thanks to the Creative Commons license.

Pretty clever!!

Skyway Software Wiki

Skyway Software Forums

Skyway Software Blog 

Skyway Software Company Website 

I was really impressed with what could be accomplished Jumpcut.

• Skyway Blog Project - The Skyway Blog project represents all the model-based development artifacts that are unique to the Skyway Blog application. The Skyway Blog also uses some common services from another project (Foundation).
• Skyway Blog Folders - This
• Relationship Diagram -
• Foundation Project - Here's an example of a more complex project that has many more services. I'll describe this service in more detail in a future post.

2. South Florida

3. Central Florida

4. Florida State

5. Miami

6. Florida Atlantic

7. Florida International

• Skyway Visual Workspace Desktop - The visual workspace. This is where you do you're model-driven development. Each icon on the desktop represents a particular project, and a solution/application is comprised of one or more projects.
• Skyway Project Designer - When double-clicking on a project on the desktop, the project designer opens to reveal all the model-based development artifacts of the project.
• Skyway Domain Designer - This is where you configure your domain to influence how the models are converteded into concrete JEE applications.
• Skyway Logic Model Designer - This is the designer for logic models, one of many types of model-based development artifacts that comprise a Skyway project.

Once again this is only supposed to be an introduction to the modelling environment. In the next several posts (of the Skyway Blog series) I'll be showing more images from Skyway Visual Workspace. More information regarding the different types of model-based development artifacts can be found here.

• "a range of development approaches that are based on the use of software modeling as a primary form of expression"
• "complete models are built including executable actions"
• "code can be generated from the models, ranging from system skeletons to complete, deployable products"
• "abstraction (of MDD) promotes simpler models with a greater focus on problem space. Combined with executable semantics this elevates the total level of automation possible"

I have been working with model-driven development for over 5 years, and I have collected a bunch of bookmarks related to model-driven development. If you click on the "mdd" tag at the botton of this post, you will see my most recently saved model-driven development bookmarks (stored in del.icio.us)...and from there you will have the option to go to my full list of bookmarks on del.icio.us.

What I like about MDD is that it's fast. The time it takes for me to take an idea from my head to implementation is fast. With MMD I'm dealing with things at a higher level of abstraction, so I don't have to get bogged down with things that slow me down (code, specifications, build scripts, compile errors, etc...). If I get an idea for a project, I can implement it in days instead of weeks (or weeks instead of months for larger projects).

When I look back at the effort involved with implementating this blog, it was minor. I built the bulk of it during one of my PTO days (I know...sad...isn't it?). I wanted to experiment with building a fully ajax-based version of a blog application. Given the progress that I made, I decided that I wanted to deploy this applicaiton as my own blog. So I spent a few evenings over several weeks completing the application...adding security, jazzing up the UI, producing rss feeds, and a few other things.

In the next post I will dive deeper into the implementation of the blog...the models. There's quite a bit to show, so I'll probably break it up into several posts, with each post showing a different part (web/logic/data layers) of the implementation.

Just making sure I cite my references (Wikipedia makes it really easy...they build the citation code for you in a variety of different formats):

Model-driven engineering. (2007, September 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:20, September 13, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Model-driven_engineering&oldid=155926528

• Categories - catagories can be added/removed by blog owner; a post can be associated with zero to many categories
• Tagging - each post can have zero to many free-form tags
• Tag Cloud - as a post is tagged, the tag is added to the tag cloud; a visitor can click on a tag in the tag cloud to see all posts associated with the tag (Tag View)
• del.icio.us Tag Integration - as a visitor clicks on a tag, they will also see any of my del.icio.us bookmarks that have the same tag (Tag View)
• flickr Tag Integration - as a visitor clicks on a tag, they will also see any of my flickr photos that have the same tag (Tag View)
• Tag View - one consolidated screen to see all the blog owner's posts, del.icio.us bookmarks, and flickr photos that match the selected tag
• Photo Section - photo slideshows can be administered by the blog owner; visitors can view the slideshows from the Photo Tab
• Reading Section - rss feeds can be administered by the blog owner; visitors can view the rss feeds from the reading Tab
• Comments - a post can support an unlimited number of comments
• Moderated Comments - the blog owner can specify whether the comments for a particular post should be moderated; comments added to a moderated post will only be visible when the blog owner approves the comment; this helps minimize comment spam
• Rich-text Editting - the blog owner adds posts using a richtext editor
• RSS Feeds - this blog can produce rss feeds for all posts, by category and by tag; when adding rss feeds to feed aggregators, the blog owner can control which posts are published to a particular aggregator
• AJAX UI - the entire user interface is implemented with AJAX; you will never get a full screen refresh; as a visitor interacts with the blog, only portions of the uI will change
• Database Support - this blog can be deployed without modification to run using Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase or DB2 (I'll explain more in future posts)
• Application Server Support - this blog can be deployed without modification to run on Weblogic, websphere, JBoss or Netweaver (I'll explain more in future posts)

• South Florida is good.
• Losing to USF at home might seem like an upset to those who didn’t watch any of Saturday night’s game. For those of us who saw it, we know better. We know South Florida is good.
• They should have. This is a team that has talent and drive and - the biggest intangible of all - nothing to lose.
• The Bulls aren’t a Cinderella story. They’re their own novel. And at 10 years old, this program has just written its best chapter: How to go from humble beginnings to humbling one of the best programs in the country over the last three years.
• South Florida is a good football team. Believe it.

As you're perusing the photos of other flickr members, you can tag the photos you like as favorites.  Here's a slideshow of all the photos I've tagged as favorites.  As I add or remove photos from my favorites, this slideshow will automatically update.

1. Select the File / Import and Export... Menu option.
2. Select "Import from another program or file" and click Next.
3. Select "Comma Separated Values (Windows)" and click Next.
4. Find the desired CSV file (USF2007.csv) and select "Do not import duplicate items" and click Next.
5. Select Calendar and click Next.
6. The next window will have a title that says 'The following actions will be performed:' above an option to 'Import "USF2007.csv" into folder: Calendar.
7. Check that box and and click on 'Import "USF2007.csv" into folder: Calendar'
8. Then Click Finish

1. Select the File / Import and Export... Menu option.
2. Select "Import from another program or file" and click Next.
3. Select "Comma Separated Values (Windows)" and click Next.
4. Find the desired CSV file (BUCS2007.csv) and select "Do not import duplicate items" and click Next.
5. Select Calendar and click Next.
6. The next window will have a title that says 'The following actions will be performed:' above an option to 'Import "BUCS2007.csv" into folder: Calendar.
7. Check that box and and click on 'Import "BUCS2007.csv" into folder: Calendar'
8. Then Click Finish

Oh well...I promise better things to come. Stay tuned!!

	private static ContactsViewUiBinder uiBinder = GWT
			.create(ContactsViewUiBinder.class);