JOTM - Java Open Transaction Manager

JOTM is an open source distributed transaction manager implemented in Java and licensed under the LGPL.

overLIB - JavaScript Tooltips

overLIB is a JavaScript library created to enhance websites with small popup information boxes (tooltips) to help visitors around your website. It will provide the user with information about what will happen before they click on a link as well as navigational help. Not to mention that it looks cool.

Here are some more insteresting links:
* overLIB features
* Some cool Extensions to overLIB

JavaScript Calendar Popup

The JavaScript Calendar Popup is a great tool which allows a much better usability at entering dates. It has many features and is pretty much customizable.
Here is another variant using overLIB:
* http://javascript.internet.com/calendars/date-picker.html
I found them through this thread at the cocoon developer mailinglist.

Subversion release 0.28

Subversion 0.28 has been released and there is an interesting article with the title "Subversion release 0.28 - the better CVS - also for Eclipse, Emacs, Tortoise and more" from Christoph C. Cemper.

I'm looking forward at Subversion becoming mainstream for open source projects!

A Compact Syntax for W3C XML Schema

The article A Compact Syntax for W3C XML Schema on XML.com by Erik Wilde presents an interesting alternative to the verbose W3C XML Schema while preserving the same semantic.
Here's an example from the article to give you an idea:

W3C Schema fragment:

<xs:element name="complexContent" id="complexContent">

  <xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexContent>

      <xs:extension base="xs:annotated">

        <xs:choice>

          <xs:element name="restriction" type="xs:complexRestrictionType"/>



          <xs:element name="extension" type="xs:extensionType"/>

        </xs:choice>

        <xs:attribute name="mixed" type="xs:boolean"/>

      </xs:extension>

    </xs:complexContent>

  </xs:complexType>

</xs:element>

XSCS (XML Schema Compact Syntax):

element complexContent extends xs:annotated {

  ( restriction { xs:complexRestrictionType } | extension { xs:extensionType } )

    attribute \mixed { xs:boolean } }

That's definitely less verbose although I don't know if I like the curly bracket and the backslash that much ;-)

BONITA - A Cooperative Workflow System

BONITA is a flexible cooperative workflow system, compliant to WfMC specifications, based on the workflow model proposed by the ECOO Team, which incorporates the anticipation of activities as a more flexible mechanism of workflow execution.
The system provides:
* A comprehensive set of integrated graphical tools for performing different kind of actions such as process conception, definition, instanciation, control of processes, and interaction with the users and external applications.
* 100% browser-based environment with Web Services integration that uses SOAP and XML Data binding technologies in order to encapsulate existing workflow business methods and publish them as a J2EE-based web services.
* A Third Generation Worflow engine based in the activity anticipation model. This flexibility allows a considerable increase of speed in the design and development phases of cooperative applications.

OWL - Web Ontology Language Candidate Recommendation

The OWL Web Ontology Language Candidate Recommendation of the W3C has been released on August 18th.
It is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facilitates greater machine interpretability of Web content than that supported by XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) by providing additional vocabulary along with a formal semantics. OWL has three increasingly-expressive sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full.

Java DocTree

Java DocTree is a comprehensive index to the JavaDoc from 56 Java projects. It links to 1521 packages and 20054 classes from a single page which saves you having hundreds of bookmarks for every Java project you use. Click on the package names below to drill down to the required JavaDoc.

Weblog temporary closed: Online Demonstration Against Software Patents

This weblog will be temporarily closed from August 25th until after August 27th due to an online demonstration against software patents.

Here is some further information on why this is such a big problem and what you can do to help:
* http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html
* http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html
* http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html

Sign the EuroLinux Petition against Software Patents!

If you want the net to stay a free platform take it as serious as many others do!

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design says an article of the Washington Post.

AOP with JavaScript

This article shows you how you can use AOP with JavaScript.
Found through this posting.

Reading a new book: Practical RDF

I started to read the new O'Reilly book "Practical RDF" by Shelly Powers.
It has about 330 pages and shows you the practical side of RDF.
I'm not a very fast reader, since I only read such books when I've got some time on the week ends or on holidays. Today I got to page 6 then I had to jump into the pool because of the hot weather ;-)

Talking about standardization

I had an interesting talk about standardization with my father-in-law Leopold Lasselsberger, who holds some important offices concerning biogenous fuels and wood combustion systems.
He encouraged me to take a closer look at the standardization efforts done by such consortiums like W3C, Oasis, IETF and others.
Let's see where this leads me to ...

LDAPd - Java LDAP Server

LDAPd is a Java-based pure Java LDAP v3 protocol compliant server. It's architecture is based on Matt Welsh's Staged Event Driven Architecture (SEDA).
The first version is available as Avalon Poenix application.

cuckooo - OpenOffice.org nested in KDE

cuckooo is a KDE Part, which allows running OpenOffice.org in a Konqueror window.

Current features:
* Shows (read-only) all document formats supported by OpenOffice.org.
* Can be embedded as a Part in Konqueror.
* Can run as a standalone application.

Really cool stuff!

Go and checkout the screenshots, which demonstrate viewing MS Word, MS Excel and MS Powerpoint files inline within Konqueror :-)

KnowledgeTree - OpenSource Document Management

KnowledgeTree (TM) is an Open Source document management system. The product provides a content repository, workflow and routing of content, content publication, content metrics definition and analysis.

SAMBA 3.0.0rc1

Samba 3.0.0rc1 has been released.
It has many improvements and goes a big step forward in NT 4.0 compatibility. Additionally it supports many features of Windows 2000/XP/2003.

b+m Generator FrameWork

The b+m Generator FrameWork is now available as Open Source. It features sphisticated MDA/D support and allows great flexibility in customizing it for your tasks. There's also an eclipse plugin!

Apache Cocoon 2.1 Finally Released

Let's have a party!
Apache Cocoon version 2.1 has been finally released after a very long development time.
This release makes a big step from an XML publishing framework to a componentized XML-based web application development framework.
Congratulations to Carsten and his helpers for doing this great release!

DocMan - DocBook Toolchain Manager

DocMan is a DocBook Conversion Toolchain Manager, a program that allows you to easily convert DocBook into a number of output formats.
I found this one on Lars Trieloff's Weblog and is written by himself. There are very promising DocMan screenshots. I definitely have to check this out!

IsaViz 2.0 Released

IsaViz is a verry impressive RDF visualization tool from W3C. It features now GSS (Graph Stylesheets) to render RDF graphs.
I think this is one of the most important visualization tools for RDF. Definitely worth a look!

AndroMDA - MDA Code Generation Framework

AndroMDA (pronounced: andromeda) is an open source code generation framework that follows the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm. It takes a UML model from a CASE-tool and generates classes and deployable components (J2EE or other), specific for your application architecture.

RSSOwl - Newsreader

RSSOwl is a freeware newsreader for RSS written in Java using SWT as fast graphic libary.
If you're interested look at this screenshot.

SourceForge Utilities

SourceForge Utilities is a collection of open-source code which makes it easy for project administrators and release technicians to work with SourceForge without having to manually navigate its website and project tools. It currently provides a Java interface to the SourceForge file release system, with more features planned down the road.
You can easily integrate these tools into your Ant build to automatically release files to SourceForge.

LDAP Schema Resources

Yesterday I looked around the net to learn about LDAP schemas and found those nifty tools and resources:
* LDAP Schema Viewer
* LDAP verstehen (in german)
* LDAP Schema (University of Florida)
* List of LDAP related RFCs
* LDAP Linux HOWTO
Really helpful, if you want to learn LDAP!

Gmane - Mail To News And Back Again

Gmane is a very nice mailing list archive with many features. One I really like is the threaded view to easily follow discussions!

oreilly.com: Practical RDF

O'Reilly published a new book: Practical RDF.
It explains RDF from the ground up, providing real-world examples and descriptions of how the technology is being used in applications like Mozilla, FOAF, and Chandler, as well as infrastructure you can use to build your own applications.

(I already reserved my copy at amazon.com ;-)

Linux / WinXP Usability Study

relevantive AG has done a Linux Usability Study by comparing the Linux desktop KDE with WindowsXP.
Linux/KDE is not very far behind WinXP!
It is very well written and shows you where the usability problems lie. The report is written in german. An english version will be available soon.
The report is available under a certain Open Content license.

Wedding and wonderful honeymoon

Yes, we finally married!

Originally Maria and I were afraid from this step as we both hate big celebrations. Nevertheless it was the most beautiful day in our life.
To some part that was due to the fact that we didn't want to have a traditional wedding. Instead we wanted to have it the way it fits best to us. I'm sure we hadn't got so much positive feedback afterwards if we followed every hint about how we should do it ;-)

Now some more infos:
We married on July 19th (the 25th birthday of Maria) at the registry office in Wieselburg (15:00) and afterwards (with some drinks and photos in between) at the church in Neumarkt (17:00).
Theb we had some time to talk to friends, relatives and neighbors while having a drink and something to eat.
After that we drove to the Mostlandhof, where we had an excellent dinner. This restaurant is located on a hill where you can overlook beautiful parts of the Erlauftal. The weather was excellent and we could enjoy a really beautiful sunset.

At about 24:00 we were taken to a quite new Hotel in Amstetten, called Exel, where we spent our wedding night.
On monday at 02:15 early in the morning a bus catched us and brought us to Venice (Venedig for german speakers ;-). There we got onto the ship Costa Classica where we had a wonderful one-week cruise: Venice - Bari - Katakolon/Olympia - Santorin - Mykonos - Rhodos - Dubrovnik (Croacia) - Venice.

I never imagined that our wedding could be so beautiful.
Here I'd like to say thanks again to the parents and grandparents of Maria for making us such a big present with the Hotel and the cruise.