CS639 Resources Fall 2004

WARNING. Much of this stuff is too old to be the right place to look now.

Much of this page comes from a previous offering of the course. If you see a on an item, then I have verified it is reasonably current, and I visited it May 1, 2004 or later. If there is no checkmark, I haven't revisited the link since May 2003, and you should not assume it is the current place to look. The date following a checkmarked item is the date I last visited the resource.

Lot's of good stuff about everything Java here, especially the FAQs. 02may04

Good tutorials at IBM Developer Works Especially the introductory XML tutorial and the related ones linked on that page. 02may04

Local copy of Xerces 1.6.2 home directory, including Local xerces docs. If you use it on a unix host on the cs network, please make symlink to /courses/cs639/f04/xerces/xerces-2_6_2. Don't make copies without good reason, as they take up a lot of space. In general, look for local stuff under /courses/cs639/f04. 02may04

xml.com , the best general source for current XML news and products. The invaluable Annotated XML Specification by Tim Bray has its home here. 02may04

The Ant home page a local copy the manual.    Ant is a build system better than make and especially savvy about Java applications. See Ant in Anger: Using Ant in a Production Development System for some of the power of Ant.

Sun's Java API for XML, JAXP API is documented as part of the J2EE API

SAX2 API. This documents org.xml.sax

The DOM level 1 core API is not javadocs, but rather the W3C specification. You'll need it for the final word if you are trying to understand how a DOM interface works, but it might help only a little with Java programming.

The W3C Schema tutorial.   Here's a cool Schema Quality Checker   from IBM alphaworks.

Servlets and Tomcat

The cshrc snippet suggested in the tomcat setup instructions referenced below sets an environment variable SERVLET_JAR to be the servlet.jar found in the tomcat5 runtime library. If you reference this in ant build files (or other classpath mechanisms), you will guarantee that you are compiling with the same api that tomcat uses at runtime. This is a Good Thing.

• local Tomcat setup instructions
• tomcat docs
• The servlet apis are part of the j2ee apis.
• The there is an advanced servlet tutorial along with the j2ee tutorial pages.. However, this one from Johns Hopkins also looks worthwhile. You may need to look at both.
• Once you have tomcat installed and running, you'll find examples, with sources, on its front page. Somtimes mine is running.

Web Services

• Apache Axis web service framework Axis is a semi-automated web services framework implemented as a webapp for containers like Tomcat. To get started, it is necessary only to have a correctly installed tomcat, and to copy the entire axis webapp from $CS639/SOFTWARE/axis-1_1/webapps/axis into your own webapps directoryRead the local documentation for details.
• The SOAPMonitor applet. Not sure yet whether it works in axis1_1.
• Tracy Gardner, An Introduction to Web Services
• IBM Web Services Tutorial
• Local jax-rpc api javadocs. jar is $CS639/SOFTWARE/jaxrpc-1_1-fr-spec-api.jar. If you need it for building under ant or otherwise, be sure to set an environment variable in your .cshrc that can be referenced.
• A WS-Policy tutorial .

Berkeley DB Java implementation

jdom.org, especially the documents at jdom.org and the local copy of the API docs.

jaxen general docs and api . Jaxen is an XPath processer that works with jdom and other api's.

XSLT

• Local copy of Xalan XSLT processor API and general docs.
• You should also see the samples, copy a few of them and try them out. The one names SimpleTransform is most interesting to get started, byt so is ApplyXPath for something possibly a little simpler.
• ZVON especially the XSLT tutorial.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics (BDEI)

• BDEI Landscape (slides)
• Integrated Taxonomic Information Service ITIS
• Local Resources

EDITORS and VALIDATORS

XML Spy is a useful XML editor that can validate, generate schemas, and do a host of other cool things. It is shortly to be installed in the lab

The Semantic Web

• The Scientific American article is not normally available online. However, UMB community members can reach it through the UMB library e-journal interfaces in the online catalog. This is accessible from all machines on campus. From off-campus you need the barcode number from your library card to access it through the library catalog.
• RDF
• A great tutorial for developers.
• The W3C RDF Validator shows triples and graphs. You can plug  http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/courses/cs639/samples/RDF/catalog.rdf into the "Parse rdf" box to see the example of our text, or the simple first example from class now corrected at http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/courses/cs639/samples/RDF/639.rdf
• Bath University UKOLN  pages on the Dublin Core and RDF
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0) is an RDF framework for describing web sites, especially the Examples.
• An Intro to RSS, especially section on Syndication and Aggregation . Then look at O'Reilly's Meerkat, an exmple of an RSS-based syndication.
• Topic Maps
• thebrain.com is an interesting application related to topic maps
• A good though elementary tutorial
• The XTM Spec at topicmaps.org

Cocoon

• .Local copy of the Cocoon documents. You should familiarize yourself with these, especially cTwIG , the Cocoon Two Idiots Guide.

WAP

• A WAP Tutorial
  
• Some WAP development tools
• All the WAP techincal specs you can swallow, including the WML v2 spec
  

• On the Design of Application Protocols . Internet RFC3117
• SOAP
• IBM Developerworks . See especially the SOAP tutorial. You will need to register at their site.
• Apachi SOAP docs .
• Java Messaging
• Sonic Software JMS Meets Web Services" Tutorial by SonicSoftware technical staff on messaging, especially JMS.
• Sun JMS tutorial
• SonicSoftware whitepapers on Messaging
• SonicMQ is a JMS implementation from SonicSoftware   where you can download the complete SonicMQ3.5 developer edition, including the MOM ("broker" ), jars implementing the JMS api, support and demo software. The free version is pretty much unrestricted except that it omits the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support and is therefore of very little commercial use. The  doc set   contains an excellent, if lengthy, Getting Started manual that will tell you how to use both broker and client samples.

Java Data Binding

JAXB

• The JAXB API, a review at XML.COM
• JAXB at Sun
• Sun JAXB tiutorial. Slightly out of date as to details, but not concepts.
  

CASTOR

•    Castor project home page
• Local Castor api docs
  

• Some Castor tutorials and other sresources

• Comparing Castor to .NET

• Geocities
• XML and Java technologies: Data binding with Castor Dennis Sosnoski, at the IBM Developer site
• XML and Java technologies: Data binding, Part 1: Code generation approaches -- JAXB and more, another Sosnoski article at IBM,, covers some alternatives to Castor. See also Part2.