Because I can annotate my action bean in Stripes I can localize configuration errors to the responsibility or set of responsibilities I’m developing (Yay event binding !). Now my configuration is clearly and cleanly attached to my code, making it easy to find, easy to adjust, and easy to debug. The days of massive XML files containing all process flow for your application in a single file are over!

Event Binding is something I really enjoy about Stripes. Event Binding allows me to put multiple responsibilities into my Action bean, reducing the number of files required for the application. Using Annotations I can create a single Action bean designed to handle all responsibilities for a common subsystem, such as user management. In other frameworks I may have created Action beans such as: AddUser, UpdateUser, ShowUserForm, etc. With Stripes I can create a single action bean called Users and put all the functionality in it, bound to callable events using Annotations. This, to me, is a prime case of convention over configuration. It’s more simple and less complex. There is cleverness in simplicity.

Although I’ve compared to Struts this isn’t a “Stripes is better than Struts” article. Preference, requirements, obligations, and suitability all factor into a decision for Java frameworks. If you’re seeking some functional examples of how Annotations can be used in place of typical XML configurations I highly recommend you try Stripes. Hibernate is another fine example as well, but that’s another post in another category.

http://mc4j.org/confluence/display/stripes/Home

http://www.hibernate.org/

• Java
• Javascript & Google API
• MySQL

Blue Shield of California is a non-profit health insurance provider headquartered in San Francisco, California. We implemented an AJAX Web application to allow users to search for an insurance agent in their area and get directions to that agent. The application integrated Java(5), JSP, MySQL, Javascript, and Google Maps.The website is public and can be viewed at http://www.blueshieldcafindanagent.com

• OC4J 10.1.3.1 (Java)
• Oracle Portal 10.1.4
• Oracle Apex
• Oracle OID 10.1.4
• Oracle RAC Server 10.2.0.3
• Apache/SVN
• Solaris Zoned Servers

The British Columbia Ministry of Health has a set of applications that are hosted on Oracle Middle Tier, using a variety of Oracle and third party frameworks. The middle tier is deployed on Solaris 10 zoned containers with non co-located infrastructure components. The architecture uses external and internal Apache reverse proxies to control access to the middle tier, which then uses mod oc4j to access the secure java applications.

• PHP & Facebook API
• Java
• Smartfox
• MySQL

Zynga is a social gaming company based in San Francisco. We work with Zynga to develop gaming applications for the social networks Facebook and Bebo. These applications were implemented with Java/Smartfox, PHP and Facebook APIs. The Texas Hold’em application regularly runs with a volume of 16,000+ concurrent users, 315,000+ daily active users.

• PHP
• XML
• Java
• Oracle

Smith & Hawken is the premier provider for gardening supplies and gifts in the US. We implemented a PHP based Web interface to allow vendors to view and update product information in Smith & Hawken’s Oracle based inventory system. Product data was imported nightly from a legacy inventory system using a combination of shell scripts to import the data into a staging area, and PL/SQL to do the transformation and loading. Content is exported in XML to a remote customer support system.

A Java/Oracle dropship application was also created to allow vendors to manage orders online.

In Oracle Internet Directory 10.1.4, there is a new option - Server Chaining. You can use server chaining to ‘virtually’ link to another LDAP Server. I have implemented this architecture so that we could take advantage of the Oracle integration with OID but also include a large group of users existing in an external LDAP server.

The actual server chaining takes about 5 minutes of configuration, and all of the users in the remotely mapped container appear in the local OID. Authentication via SSO is immediate - both OID and chained users authenticate seamlessly.

Group management can be done on both types of users, and this group membership is recognized by Oracle SSO-enabled applications including Portal. You can add a chained user to an OID group via OIDDAS or directly in the oidadmin utility. Presumably you could also include a local OID account in a remote chained group but I didn’t use this functionality.

There are some issues with server chaining though - the oracle OIDDAS interface throw an error if you log in as a chained user. You can log in as an OID account and search for the chained users, but there is some kind of error in the OIDDAS that just throws a proxy privilege exception and does not allow you to continue (or log out) once you have entered chained user credentials.

There are several Oracle and third party applications that use direct LDAP authentication, such as Application Express, Confluence, XML Publisher. These application generally require a specific realm within the LDAP server that is used for access. It is not recommended to map the chained users into the root realm within OID, so it is difficult to allow both chained and local users to authenticate into these ldap-direct applications. However, this would also not be possible in the original architecture since the users were distributed in the source LDAP.

The biggest issue I have experienced is that currently you can only chain one remote LDAP of each type (Active Directory and SunOne). It would be great if you could map to different ldaps, or have filter control on the mapping. Because our chained accounts were in many realms, we had to map at a very low level and degrade search performance on OID because of a lot of (unnecessary) account mappings.

• Oracle B2B Integration Server
• Oracle Advanced Queueing
• OpenSSL
• ebMS 2.0

The National Routing System is a secure electronic communications environment permitting provinces, territories and federal departments to exchange vital event information. It allows provincial and territorial vital event registrars to validate birth information that is essential to authenticate identity and to notify federal departments of deaths in order to manage changes to program entitlements in a timely manner.

http://unece.org/stats/documents/ece/ces/sem.54/3.e.pdf

• ASP .NET
• Oracle pl/sql
• Active Reports/Crystal Reports

The San Francisco Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast, with a daily circulation of 512,129 and a Sunday circulation of 539,563 (ABC Publisher’s Statement, September 2002). We created a database access layer and implemented a series of reports for Financial, Circulation, and Distribution program areas. The reports were written in Active Reports/.NET, and Crystal Reports. The database access was optimized by the use of materialized views and a series of summary snapshots.