************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * May 2002 * * * ************************************* News and Comments The saga of DB/C FS 3.1 continues. We had hoped to release it several months ago, but we're still in beta test mode. It should finally be released in June. We are increasing the cost of renewing lapsed support. The price for renewing support for DB/C DX and DB/C FS that has lapsed more than one month will increase on July 1 from 10% per month to 15% per month of the annual support fee. Thus, the incentive to stay current with your support is now even greater. You can review the expiration status of your licenses using the DB/C Online Sales and Update System at www.dbcsoftware.com. If you have any questions about this policy, send us email at admin@dbcsoftware.com. The dbctalk email list has become a valuable tool for users of DB/C DX and DB/C FS. There are now about 90 subscribers to dbctalk. Although it is erratic, the volume of email has picked up recently. In early May there were no emails for several days, but there were more than 20 emails posted on May 15. There are now an average of 20 emails posted to dbctalk per week. The quality of questions and answers posted on dbctalk is generally quite good. A wide range of topics is discussed - GUI programming, printing issues, how to do TCP/IP, descriptions of hard to replicate glitches, questions about performance, and much more. There are 275 readers subscribed to the email distribution of this newsletter. Thus there 185 DB/C Newsletter readers who aren't subscribed to dbctalk - you're really missing a valuable source of information. You can subscribe by sending an email to dbctalk-subscribe@dbcsoftware.com. And if you want to have each day's worth of emails summarized into a daily digest form, after you've subscribed send an email to dbctalk-digest@dbcsoftware.com. More information about dbctalk can be found in the December 2001 DB/C Newsletter. Peter Hanusiak, an active participant on the dbctalk list, has created a robust implementation of a Java interface for DB/C DX for Win32 and an XML interface for DB/C DX that is written in Java. Peter has indicated he would be happy to share his code. If you are interested in using Java and DB/C DX together, you should check this out. You can contact Peter by email at hanusiak@sozo.fns.uniba.sk. We continue to work extensively with Eclipse. In the next few months, we'll have some quite interesting announcements concerning our efforts. This month's article is a mini-review of two books that are focused on successfully creating Java applications. If you are doing anything with Java, I highly recommend these books. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** Two Books Effective Java by Joshua Bloch, published by Addison-Wesley 2001 'Effective Java' is one of the books in Addison-Wesley's 'The Java Series' books about Java. This series of books is the authoritative source for information about Java. If you do any programming in Java, you should have several of the books in this series on your bookshelf. 'Effective Java' is essentially a Java hints book. For clarity, the hints are numbered - there are 57. Here is a sample of the hints in this book: Item 5. Eliminate obsolete object references Item 16. Prefer interfaces to abstract classes Item 26. Use overloading judiciously Item 27. Return zero-length arrays, not nulls Item 29. Minimize the scope of local variables Item 31. Avoid float and double if exact answers are required Item 39. Use exceptions only for exceptional conditions Item 50. Never invoke wait outside a loop The book is well organized. The hints are grouped into ten categories which correspond with the chapters. There is just the right amount of Java code provided as examples. This book is valuable to all Java programmers. Most, if not all, of the hints will be useful for novice Java programmers. And Java experts will be surprised at how much they learn from this book. If you are only going to buy one Java programming book this year, buy 'Effective Java'. Bitter Java by Bruce A. Tate, published by Manning Publications 2002 'Bitter Java' is the opposite of 'Effective Java'. It is about how things are done wrong in Java. Tate uses the recently coined term 'anti-patterns' to categorize various bad things done in Java. Many of the anti-patterns that are described in this book apply to other languages also. In addition to Java anti-patterns, one section of the book focuses on things that can be done wrong with XML. The book really focuses on server-side applications anti-patterns, thus a more appropriate title would be 'Server Programming Anti-Patterns', but that probably wouldn't sell as many books. The book is written in a conversational form that was somewhat annoying to this reader. The author is a white-water kayaker. Each chapter opens with one of the author's kayaking experiences and then tries to relate the kayaking experience with the anti-patterns described in that chapter. The pundits at slashdot (www.slashdot.org) were evenly divided as to whether they liked the kayaking narrative or thought it was fluff. Ignoring the kayaking, there are some really important lessons to be learned from this book. The author is a consultant who appears to have seen quite a number of failed or semi-failed projects. His key point is that you can learn quite a bit from studying the errors of those who have preceded you. If you are embarking on writing Java server code, whether servlets, JSPs or EJBs, you should read this book. ****************************************************************************** DB/C Language Class Schedule Class: DB/C Programming Language Fundamentals Date: September 2002 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com. ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you monthly, just send an email message to 'dbcnews-subscribe@dbcsoftware.com'. The newsletter will be delivered to the email address from which the message was sent.