Jim Mangione

The most basic way to capture these elements of interest is through application logs. Most Java-based production systems have them in some form, and most of them probably implement a custom API or use one of a handful of third-party packages that may or may not be cross-compatible. Out comes java.util.logging in the new Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) v1.4. Developed collaboratively with input from several key contributors (see “JSRs: Java Specification Requests” at http://jcp.org/jsr/detail/47.jsp for details), this package can be used as is, extended for additional functionality, and in conjunction with enterprise application services. How does it work out of the box? What are its limitations and how easy is it to extend its capabilities? I’ll discuss these issues, plus show how to add database-level logging to the package’s framework. J2SE Logging: Out o... (more)

Adding a Custom Event to a JavaBean

One of the first truly reusable components I wrote in Java was a login bean that validated a username/password against our company's network. It was lightweight (using AWT classes), and worked with both applets and applications. This proved to me how simple writing and deploying a JavaBean was. It also introduced me quickly to the concept of custom event handling. You see, the bean's container class (be it an applet, frame, etc.) can easily talk to the bean and invoke public methods such as bnLogin.setDefaultUserName(). But after the bean validates a user, it has to notify its co... (more)