The next release of JVx is coming!

It'll be version 2.2. We have 2 open tickets for this release but both are refactoring tasks, nothing too important. We're already feature complete.

It'll be an awesome release because we have a lot of performance improvements and some really cool features like lazy loading of BLOBs (binary content). The server implementation is now IoT ready and it's pluggable. Support for Lambda expressions with full backwards compatibility for our listener handling. And we have support for application monitoring, style definitions, streamed upload of large files, and much more.

We plan the release for the end of this week.

Our VaadinUI was based on vaadin 7.1.15 and 7.4 was released some days ago. We're happy to announce support for vaadin 7.4.

The repository of JVx' vaadin UI already contains 7.4 libraries and everything is available for you. We don't have an official release right now, because we do some tests and afterwards we'll release a new version of our UI. We don't have a date for you but hopefully in March.

We currently don't use the new Grid component, but we'll replace the current table implementation asap.

The last information is about the next release of VisionX 2.2 preview. It will contain JV' vaadin UI for vaadin 7.4 and some new features like exporting an application for embedded devices (run the application on embedded devices like Raspberry Pi, without application server - "Micro applications").

Oh, finally... Check our github page, because we have new projects for you.

You can build amazing applications with JVx. The framework is full-stack and supports your ALM. It has a flexible architecture, allows RAD, has built-in support for automated testing, deployment is an easy task and CI/CD are well supported.

But what happens with your applications after deployment?

Usually an application works different in production because the runtime environment is different and the amount of data grows. The number of users could be even more than in your test environment. You're well adviced if you check the deployed applications on their health, during the first few weeks or months. But it's not an easy task to check application health because reading log files or checking system parameters is not enough.
It would be best to use an application performance monitoring tool like Appdynamics or VisualVM. But such tools are complex, pro versions aren't cheap and such tools aren't specific for JVx applications.

It's horrible to check application health without a monitoring tool and it doesn't work with large applications. Or it's possible but you need too much time to find the problems.

We tried Appdynamics Lite for JVx applications and were impressed about the features, but shocked about the complexity. It's a dinosaur with millions of options. You should use a dedicated server for the tool and the machine should have extra power. Sure, the tool solves a problem but we won't use it for JVx application monitoring because it doesn't read all available information. It wasn't an option to create adapters for appdynamics because it's too complex and we love keeping things simple!

No worry, we have a simple solution for you!

It's our upcoming Application Monitoring tool. It was designed especially for JVx applications and it supports the whole server-side handling with life-cycle and server objects. The tool is a JVx application and runs with vaadin UI.
It will work with every standard Java application server and hardware requirements are as usual for JVx applications. Sure, some extra memory will be needed because analyzation of application metrics needs more resources.

Some impressions?

Monitoring Dashboard

Monitoring memory

The first image shows the dashboard. It has an overview of general health and some server parameters. It shows memory consumption, concurrent user count and SQL statement statistics. This is one of the most important information about JVx applications because slow statements can slow down your application!

We show the top 10 of the slowest statements and other useful metrics.

The tool allows access to the metadata cache and shows all details about server calls. Here are more impressions for you:

Metadata overview

Call details

The application monitoring tool was designed especially for JVx applications and the server-side implementation of JVx. It's perfect integrated and doesn't slow down your application. It helps you to find the problems before your customers will find them. And it also helps with performance tuning of your application during development or after deployment in production environment.

The tool itself is not open-source and not free to use. It's a commercial addon for your JVx applications. We don't offer a lite version because tools for quality assurance should be paid. If you're interested, feel free to send us an email.

The first preview release of VisionX 2.2 is available. The exact version number is 2.2.41.

It available as trial version or for our customers via download area.

The preview release contains updates of all dependent frameworks like JVx and vaadin UI.

Here's a list with more details:

• Responsive web applications
  

  Window shutter web control

• Browser navigation
• Application styles
• Support for embedded devices
• Style definition with VisionX
  

  Style definition

• New EPlug support
• Custom Database connection strings (e.g. Oracle TNS entry)
  

  Custom connection string

• Live Template support for work-screens
• XLSX reports instead of XLS
• Ready for application monitoring
• UI improvements
• Ready for native Android client

Sure, we fixed some bugs and we also improved overall performance because of improvements in JVx. The most interesting thing is the support for embedded devices like RaspberryPi.

Have fun with VisionX

Today is a great day, because I'm able to write about our latest Research Project.
It has to do with JavaFX and JVx - what else.

If you remember one of my blog postings in 2013, you know that we tried to implement our JVx UI with JavaFX. Long story, short: Not possible with one master thesis.

But... we always try to reach our goals and it's an honor to tell you that we're back on the track.

It's cool because of JavaFX. It's APIs are still not perfect and the overall performance could be better but it has so many awesome things. Two of them are styling via CSS and animations. JavaFX is the official replacement for Swing and it has potential to bring back "write once run anywhere". We don't know if JavaFX will be the holy grail for desktop application development but there's nothing comparable in the Java world.
To be honest, it's not a problem for us because our JVx is (UI) technology independent and if JavaFX won't do it, we'll implement the next UI toolkit for JVx.

... but back to the topic

You should already know that JVx is a Full-stack application framework for building database (ERP) software. It's GUI technology independent and we've different UI implementations. The most important ones are based on Swing and vaadin. We also have native Android and iOS support and our applications run on embedded devices as well. Our applications don't need an application server to work properly because we have a plain socket server as well (IoT ready).

Our preferred Java UI technology was and is still Swing, because it's feature rich and you can build every kind of application without bigger problems. The problem with swing is that it's old and not maintained from Oracle. Sure it will work with future Java releases without bigger problems (hopefully) but you can't use modern development techniques or create fancy and fresh UIs with less effort. A standard Swing application looks boring and cold. Sure, it's possible to pimp a swing application with lots of pictures or nice looking LaFs, but it's not fun.

Swing development is like software development in the stone-age, compared to state-of-the-art web development. If you do web development, you have CSS3 and HTML5 and some nice designed UI frameworks. I won't say that you're faster or that web development is better but it's easier to build nice looking UIs. I'm not a big fan of classical web development because most applications are horrible to maintain, there are soo many different frameworks and you can't be sure that your investment is future-proof because many frameworks don't survive the first year. But everything depends on knowledge and the right framework - for sure.

IMO it's better to use one framework that solves most of application relevant problems - if it exists. If we talk about web applications, I recommend vaadin because it's feature rich, just works, is very polished and is licensed under Apache 2.0. The community is active and great support is available!
Sure, there are some other frameworks like GXT or extJS from Sencha, but the license could be a problem if you build commercial applications. Don't forget RAP, but it's not trivial to start with the whole Eclipse ecosystem.

I'm talking about (enterprise) application development and not about webpage or webservice development. I would recommend pure HTML5 and CSS3 with one or two smaller javascript libs for developing fancy "webpages", or php instead of Java. If Java and "webpages", PrimeFaces is a good decision.

Soo, if Swing is "dead" and web development is hard, what should we use for (enterprise) application development?

If you develop for the desktop, try to start with JavaFX becasue it's maintained and has potential for mobile devices.
If you develop web applications, use vaadin.

And why should you use JVx?

JVx bundles all together in one independent framework (it's still small and easy to learn). You'll be independent of the underlying UI technology. Write your application once and start it with different UI technologies or use it on different devices without problems. Your investment is future-proof. JVx is open source and licensed under Apache 2.0. JVx doesn't hide the underlying technology. It's always possible to use features from the technology if you want. If you use a UI without abstraction, you can't switch to another UI easily without rewriting most parts of the UI. If you start with e.g. JavaFX and if Oracle will abandon JavaFX, will you rewrite the application?

You can compare the concept of JVx with SLF4J, but with a different use-case: (enterprise) application development

And what about JavaFX?

I like JavaFX because of, IMO, 5 great things: scene graph, CSS styling, Animations, Web engine and the community. All other things are important and useful but not essential for real-world applications (vs. Swing). It's not possible to compare Swing with JavaFX because JavaFX was written from scratch and Swing was based on AWT. Sure, both toolkits are UI toolkits but with different concepts.

JavaFX bridges the gap between desktop and web development. It's still a toolkit for desktop applications but with most advantages of web development. It's possible to create fancy applications without headache. There are cool tools like Scene Builder or ScenicView. IDE support is getting better and developing controls is not too hard.

Sounds too good? JavaFX is on the right track and ready for real-world applications.

That was enough for us to start a JavaFX UI for JVx. It's the only framework which allows switching between Swing, Web, JavaFX or native mobile. Sounds unbelievable? Here's is our first video with our JavaFX implementation. It demonstrates the full power of JVx and JavaFX.

The video starts with our good old Swing UI. The same application will be shown as web application in a Chrome browser. And finally it will run as JavaFX application. You should carefully check the JavaFX application because it has an embedded browser that shows the same application, with a different UI technology - at the same time. Don't miss the animations

We have a great new feature in our generic web application. It's now responsive and supports big and small devices like smartphones, without additional coding. Everything will work out-of-the-box.

The application is generic which means that it's an application frame that can be used for you own requirements. We have a simple demo application for our internal tests.

Have a look:

The menu changes the position and size. Also padding and margin are different if there's not enough space.

What a great day for our Android dev team. Our new test devices arrived today.

Nexus 5 with KitKat

Nexus 9 with Lollipop

We're not sure if the dev team is making progress today

The Android Client will be available in Google Play as soon as possible. Currently only the iOS client is available in the App store. The Android client will be available as Preview version and as Pro version, same as the iOS client. The preview client could be used for tests together with VisionX. It will be limited to one screen.

The last official JVx release was in May and last VisionX version was released in July. We think it's time to update both and planned the release of JVx 2.1 and VisionX 2.1 for the end of November. Currently, we are in time and shouldn't have any delays.

There are some open tickets for JVx and VisionX, but the planned features are done. The open tickets are nice to have and favoured from the 2.2' release.

Especially VisionX 2.1 will be an awesome new release because it contains soo many new features. The new solution store, the styling of mobile and web applications, the new GUI designer, PDF reporting, IDE integration, subscription based licensing and many more. The release will be the first with full Oracle Forms migration support. It has all known features of Oracle Forms like Repeating Frames, Focus order, Popup Menu configuration.

The release will contain solutions for over 200 tickets.

And what's in JVx 2.1?

We've some cool changes, e.g. great support for automatic tests (unique component names), reduced metadata caching, JNDI support for configuration files, Replacement and StrictIsolation annotations, REST refactoring and many more.

Stay tuned

The upcoming release of VisionX will support PDF report creation. We didn't re-invent the wheel and used our existing reporting engine with our templating mechanism. You'll simply create a word or excel template as usual and the result will be a PDF file.

The new PDF options

PDF reports

Our solution is based on toPDF and we recommend the commercial SDK, but it's also possible to integrate an OpenSource alternative or your own product. We'll help you if you need support!

We think that an end-user should create reports with word and excel instead of custom reporting tools. Of course, a developer will love it
Don't waste time anymore!.

The big advantage of our solution is that the reports will look exactly as designed and you won't use new tools to create pixel perfect reports.

We have a nice looking Reporting application in our solution store. It's a standard JVx application with a styled table.

But it's not a table demo! It demonstrates report creation for offline data manipulation. Simply create Excel sheets for your contacts, change the contact offline and update the online record with a simple upload. The Excel file has choice fields and allows same features as the online form.

Here it is

Reporting demo

of course, it's free

Simply open the solution store and install the application