A new version of dotCMS, an open-source J2EE enterprise class web content management system, was released this week. dotCMS 1.5 incorporates web content management with CRM, eCommunication tools and ecommerce.

New features introduced in dotCMS 1.5 include:

• Content "Triggers" using JBoss Rules to allow rule based user segmentation by usage.
• Business Intelligence Reports - Integrated with Jasper Reports and iReports allow detailed and customized reporting on site usage, transactions and content activity.
• Improvements to User Search Segmentation, Permissions and Management.
• Revamped Campaign/Communication Manager.

IBM expects that the tools will help its customers integrate Windows SharePoint Services, Office document libraries, SQL Server Reports and .Net applications into IBM's WebSphere Portal Server without the need for Java developers, the two companies said."

Complete Story at ComputerWorld

Coach Wei, Java developer, asks the following question on his blog.

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java?

At work we're actually moving many of our in-house desktop applications from Python to Java. I wouldn't be too surprised to see us migrate more PHP Web applications over to Java too for some of the reasons Wei gives in his blog post. But I have a theory as to why PHP and Ruby could be considered "cool" and it has less to do with Java's features and more to do with the culture of open source.

"Web 2.0 applications developed using standard Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE)-based approaches face serious performance and scalability problems. The reason is that many principles that underlie the Java EE platform's design — especially, the use of synchronous APIs — don't apply to the requirements of Web 2.0 solutions. This article explains the disparity between the Java EE and Web 2.0 approaches, explores the benefits of asynchronous designs, and evaluates some solutions for developing asynchronous Web applications with the Java platform."

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• Content "Triggers" using JBoss Rules to allow rule based user segmentation by usage.
• Business Intelligence Reports - Integrated with Jasper Reports and iReports allow detailed and customized reporting on site usage, transactions and content activity.
• Improvements to User Search Segmentation, Permissions and Management.
• Revamped Campaign/Communication Manager.
• Web based communications can delivered to a segment of site visitors as a campaign.
• Updated User Interface.
• Taxonomy (Tagging) Improvements
• Quartz based job scheduler.

"Sun Microsystems has announced the availability of Java Platform Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6).

This new version of Sun's Java platform is "an exciting release for us because it's our first community release," said Jean Elliott, director of Developer Marketing at Sun."

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"Few were surprised when Sun Microsystems finally opted to publish the code to its widely used programming language, Java. Sun executives had dropped hints for months that they would make Java freely open to developers, who in turn would be able to tailor and improve the code, used for creating Web-based programs for use on all manner of computer hardware.

What caught some off guard, however, was how Sun (SUNW) would do it. Specifically, Java will be freely available under what's called the general public license (GPL), which also governs the distribution of the Linux open-source operating system."

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"How can something like this be so popular he asks? Yet, the software is successful by definition. Nobody downloads unsuccessful open source applications. The technocrat, heavily invested in his own technical prowess [Java, C], faced with successful yet technically inferior code experiences cognitive dissonance. The only thing to do is to belittle the successful, but surely offensive code. 'I could write better code than this,' he says, or 'this code sucks,' or 'this is unmaintainable.' "

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The vendor intends to make both Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME) freely available in "the November time frame," Peder Ulander, vice president of software marketing at Sun, said in an interview Tuesday."

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