“We’d like to thank our very active community. User requests have been the driving element for us. With professional support, open source software today is the safe choice not only for developers, but also the enterprise.” —Ben Wang, Core Developer, JBoss

My first article for Software Development, in 1995, described mapping objects to relational databases. Object/ relational (O/R) mapping was considered almost heresy at the time—even though everyone was doing it, few wanted to admit it. Fast forward to 2004: Not only is O/R mapping the norm, we also have a plethora of available tools. One that has arguably had the greatest impact is Hibernate, an open-source software persistence framework.

Hibernate is a powerful O/R mapping framework and query service for Java that enables basic create-read-update-delete (CRUD) persistence of Java objects, as well as sophisticated features such as persistence of associations, inheritance hierarchies and Java collections. It also implements the Hibernate Query Language, an object-oriented extension to SQL, simplifying complex database querying.

Hibernate helped to make O/R mapping a “must-have skill” (not heresy) for every business application developer.

—Scott W. Ambler

JClass ServerViews 4.0
Quest Software

Irvine, Calif.-based Quest Software’s JClass Server Views is a suite of Java charting components that runs on the J2EE server, rather than on the client. In the olden days of three-tier computing, the client handled the presentation layer. However, since the advent of Web servers and Java application servers, client-facing pages have been created on the server, yet the necessary components for advanced graphing and charting have been absent from the server toolset. Quest provides an elegant solution with Server Views, which leverages JSP and servlet technology to deliver graphic representations of data that can be updated in real time. The charts and graphs can be sent to clients as Flash files or PDF documents, and for those who wish to access these capabilities without writing any code, intuitive, drag-and-drop style-design tools for charts and graphs are included. Quest delivers a complete solution.

—Andrew Binstock

JViews 5.5
Ilog

JViews 5.5 promises to build better GUIs in less time—and it does. JViews is a set of Java components for building advanced graphical displays—including asset management maps overlaid with data-aware graphics; process and workflow diagrams; real-time performance analysis displays with charts; customized editing and modeling tools; “logical views” of telecom, transportation and utility networks; and interactive Gantt charts for scheduling and planning; as well as dashboards and enterprise portals. Gentilly, France–headquartered Ilog goes beyond HTML and Swing components—JViews is a GUI library with prebuilt components as well as an API that allows for customization.
You now have no reason for producing bland GUIs—get ready for snazzy, sophisticated graphical displays that will astound your customers.

—Sue Spielman

Prevayler 1.02.002
Klaus Wuestefeld—Open source

Are you still using a relational database to store your business objects? Would a free, open-source software product that runs 9,000 times faster than Oracle through JDBC and 3,000 times faster than MySQL through JDBC be of interest to you? If so, you should take a look at Prevayler, because it enables you to work with your objects simply as objects. Java developers no longer need to map their objects into a relational database, nor marshal the objects back and forth between the two technologies. Furthermore, they no longer need to license, install and then maintain database servers; nor do they need to go hat-in-hand to database administrators for help. This sounds fairly jolting to me.

— Scott W. Ambler