This article deals about various factors when creating and null assigning the objects in Java. More info

Back in the 90s I was on a big project to standardize enterprise software. We wrote a few papers about it, and a chapter in a book. We often used the 'Henry Ford' analogy, which relates to the impact standards for interchangable parts had on hard goods manufacturing. The Henry Ford analogy says that the hard job in mass assembly is getting the interchangeable parts standardized - thereafter creating the moving assembly line is the easy job. More info

OpenEJB has been around for seven years and is one of the few standalone and embeddable EJB containers. Useful mainly for unit testing EJB beans (embedding the containers in unit tests), OpenEJB is also available as a Tomcat plug-in. Which means you can call EJB beans from your Web application's servlets. This fact alone opens up new possibilities for migrating current Web applications to JEE 5 in addition to facilitating development and testing using the popular Apache Tomcat server instead of a full JEE application server, even if you eventually deploy to a dedicated JEE application server. More info

Canonical, the Ubuntu people, is going to start selling support contracts for IBM's freebie DB2 Express-C database. It's the first time Ubuntu users will be able to buy an annual subscription service directly from the company. It's also going to offer the thing as a virtual appliance running on VMware. The $3,750-a-year subscription covers both IBM and Canonical support as well as clustering, data replication and higher resource limits for greater scalability. More info

Nuesoft Technologies announced its Authorized Agent Program, a new initiative to qualify resellers, agents, consultants, and other professionals who work with medical offices to distribute its NueMD medical practice management systems. The program aims to maximize sales opportunities for motivated Agents while increasing sales channels to offer more convenience and options for customers. More info

Kevin Nilson, the leader of the Silicon Valley Web Developer JUG, relayed to me the idea of creating an application in JavaFX Script that consists of a wheel that has the names of JUG attendees on it. The wheel would revolve and land on a name, who would then receive a prize. Today's post is a first cut at this, which also demonstrates several compiled JavaFX Script features. More info

If you're looking to add Ajax functionality to your JSF applications, the AjaxComponent strategy provides the simplicity of a component and the power of a phase listener. More info

In this episode we talk about the Center for Mobile Education research and feature the introductory presentation by Terrence Barr and Roger Brinkley at last month's Mobile and Embedded Developer Days. More info

Three top-notch open source Java application servers compared based on features, deployment, and performance. More info

Velocity is the leading open source template engine used by Java developers, but FreeMarker comes in a close second. Find out which one wins the race, based on factors of power, ease of use, and performance. More info