SD Times Issue 238 by BZ Media

Author:BZ Media
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SD Times;
Published: 2010-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

SYSTEMS

www.sdtimes.com

Software Development Times . January 15, 2010

NEWS

21

An opening for closures in OpenJDK

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ed and immutable.

"Leveraging multiple cores requires writing scalable parallel programs, which is incredibly hard," he said. "Tools such as fork/join frameworks based on work-stealing algorithms make the task easier, but it still takes a fair bit of expertise and tuning. Bulk-data APIs such as parallel arrays allow computations to be expressed in terms of higher-level, SQL-like operations (e.g., filter, map, and reduce), which can be mapped automatically onto the fork-join paradigm.

"Working with parallel arrays in Java, unfortunately, requires lots of boilerplate code to solve

even simple problems. Closures can eliminate that boilerplate."

Gilad Bracha, Neal Gafter, James Gosling and Peter von der Ahe have already coau-thored a draft proposal for closures in Java, and a healthy debate has taken place on both that blog and around the OpenJDK community.

ELSEWHERE IN OPENJDK

All this extra time in the OpenJDK development schedule means that many other projects will have time to expand their implementations before release. Many of these efforts are attempts to address longtime concerns from users over Java.

Project Coin, for example, is an effort to find and make small language changes to Java, though the discussion around this project of late has focused on the actual semantics of a closure implementation. But other ideas have been proposed under Project Coin, such as Joseph Darcy s addition of strings in switch.

The Da Vinci Machine Project, on the other hand, is an effort to add first-class language support to the JVM. JRuby and Jython already allow Ruby and Python code to run in a JVM, but the Da Vinci Machine Project seeks to add specific modifications to the JVM to make other languages run on the JVM at

the same speeds as Java itself.

Project Jigsaw, meanwhile, might not be completed in time for OpenJDK 7. This effort, based on JSR 294, seeks to modularize Java, with the goal of allowing portions of Java to be used without needing an entire Java stack. It would also make it easier to build new modules and functionalities for Java as a platform. The project has been in the works for over three years now, and an alpha-quality binary of a modular Java component is available only for Ubuntu Linux.

The alpha-quality Java packages install Java components for use on the base JDK, AWT and Swing. I

Telerik engine automates Ul testing for Silverlight

BY DAVID WORTHINGTON

Telerik, a component maker, has expanded its WebUI Test Studio to provide automated user interface testing for Silverlight.

WebUI Test Studio 2, released in December, is the result of collaboration between Telerik and quality assurance software developer ArtOfTest.

The testing software, which costs US$2,499 per machine, offers the same product features for Silverlight as it previously did for ASP.NET AJAX, said Todd Anglin, Telerik s chief evangelist.

A UI object model allows QA professionals to target a

specific element in Silverlight, Anglin said. A 3D elements viewer provides a "fly-out element selector," he added. "It is easy to peel back the layers in a codeless, visual way.

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