November 01, 2004

Jakarta Project

I'm doing some research at work today. I've started by trying to get a feel for what the Apache Jakarta Project has available in the space.

The Jakarta Project seems to have a hard time describing their products without resorting to marketing language and buzzwords. Take, for example, HiveMind:

HiveMind is a services and configuration microkernel:

  • Services: HiveMind services are POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) that can be easily accessed and combined. Each service defines a Java interface it implements. HiveMind takes care of instantiating and configuring each service just as necessary. HiveMind lets services collaborate with each other via dependency injection.

[...]

Much of the terminology is so generic that the projects blend together in my mind. There are too many frameworks, too many general-purpose engines. If you want developers to use your products, you must provide specific information on them. "A general-purpose blah blah blah XML blah blah blah framework" is NOT helpful.

I apologize for picking on the Jakarta Project and its products (I'm NOT picking on its members; please don't take this personally), but this is VERY frustrating. I'm sure there's a lot of great technology available from the Jakarta Project, but I sure can't find it.

Posted by dwc in Programming at 03:05 PM