Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Sanjiv is back with SmartGWT


The God of GWT wrapper is back. Sanjiv is going to wrap another 3rd party UI library which is SmartClient. This time the SmartClient is more rich than Ext Js. But i felt slow when browsing through the showcase. It is still the problem of GWT. Or it because of wrapper wich does not take advantage of GWT javascript optimisation in compilation. Here is the showcare.

After the Issue happened in GwtExt, the first thing we need to see is the licensing issue. SmartGWT and the underlying SmartClient library are LGPL, free for use inside commercial, closed source applications without payment of any kind. Sound ok. Hope he found the right way to go this time.
SmartClient does provide web visual builder also. It sound really comprehensive. Here is the video to showoff.



Some of the points and question coming out in my mind...

1)Is GwtExt going to end soon?
2)It is just the wrapper like GwtExt. It does not fully use the power of GWT like javascript optimisation and more...
3)Can Sanjiv be trusted this time?
If you are just the simple user. you should use SmartClient. If you are professional technology java guy. you should not consider this because you learn nothing. I still will choose ExtGwt. It is because it build up from native google api. We can learn the code from there and change the code if anything happen which you can't do anything with GwtExt and this SmartGWT.

Comparison of Jasper and Birt

There are 2 famous Java Reporting tools which are Jasper( free ) / Jasper server and Birt( free ) from Eclipse/Birt Exchange from Actuate. You can consider the following points when selecting the java reporting for your project.

Drawback of Birt
1) Jasper ui is pixel base so you can get exactly what you see what you get but Birt is not. Issue in receipt printing for those location and allignment is fixed.
2) Eclipse designer problem. You have to erase the whole filter and add again. The changes will not be reflected if you just modify from there.
3) Output is different in Eclipse designer and real deployment when play with complex subreport.
4) White space between row.

Drawback of Jasper
1) The subreport has to use whole row in main report but Birt not neccessary. Not really consider drawback of jasper because subreport is not really useful because of the performance issue.
2) File size is big for embedding to your project because of the wizard and view page (i think).

Advantage of Birt
1) Provide Wizard to create input screen in ajax.
2) View reporting page is provided so programmer no need to code the output screen. But have to do the security part.

Conclusion
Jasper is the winner because it will not create many issue like Birt for programmer.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Google Docreader : Change root label of tree



At the beginning, the label is follow your project name which can not contain any space. Thus, it can not be meaningfull name for your document description.
After i google arround the world, secret behind is you need to create a wiki page in your google project hosting named DisplayName.