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Painless Participation
Jason Jackson
December 6, 2004
Recently, there's been a tremendous amount of chatter regarding BEA and its involvement in open source projects, namely Apache Beehive. At the time I'm writing this, a contributor to Beehive named Hoi Lam just submitted a database control for Beehive that he's been working on. There's little doubt that the Beehive community is starting to truly thrive.
Still, judging by the e-mails I receive every day, it turns out there are a number of people who would like to get involved in Beehive but don't know how. Fortunately, getting in touch with your inner hive is easy and painless, and it requires no special equipment, fancy uniforms, or ninja training.
"We welcome involvement at every level," said Ken Tam, one of BEA's contributors to Apache Beehive. "If you tell us a bit about your background and what parts of Beehive you're particularly interested in, we might be able to provide some suggestions as to areas of contribution."
To get involved in Apache Beehive, simply visit http://incubator.apache.org/beehive/, and send an e-mail to the Beehive developers' mailing list describing your personal areas of expertise and asking how you can best get involved. Your contributions are not only welcome, but are vital to the overall success of the project.
Ninjas, of course, are especially welcome.
Pollination
Pardon the pun, but the persistent buzz over Beehive makes it easy to overlook Pollinate—another project that's kicking around the community right now. The goal of Pollinate is to build an IDE and toolset based on Eclipse 3.0 that leverages the open source, Apache Beehive application framework. WebLogic Workshop 8.1 (WLW) serves as a rough guide as to what Pollinate hopes to achieve; although, none of the WLW implementation (except what is present in Beehive) will be used in implementing Pollinate.
Pollinate plans to provide a full-featured Java development environment that enables developers to visually build and assemble enterprise-scale Web applications, JSPs, and Web services while leveraging the Java controls framework for creating and consuming J2EE components optimized for a service-oriented architecture. The plan is to accomplish this by creating a broad set of Eclipse plug-ins and user-interface components for building projects on top of the Apache Beehive framework.
Better still, the mere existence of Pollinate might mean the end to really silly bee-oriented references. We've managed to use up Beehive and Pollinate; there can't be too many others, right?
You can learn more about the Pollinate project at http://www.eclipse.org/pollinate/. From there you can also sign up on the Pollinate mailing list and access their newsgroup.
What About Aunt Bee?
In last issue's edition of "Logically Speaking," I asked the readers of WebLogic Pro to help me come up with Web service examples that elderly noncomputer users could understand. The occasion was my family reunion, where two-dozen people who only knew of me from baby pictures were bound to ask me what my job—and what BEA—is all about.
Apparently, this area is something with which many of you have experience. Many responses came in, and I was able to use a couple of them to get out of long, painful conversations with people who still think that "you've got mail" voice is the absolute peak of computing power.
Yes, I come from a family of Luddites. Don't judge me.
Anyway, suggestions rolled in explaining different ways of explaining Web services to more oblivious audiences, including one that borrowed liberally from the plot of an episode of Matlock, or so I'm told. That suggestion was both creative and hilarious, but the person who sent it in must have actually watched an episode of Matlock at some point in his life.
Your secret is out, Mr. Ted Wong of Farmington Hills, Michigan. It's now known that you're a closet Andy Griffith fan.
About the Author
Jason Jackson is editor of dev2dev. Contact Jason at jjackson@bea.com.
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