Using Groovy Closures Instead of Template Method

A good software developer always keeps the DRY principle in mind. Whenever code is duplicated, maintainability problems are introduced and the code base becomes difficult to understand. Java developers often rely on the template method pattern to reuse code. Groovy's closure programming concept is an alternative way to solve similar problems. Closures provide a concise way to pass around code without the ceremony involved with design patterns. This article by Nirav Assar will demonstrate how closures are used to embrace the DRY principle.

Using Flowplayer in Plone 3

This article series by Tom Gross, author of Plone 3 Multimedia, explains how to add audio content to Plone and enhance its features with Plone4Artists products. It also shows how to include audio data in HTML with plugins and Flash.

There are at least four use cases when we think of integrating audio in a web application:

1. We want to provide an audio database with static files for download.
2. We have audio that we want to have streamed to the Internet (for example, as a podcast).
3. We want a audio file/live show streamed to the Internet as an Internet radio service.
4. We want some sound to be played when the site is loaded or shown.

In this article we will discuss three of the four cases. The streaming support is limited to use case 2. We can stream to one client like a podcast does, but not to many clients at once like an Internet Radio does. We need special software such as Icecast or SHOUTcast for this purpose. Further, we will investigate how we solve use cases 1, 2, and 3 with the Plone CMS and extensions. Technically, these are the topics covered in this article:

• Manipulation of audio content stored as File content in Plone
• The different formats used for the binary storage of audio data
• Storing and accessing MP3 audio metadata with the ID3 tag format
• Managing metadata, formats, and playlists with p4a.ploneaudio in Plone
• Including a custom embedded audio player in Plone
• Using the Flowplayer product to include an audio player standalone in rich text and as a portlet
• Previewing the audio element of HTML5
• Extracting metadata from a FLAC file using mutagen

Using Debug Perspective – setting breakpoints

The article, Using Debug Perspective, will guide you through the ways of setting up breakpoints and navigate through the code using various breakpoint manipulation options. This article by Anatoly Spektor, author of Instant Eclipse Application Testing How-to, will guide you to learn what breakpoints are and how to use them. After reading this article, you will be able to effectively debug Java applications of any scope. Fortunately, any prior knowledge of Eclipse is not required; thus it is suitable for developers with any level of experience in Eclipse application development and testing.

Using Content Type Effectively with Plone Intranet

Building a successful intranet is not an easy job. When we are asked to build an intranet there is always an implicit requirement that doesn't show in any requirement list. This requirement is easy in concept, but hard to achieve: the intranet must be a success in terms of usability and use. The last thing we will want is that it ends up being one of those web services that people barely use. In this article, by Víctor Fernández de Alba, author of Plone 3 Intranets, we will cover the key factors for the success of an intranet and the effective use of the content types.

We will cover the following topics:

• Navigation and taxonomy
• Collections
• Table of contents
• Next/previous folder
• Presentation mode
• Best practices for third-party content types

We can make building an intranet an easy task if we want to do so. As we already know, a content type is not only an information container; it also defines the way the information is shown to the consumer via the content view. We will learn to use the right content type and its right view for the right job. Another crucial factor is to extend wisely our default content type set via third-party add-on products. We will learn how to choose and use them correctly.

Using Business Rules to Define Decision Points in Oracle SOA Suite: Part 2

In the previous part of the article we looked at how we can use the Oracle Business Rules engine to implement business rules, and how we can invoke these from within BPEL as a decision service.

In this part by Matt Wright, we will have a look at how to create a Decision Service.

Using Business Rules to Define Decision Points in Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1- An Introduction

In this article by Antony Reynolds and Matt Wright, authors of Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 Developer's Guide, we will discuss the new Rules Editor in 11gR1, including Decision Tables and how we can incorporate rules as decision points within a BPEL Process.

Using Asterisk as a PSTN Gateway for OpenSER

PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is the collection of all the telephone networks, which are interconnected in the world. If we want to be able to route calls from and to the PSTN using OpenSER, we need to be connected to a PSTN. To send calls to the PSTN, we need a device called PSTN gateway. There are several manufacturers such as Cisco, Nortel, and others who manufacture this kind of equipment. You can also use an Asterisk PBX box for this task. Asterisk makes an affordable PSTN gateway that is very competitive with the big players mentioned above. In this article by Flavio E. Goncalves, we will see how to use asterisk as a PSTN gateway for OpenSER.

Using ASP.NET Controls in SharePoint

As SharePoint and the underlying .NET Framework developed over the years, more readymade controls have become available for us to use in our applications. Such controls allow us to drop common, and often complex, features into our site. For example, if we would like to add user registration and login features (often referred to as personalization and membership) to our site, it is a chore to build everything we require (registration form with validation, login box, password reminder, change password, etc.) each time we build a site. Microsoft has built these controls for us so that we can easily add them to our site. In this article by Mike Poole, we will examine the use of these controls.

Very occasionally, we find that we are not able to do what we would like to do with the SharePoint configuration that comes "out of the box". A common example of this is using forms authentication in our site. Later on in the article, we will also make some configuration changes to SharePoint and associated products, such as Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server, and Visual Studio, to demonstrate how forms authentication can be enabled.

Using An Object Oriented Approach for Implementing PHP Classes to Interact with Oracle

This article by Yuli Vasiliev examines the object-oriented approach for developing PHP/Oracle applications, as an efficient means to reduce the development time and complexity, and increase the maintainability and flexibility of your applications.

In the following sections, you will learn how to create a simple PHP class to interact with Oracle and then how that class can be modified and reused in different scripts.