Enterprise build system, Gradle Inc. and repository specialist JFrog have formed a collaborative relationship to work toward a series of offerings that the companies say will enhance user productivity. The companies will begin packaging JFrogs repository manager, Artifactory and Gradle together as a more complete build offering.

Web services testing software vendor eviware has released soapUI 3.5, which now supports the testing of JMS, AMF and databases. Free and open-source, soapUI is a desktop application used in inspecting, invoking, developing, simulating and testing Web services. The interface is designed to feel like the IDEs that are already familiar to developers.

Did you miss our Application Performance Management virtual seminar in February? In these expert presentations discover the best techniques for perfecting performance builds and for finding, diagnosing and fixing performance bugs. Gain instant access to the latest tools for mastering performance management across the lifecycle.

Five articles on classloaders, objects, classes, redeploying, OSGi, Tapestry 5, HotSwap, JRebel and other aspects of Java class reloading and turnaround.

Are you tired of turning every non-trivial class into an interface, and then create an "Impl" that actually does the work when mocking objects for testing? Do you know about JMock's ClassImposterizer? It allows you to mock instances without calling the constructor of the mocked class, ultimately helping you write and test your code faster.

Free your apps from the bugs and headaches of Java NIO. XNIO offers NIO capability but in a hassle-free manner and vastly simplifies the opening of channels with support for SSL and virtual channels within the same API. Learn more about this open source project from JBoss and how to integrate it into your applications.

JSR-310 the Date and Time API inspired by Joda-Time, has entered Early Draft Review. Feedback is wanted!

Middleware vendor WSO2 recently released Cloud Identity, which the company said eliminates the need for internal software, dedicated hardware, and systems administrators in identity management. Instead, WSO2 provides enterprise identity management as a pay-as-you-go, hosted service that scales.

TechTarget has been working on a project to redesign TheServerSide.com. Updates to the site will be noticeable in the near future.

NoSQL describes several database technologies for which the data stores don't need a fixed schema and often avoid join operations. Brian Aker gives a lightning talk (7 minutes) about NoSQL during the Nov 2009 OpenSQLCamp in Portland, Oregon.

In February, IBM announced the open beta of WebSphere Application Server feature packs for OSGi and JPA. The feature packs are product extensions that provide lightweight application frameworks for WebSphere V7.

One common comment we hear when talking about JRebel is that class updates should be implemented in the standard JVM. However the support for full schema change HotSwap would be in the next version of the JVM, JRebel would still be a worthwhile investment. Why?

Centralized application logging server, logFaces reached its version 2.5 release this month. This release brings with it notification triggers, an asynchronous appender with a failover mechanism, and user interface enhancements for filters, drills and queries.

Zappos recently talked about their best practices of delivering WOW Performance to their customers. Zappos re-architected their web-site and went from Perl to Enterprise Java as the need to scale and perform was driven by explosive business growth and performance problems in their old architecture.

Adam Bien says Jigsaw should increase the classloading performance and reduce the size of jars.

A new version of jbi4corba has been release with better mapping for aliased types.

Primary goal of this release was fixing compatibility issues between several versions of Eclipse, The Grinder and PyDev. Secondary goal was to add compatibility with recently release Jython 2.5.0 and 2.5.1.

Dave, a Java developer, writes: <i>I recently celebrated my 40th birthday. A friend joked, "Hey, guess that means you're too old to program anymore!" I laughed, but it gave me pause. COBOL guys faced this problem years ago as Java guys were ascending the ranks.</i> Is our turn coming up? Dave dispels 5 negative myths about older developers.

Multiverse is an Open Source Software Transactional Memory implementation for the Java platform that has been under development for the last 18 months. Multiverse integrates with the Java language based on annotations and bytecode instrumentation.

NT/e Ltd has announced CloudTran, a middleware product that brings the Cloud into the mainstream as an application platform for Java. CloudTran provides a simple Java view of data, mission-critical transactions and automatic distribution in the Cloud.