HTTP/2: A jump-start for Java developers

HTTP/2 was approved in February 2015 as the successor to the original web communication protocol. While it is in the last stages of finalization, the standard has already been implemented by early adopters such as Jetty and Netty, and will be incorporated into Servlet 4.0. Find out how HTTP/2 renovates HTTP's text-based protocol for better latency, then see techniques like server push, streaming, multiplexing, and header compression implemented in a client-server example using Jetty.

High-speed browser networking

In the early days of the World Wide Web, Internet connection bandwidth was the most important limiting factor for a faster browsing experience. That has changed in the years since, and these days many consumers use broadband technologies for Internet access. As of 2014, Akamai's State of the Internet report showed that the average connection speed for customers in the United States exceeded 11 Mbit/s.
As Internet connection speeds have increased, the importance of latency to web application performance has become more apparent. When the web was new, the delay in sending a request and waiting for a response was much less than the total time to download all of the response data, but today that is no longer the case. "High bandwidth equals high speed" is no longer a valid maxim, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the importance of bandwidth. For use cases that require bulk data transfer such as video streaming or large downloads, bandwidth is still a roadblock. In contrast to web pages, these types of content use long-running connections, which stream a constant flow of data. Such use cases are bandwidth bound in general.

Read the entire article here: http://www.javaworld.com/article/2916548/java-web-development/http-2-for-java-developers.html

Internet Explorer. What's next for IE?

Microsoft still isn't talking specifics in terms of what it plans to deliver as part of the next version of Internet Explorer, IE 8.0. But at the Mix '07 conference in Las Vegas, Chris Wilson, platform architect of Internet Explorer, did share some general directions the team is taking with its next release.

In his "IE Past Present and Future" talk on May 1, Wilson told the standing-room-only audience that he wasn't going to show an IE 8.0 feature list, as he "wasn't allowed to."

However, Wilson did tell attendees that Microsoft is planning to require Web site authors to "opt-in" to standards mode when developing IE 8.0 sites.

"Five years ago, no one in the top 200 Web sites was using standards," Wilson said. "Today it is half of the top 200 Web pages."

Wilson acknowledged that he wasn't sure exactly what form this kind of opt-in would take. But asking authors to opt in will "give us freedom to do some great things," he said. By giving Microsoft permission to make IE 8.0 more standards-complaint, authors will take responsibility for breaking pages.

Wilson said to expect Microsoft to be investing across layout, object model and Ajax development fronts in IE 8.0. Specificially, Wilson said Microsoft is investing in making IE 8.0 more compliant with CSS 2.1 layout standards. Microsoft also is working to make the IE 8.0 object model more interoperable with that used by other browsers, and is looking to provide more client-side application programming interfaces (APIs) to support local storage for mash-ups, Wilson said.

Microsoft is planning to make tweaks to IE that will allow developers to more easily add extensions to its browser, Wilson said. He said Microsoft acknowledged that extensions are powerful but potentially "scary."

He also said to expect Microsoft to continue to invest heavily in advancing its Web development toolbar with the next version of IE.

Wilson reiterated that Microsoft continues to see security as its No. 1 challenge with IE 8.0.

Wilson also noted that Microsoft isn't planning to wait another five years to release its next version of IE (as it did when the company waited five years between IE 6 and IE 7). Last year Microsoft officials said they expected to be able to release new versions of IE every 12 to 18 months, but Wilson said an every-two-year schedule was looking more likely.

Wilson said that a number of people have suggested Microsoft release new versions of IE in service packs or as part of the company's monthly security updates, but that Microsoft has ruled that out, as it would make IE too much of a "moving target."

If Microsoft holds to that schedule, IE 8.0 should ship some time in 2008. In January 2007, Microsoft began gathering feedback from developers on what kinds of features and functionality they'd like to see in IE in the future.

Wilson spent most of his talk focusing on the compatibility vs. standards-compliance connundrum which Microsoft has wrestling with its current and future IE releases. With a half-billion IE users out there, Microsoft takes its responsibility seriously to not break sites without solid reasons, Wilson told attendees.

Any feedback for the IE team as it moves forward with its next release?

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MySQL tutorial - Managing database

Creating Database

To create a database in MySQL, you use the CREATE DATABASE statement as follows:

CREATE DATABASE [IF NOT EXISTS] database_name;

CREATE DATABASE statement will create the database with the given name you specified. IF NOT EXISTS is an option part of the statement, this part prevents you from error if there is a database with the given name exists on the database server. In our tutorial, for example, to create classicmodels database, you just only apply CREATE DATABASE statement above as follows:

CREATE DATABASE classicmodels;

After executing the statement, the MySQL will returns you a message to indicate whether the execution are successful or not.

Showing Databases

SHOW DATABASE statement will show all databases in your database server. You can use SHOW DATABASE statement  to check the database you've created or to see all the databases' name on the database server before you create a new database.

SHOW DATABASES;

On my database server, the output is :

+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| classicmodels      |
| mysql              |
+--------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Selecting Database

To select a database which you plan to work with, you use USE statement

USE database_name;

You can select our sample database by using the USE statement as follows:

USE classicmodels;

From now you can query the tables' data and do whatever you want inside the selected database.

Removing Database

Removing database means you delete the database. All the data and related objects inside the database are permanently deleted and cannot be undone. So it is very important to execute this query with cares. To remove the database you can use DROP DATABASE statement as follows :

DROP DATABASE [IF EXISTS] database_name;

Like CREATE DATABASE statement, IF EXIST part is an optional part to prevents you from removing database which is not existed. In order to practice with DROP DATABASEstatement, you can create a temporary database, show the database on the database server, and drop it step by step as follows :

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS temp_database;
SHOW DATABASES;
DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS temp_database;