I haven’t tried this yet, as on my current project we are deeply emmersed in Jasper Reports, but this will be interesting to take a look at.

Eclipse BIRT 2.0 Release

While I’ve been working in Java for the past 7 - 8 years, I definitely do not label myself as a Java -loyalist. I’m an Internet Application loyalist, and I want to do whatever it takes to get the apps done right and done fast. I agree with Andreessen’s statement that Java’s complexity has grown by leaps and bounds. The learning curve has become too steep, and many IT departments are finding it difficult to train an employee in all the technologies needed to go in and make a simple change to a module on their web site. When you have to know Spring, Hibernate, Struts, Tiles, SQL/RDBMS, and make edits within all these technologies in order to add one field per the client, it becomes utterly ridiculous.

It may be fun for us developers, and we love all the separation of the various layers of the application, but it’s no good for the client, and that’s who pays us. So we as Architects, Analysts, Designers, and Developers better come up with something that provides for much faster turnaround time.

If you haven’t yet read about Groovy, here is an article on Sun’s web site about it. I like the idea, as you should probably have guessed from my complaints about Java. Just looking at some of the examples reminds me of the fun years I had developing simple things in Perl. No, this won’t replace Java development in general, but it could be used for some very simple applications, from Unix scripts to simple web sites.