In Relation To

The Web Beans (JSR-299) specification is now available for public review.

The Seam distribution includes a tool named seam-gen to help you get started quickly using Seam. The tool collects information from you about your project and then uses that information to create a project structure. It can also generate a CRUD application by reverse engineering your database schema and generate various forms of stub code. In this entry, you'll learn how to get the generated project setup in Eclipse so that you can leverage the available tooling.

Kito Mann, editor of JSF Central, recorded a podcast with me a couple of weeks back. We deleved deep into the features of Seam 2.1, but also talked about the Public Review Draft of Web Beans (keep an eye on Gavin's blog for updates) and JSF2.

The 2.1 GA release was just a week ago, but a few minor issues slipped through the cracks, mostly around seam-gen. We've put together an SP1 release to address the problems. If you are using 2.1 already, I'd recommend grabbing 2.1 even if you aren't experiencing any of the issues.

As you've probably noticed, we've been busy over the last month preparing the Seam 2.1.0 release - and I'm pleased to say that it's here at last! Some of the highlights from Seam 2.1.0 include an identity management framework with ACL style permissions, an Excel reporting module, an embellished and more flexible seam-gen, first class support for Wicket, built-in support for URL rewriting and a technology preview of JAX-RS (REST) support through the RESTeasy project.

Along with Seam 2.1 comes a handful of enhancements to seam-gen. These changes are a culmination of the mods I made to the seam-gen project that forms the basis of the sample code for Seam in Action. Perhaps after reading this entry, you'll conclude that the enhancements go well beyond modest.

This is the second part in my short series on using Wicket with Seam.

Out of the box, seam-gen copies all the dependencies of Seam (and then some) into the lib directory of the generated project. The JAR files in that directory are then placed on the project's build path. While this approach gets you up and running quickly, it's probably not the best long-term strategy. It's difficult to determine which libraries your project actually depends on and which versions of those libraries are present. What you need is some sort of formal dependency management.

That's right, we've just posted Seam 2.1.0.CR1.

Seam 2.1.0.BETA1 brought Wicket support to Seam, but how do you use this support?