At the moment I’m working on a prototype for another java application and got used to the new java 1.5 features like generics and the new for each loops. The generics are definately the way to go for typesafe collections and I’ll try to use them from here on out. I found the wildcard <? extends> and some other constructions confusing at first but I do understand that there are several restrictions (german link) when using generics. Someone should publish some design patterns for typical cases that require generics.

For that project I also experimented with BeanShell which is basically a java scripting interpreter. I’ll probably use it for custom formulas which are evaluated dynamically within the java application. Easy to use and powerful.

The next component I’ll look into is EJB3 persistence using Hibernate. I have worked with the hibernate tools and reverse enginered some database tables but since I already have the POJO classes and don’t want to create all the old hibernate xml mapping files I might as well check out how to create EJB3 persistence by using annotations. More on that soon.