Dear Google,

since I did not find a better play to post this idea, I just did it right here ;-)

For openSCADA, the open source project I am working on, we use Google Groups as a communication channel with end users. This works quite fine actually, and I think that Google Groups are a fine instrument for that.

Today I stumbled over an easy configuration mistake you can make, which will cause “400 Bad request” for most static resources. It took me a little bit of time to figure out what went wrong.

I had a classic Spring WebMVC setup, DispatcherServlet, resource mapping for static resources (CSS mostly).

Creating a modular web application in Java still is a tricky task. While there has been some improvement with web fragments, this still is far away from what you actually want.

But what is it that you (or better I) want:

• Modularity – Make the application extensible using plugins. Not just one big block. Install additional functionality with a few clicks
• Easy setup – Setting up a JEE server like JBoss can be a pain in the ass. First you have to configure your datasource with some obscure XML file. It would be way better to be directed to some sort of setup screen, asking for all database (etc.) information first. Guiding you through a setup process. With JEE your web application won’t even start if your JPA data source cannot be loaded since the driver is not specified.

Again an interesting problem, I do have a Linux box and it has two GSM modems and an RS-232 FTDI USB device built in. Each GSM modem brings three USB serial devices. Now I do want to dial up using the first of these modems and therefore I do need the device name, e.g. /dev/ttyUSB2.

Finally, we put a few functions and classes together that we already had, and made a simple, easy to use and jet powerful tool which we would like to have ourselves ;-) Sadly, it did not exist when we would have needed it, so we had to make it ourselves.