We've been working hard on the new Axiom Stack website (well ok, Nick has been working the hardest) and boy are we excited about it.

We changed the look, made it a bit more functional that design oriented. We added search and now the full Axiom Stack documentation is searchable and downloadable! Woo hoo.

We've added a community section with all the areas where you can find Axiom Stack including this blog, twitter, google groups for announcements and forums and our Issue Tracking site.

The most important area we've added is support. Now you can sign up and get support for your Axiom Stack build. We have email and phone support available depending on the plan you take. This will make it much easier for you to get you questions answered by us and keep moving along with your project.

Our documentation is constantly being updated. We added in more tutorials and how to's. We've opened a Partner's area (ask us how to become one) and we introduce you to the Axiom Team.

Go and take a look. Let us know what you're working on, get involved in the community and ask us how you can get support.

Give Axiom Stack a try, you won't be disappointed.

We like choices. We assume you do too. In helping you see the advantages of the Axiom Stack, we've teamed up with Joyent to give you the tools to power your applications with our framework and their state-of-the-art servers.

Having used the services at Joyent, we can say that we were both pleased and impressed. Their Accelerators are simple to setup, easy to use and cost effective. This means you can now go to Joyent, and in a few steps, have a server configured and ready to go with Axiom Stack.

We are pleased to be teaming up with Joyent. Kent Langley wrote about Axiom Stack deployment on Joyent Accelerators on the Joyent Blog.

"I think of Axiom Stack as a Javascript Platform as a Service (PaaS) on top of Joyent’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). As such, I think it could be of interest to a number of people."

Joyent's Accelerator gives you the ease and flexibility of cloud computing. Dynamically expand your instance in minutes. The power and scalability of the Joyent Accelerator combined with the ease of the Axiom Stack make a lineup that can help build and host dynamic applications better and faster.

Go to Joyent and check it out today.

Creating a documentation system for Axiom Stack has been a unique challenge and I wanted to elaborate a bit on what we've come up with to do the job. 

Most widely used languages have good code-level documentation tools already: RDoc for Ruby, Javadoc for Java, etc.  You comment your code according to the coventions of the tool and the tool in turn takes them and spits out some nicely formatted, human-readable documentation. 

Our challenge: not everything in the Axiom Javascript environment is implemented in Javascript!  Axiom Stack itself is written in Java, while applications are written in Javascript.  The JS API available to your application code comes from two sources:

- Pure Java objects, wrapped up and exposed to the scripting layer via Rhino.  This is stuff like theAxiomObjectprototype and theappobject.

- Modules and libraries written in Javascript.  We include a number of utility libraries (like theftplibrary) and enhancements to existing JS prototypes like Array and String in this fashion.

So, we couldn't simply run the language-appropriate tool over all our code and be done with it.  Here's how we did it:

First, we created a class that used Sun'sDoclet APIto run over all our Java classes.  Any classes marked as exposed to the scripting layer are transformed into stub Javascript. This code doesn't do anything, but serves as an empty frame forjsdocto parse, and is thrown away after the build has completed. Quick example:

/** 
 * Grates cheese of your choice.
 * @jsconstructor
 */
public class CheeseGrater(){
 	/**
	 * @param {String} cheeseType Type of cheese.
	 */
   	public CheeseGrater(String cheeseType){
		    // ...
	}

	/**
	 * Grate up some cheese!
	 */
	public GratedCheese grate(){
		// ...
  	}			
}

Becomes:

/**
  * Grates cheese of your choice
  * @param {String} cheeseType Type of cheese.
  * @constructor
  */
function CheeseGrater(/**String*/ cheeseType){}

/**
  * Grate up some cheese!
  * @returns {GratedCheese}
  */	  
CheeseGrater.prototype.grate = function(){}

Then, we run jsdoc over both the Java-generated stub code and the real Javascript in our libraries and presto! Usable documentation.

TheAxiom Stacksource code has been opened. It was a fairly large undertaking to get the source out to all of you in a way that made sense and made it easy. Also, we didn't want to release the source withoutdocumentation.

So, we cobbled together a documentation tool based onJSDoc. This grabs methods within the Javascript context including the Java specific methods. This is extremely handy as we no longer have to use two tools for documentation. This means that you'll get more and better documentation as the projects progress.

Also, we had to get some licensing in place. This is important because we want you to be able to view and modify the source. Ultimately we'd like to include what you're working on in our codebase too. More heads are better than one.

In the same spirit that we provided the source to you, we'd like you to do for others. This is the reason we put the stack under theAGPL license. If you'd prefer to not reveal yoursecret sauce, we understand. Feel free tocontact usto discuss other arrangements.

One other thing we did was to create aforum systemon top of the stack. We like the phrase "eat your own dogfood". We're in the process of revamping parts of it as I type this, but it is available for use right now. Feel free to take it for a test drive, we're watching them so you can ask all the questions you'd like...unless you're a bot...then stay out.

Overall, this was a big deal for us. We wanted to give back to the community that gave and continues to give to us. Thanks, enjoy, and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you.

National Public Radio(NPR) has released their API and has included Axiom Software's Searchable Radio widget on theirAPI widget page. NPR has been working on their much anticipated API release for some time. The API gives developers access to all of NPR radio's news, features and music.

Axiom Searchable Radio gives the user the ability to search, browse and listen to those stories through their iPhone®. Accesssearchableradio.comfrom your iPhone browser and dig in to thousands of pieces of content.

Axiom Searchable Radio was developed with and runs on the Axiom Stack (soon to be) open source web application server. Check theAxiom Stackfor the upcoming open source release, tutorials and documentation.

We are very close to having the Axiom Stack source code ready for the public.  The primary task left is code commenting.  Its that thing that most developers like to avoid unless they have a gun pointed at their head (and even then, they might reflect for a few minutes before deciding on bullet vs code commenting).  In addition to making the code base easier to follow for people who want to jump in and start hacking, a primary goal for us is to use JSDoc to take the Java code comments and create Javascript level API docs out of them.  There are a lot of classes to comment in order to get the Axiom JavaScript APIs fully documented.  This should all be finished pretty soon, and hopefully the source code and documentation will make it easy for developers interested in the stack to jump right in.

Are we offensively biased? Sure we are. Do we think our products are the best? Of course we do. Are we prepared to listen to the community? Can we take criticism? Will this help us? Yes, yes and you bet.

We know our product is mature; we are also mature enough to know it can be improved. That’s where you come in. Opening the source of theAxiom Stackis a big deal. We are opening our hard work, our development expertise and our lives to you. We have been living this Stack and living the process for some time. We are confident of not falling flat due to quality challenges; we know we made something good. The Axiom Stack been implemented and running on some large, high trafficwebsites. We’ve had some great feedback from the release of the free-for-personal-use version, which launched in March atSWSX. But, having others look into the full source is something that hasn’t been done. What’s needed is the differing points of view and having others look at it through eyes with experiences that can take it in an uphill climb to where? Well, who knows? All we do know is that we have a plan to keep it moving the right direction and with your help, it’ll go further faster and eventually rule them all.

Well, the decision has been made and we’re excited, the work has begun and it’s only a matter of time. Axiom Stack has decided to open up its source to the outside. We are re-licensing the software under GPL. This will help us confirm what we already know, Axiom Stack is a smart choice for developers who want to build applications and deploy websites quickly and easily.

We’ve been using it and it’s deployed commercially, that’s good. This step is bound to be filled with excitement, and worry. It’ll open us up as a company so others can view the inner workings. I’m sure they’ll be disagreements amongst the newly building community…but that’s good. How else to improve what we know is already good.

It’s a big step and a good one. So go take a look. Dig around. Let us know what you think. We need a few weeks to tie up the loose licensing ends, but it’s only a matter of time before we open it up.

The term Networking has a tendency to make most developers cringe and walk the other way. I say most, there must be some that don’t mind speaking to strangers about what they do, what they’re working on, what they’re interested in doing, where they see their industry going and developing relationships with others with or without similar interests. It doesn’t sound that hard.

The scary part is that networking is actually marketing…”ah, what, marketing, not me, no no no! I develop applications, I write the best code, I use great scripting languages and I read and comment on technical Web sites”. See any similarities here?

Just getting out and talking passionately about what you do is the best marketing there is. People are interested if you are excited about your subject. People want to know what’s new about it, why it’s special and why it’ll succeed. You might also learn a thing or two.

Learn from others by listening. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You know what you’re doing better than anyone else and there isn’t anything you could possibly learn from them. But, listening to what others say about their past experiences with any software is one of the best ways to gauge your own work or product.

Networking is easier than you think and very productive for your company and brand. Seeing smart people talk passionately about their work will excite others about your work, which will turn into leads, which could possibly turn into sales. If you are passionate about your work and can talk about it, you can successfully network.

Try it, you might like it.