Getting support for Jena
You've read the tutorial and the other documentation, asked your friends and colleagues. You've hit Google. You've gazed at the stars. OK, maybe not the last one. Good news - there are two mailing lists you can use to ask further questions.
- jena-dev is for people using Jena to develop applications. This is probably the one you want.
- jena-devel is for people developing Jena itself. This is probably not the one you want, unless you're extending Jena (in which case you probably aren't reading this tutorial).
Yes, we know they have confusingly similar names. Sorry! It's a historical accident, and will probably get sorted out one day. The Jena developer team, and many experienced Jena users too, monitor jena-dev and can answer most questions.
How not to ask good questions
You say "URGENT!! my code's not working!!! what's wrong with it?" and not much else.
How to ask good questions
Remember that we can't see your computer. Give all the information you can that's likely to be relevant, but please, take the time to make it easier for us to read. Much as we like you, our users, there's only so much time in the day. The more work we have to do to figure out your question, the longer it will take you to get an answer. Good things to do:
- Copy the actual code you are trying to run. If you re-type it, misleading typos can creep in.
- Send a runnable version of your code, if it's not too big. Most times, what we will do is run your code in a debugger to see what's really going on. Better still, learn to use a debugger so you can see for yourself. Most modern Java IDE's, such as Eclipse, have very powerful graphical debuggers.
- Don't just send your entire project (yes, people have done this). Take the time to create a small test program that shows the problem in-the-small. Not only is this courteous, often the act of doing so simplifies the problem to the point that you can understand what's wrong and how to fix it.
- Don't forget the data. The problem may not be in the code you've written, but the data you are processing. If we can't see the data, we can't give a complete answer. Again, small and complete is good.
- Tell us which version of Jena you're using. Unless there's a very good reason why you can't, try your problem or program with the latest version of Jena.