Southern Ohio Software Symposium

August 17 - 19, 2007



Event Details

Location

Cincinnati Marriott Northeast
9664 Mason Montgomery Road
Mason, OH 45040
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Session Descriptions

Brian Sam-Bodden - Java author, Ruby geek and Open Source Advocate

Brian Sam-Bodden

10 ways to use Hibernate effectively

Learn 10 tried and true ways to improve the way you use Hibernate today. In this session you would learn about a collection of 10 tips, tricks, practices and tools that will make you more effective at designing, implementing, testing and tuning your application's Hibernate-powered object-relational layer.

Beginning Drools - Rule Engines in Java

Drools is an open source pure-Java implementation of a forward chaining rules engine. Drools can be used in a J2SE or J2EE application and allows you to express rules programatically or by building domain specific rule languages. Learn how Business Rules with Drools can make your Java applications more flexible and robust.


Beginning Object-Relational Mapping with Hibernate

Hibernate is an open source Object-Relational Mapping Framework that mostly automates the tedious and time-consuming task of persisting Java objects to a relational database.
Hibernate is quickly becoming the preferred way for enterprise developers to overcome the object-relational impedance mismatch and a good alternative to the coarse-grained Entity EJBs, low-level raw JDBC, and by-committee specifications like JDO. Learn what your choices in the ORM arena, what to look for in an ORM tool, and how to get started with Hibernate for your next J2SE or J2EE project.

Professional Java UI development with the Eclipse RPC

Learn how to build featured rich applications using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. The Eclipse platform is an open tools platform, on top of this platform you can build your own applications (which do not need to be IDE like or IDE related). Yet you can enjoy the benefits of working with a mature and featured rich platform that can greatly reduce the amount of time required to create a professional-looking and robust Java UI application.


Brian Sletten - Forward Leaning Software Consultant

Brian Sletten

Applied AOP

Most people new to Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) are fed up with separation of concerns zealots explaining how great their techniques are at dealing with... logging. Ok, you get it. Logging is a cross-cutting concern that can be appropriately modularized. What else does AOP have to offer? A lot, it turns out. This talk will give an introduction to the motivations of AOP as well as a series of concrete examples drawn from enterprise and client side Java. Come learn how AspectJ-flavored AOP can begin to benefit you immediately either in development or production environments. Learn how to enforce architectural policies, find Swing threading issues, reduce the invasiveness of the Observer design pattern or even improve the reusability of your domain models. Now that Spring 2.0 provides support for AspectJ, the time has never been better to learn about these new (but backwards compatible) ways of thinking about building software.

Give it a REST

As developers, we sometimes get to make choices about the technologies we use, sometimes not. We base these decisions on personal experiences, recommendations from others and a general sense of where the industry is going.

Web Services have been all the rage for several years now. We have been told time and again that we should be building systems around them; as an industry, we've never been more confused. Perhaps it is time to Give it a REST.

Introducing the Semantic Web

Just as the world is feeling comfortable with the Web, Tim Berners-Lee et al inform us that what we have seen so far is just the beginning. His original plans at CERN were larger and grander. The Semantic Web is the new vision of machine-processable documents and metadata to improve search, knowledge discovery and data integration and management. While there are many naysayers chiding such grand visions, there are also pragmatic and useful technologies emerging that can be applied today.

Resource-Oriented Computing w/ NetKernel : Software for the 21st Century

Imagine the simplicity of REST married to the power of Unix pipes with the benefits of a loosely-coupled, logically-layered architecture. If that is hard to imagine, it may because the architectures available to you today are convoluted accretions of mismatched technologies, languages, abstractions and data models.

NetKernel is a disruptive technology that changes the game. It has been quietly gaining mind share in the past several years; people who are exposed to it don't want to go back to the tired and blue conventions of J2EE and .NET. Not only does it make building the kinds of systems you are building today easier, it does it more efficiently, with less code and a far more scalable runway to allow you to take advantage of the emerging multi-core, multi-CPU hardware that is coming our way.

Come see how this open source / commercial product can change the way you think about building software.


David Geary - Author of Graphic Java and co-author of Core JSF

David Geary

Ajaxian Faces

JavaServer Faces is a perfect platform for implementing Web 2.0 interfaces with Ajax. This session explores how you can use these two potent technologies--JSF and Ajax--together to create applications that look and behave like desktop applications but run in the browser.

JavaServer Faces: A Whirlwind Tour

In April 2005, annual growth rates for jobs in JavaServer Faces, Struts, and Ruby on Rails were all at about 0%. Today, Struts' growth rate still hovers around 0%, but JSF and Rails have taken off. At the end of 2007, both JSF and Rails were growing at a rate of between 400-500% annually (according to indeed.com).

JSF has passed the adoption tipping point, and is now the Java-based framework of choice, as is evidenced by its ecosystem. From vendors such as MyEclipse and RedHat to open source projects such as Seam, Facelets, and Ajax4JSF, JSF is where the action is.

Come see why JSF is so popular. In this code- and demo-intensive session, I'll show you the fundamentals of JSF.

Prerequisite: Some knowledge of Java-based web applications, such as Struts, is a plus, but is not required. If you have a significant experience with JSF, you probably already know most of what's covered in this session.

Killer JavaScript Frameworks: Prototype, Scriptaculous, and Rico

An introduction to the popular Prototype JavaScript framework, and two frameworks built on top of Prototype: Scriptaculous and Rico.

RAD JSF with Seam, Facelets, and Ajax4jsf, Part One

In this session, see how you can get Ruby On Rails-like productivity on the Java side of the house with this compelling combination of technologies.

RAD JSF with Seam, Facelets, and Ajax4jsf, Part Two

A continuation of a 2-session presentation on Seam, Facelets, and Ajax4jsf.

The Google Web Toolkit, Part One

Developing highly interactive web applications, for the most part requires knowledge of a wide array of technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, JSP, JSF, etc.

With the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Google turns that notion of development on its head. Instead, you implement Ajax applications by writing almost entirely in Java. You use an AWT-like API, which the Google compiler compiles to JavaScript that runs on the client.

The Google Web Toolkit, Part Two

The second part of a 2-session presentation on the Google Web Toolkit.


Jared Richardson - Agile coach and co-author of Ship It

Jared Richardson

Agile Software Testing Strategies

Creating and maintaining a solid automated test suite is critical to an Agile strategy, but often we're just told to "Do it." In this talk we'll look at several pragmatic strategies for creating and building your suite.

Build Teams, Not Products

A great team builds great software, but how do you build a great team?

Continuous Integration with Cruise Control

Continuous Integration is increasingly recognized as a vital practice in an Agile software shop. Traditionally it's been difficult to set up and administer. Today, that's no longer the case.

Distributed Teams: Remote Agility

How do you keep a team scattered across time zones in sync?

Gradual Agile: The Secret to Introducing Agile Practices

Agile practices are popular because they work, but getting people to take that first step can be tricky.

Shippers Unite!

An overview of the Agile software approach from the book Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects.

Software Development Techniques

Throughout our software careers we learn habits from our coworkers, from books we've read, and occasionally, from conferences we attend. Much of our competence comes from the tips and tricks we pick up as we go.


Jeff Brown - G2One Director Of North American Operations - Groovy and Grails Developer

Jeff Brown

Advanced Techniques With Grails

Grails represents technology that offers great flexibility and power without the complexity introduced by other Java web application frameworks. Custom tag libraries are a snap. GSP Templates provide a simple mechanism for reusing UI elements. Sitemesh is integrated to help provide a consistent presentation across the entire application. Grails provides simple mechanisms for leveraging the power of Ajax.

Groovy For Java Programmers

Groovy is an agile dynamic language for the Java platform. Groovy has a Java like syntax along with many features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk. This session covers a lot of ground including many interactive examples to hilite the powerful language features that make Groovy compelling. A lot of momentum is building in the Groovy and Grails communities right now and this session is aimed at Java developers who want to leverage the power of Groovy.

Introduction To Agile Web Development With Grails

Grails brings the powerful "coding by convention" paradigm to Groovy and Java. Grails is not just another flavor in the pool of web development frameworks for Java. Grails leverages the powerful dynamic features of Groovy while taking advantage of best of breed technologies like Hibernate, Spring, Sitemesh and Quartz to make web application development both fun and easy.

Test Driven Development With Groovy And Grails

The value of Test Driven Development (TDD) has become widely accepted. The practice has extended beyond just XP teams. Good TDD practices yield high quality software and help teams maintain confidence in their software as complexity grows. The dynamic nature of Groovy makes TDD easy and fun. Groovy may be used to unit test not only Groovy code but other code as well. Testing Java code with Groovy is a snap. Learn to use the power of Groovy to test your systems.


Neal Ford - Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.

Neal Ford

Advanced Selenium

This session discusses advanced Selenium techniques for testing web applications. It discusses techniques for both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, including data driven tests, creating branch points, testing Ajax applications, creating flexible tests, integration with continuous integration, and tons more.

Building DSLs in Static and Dynamic Languages

This session discusses building Domain Specific Languages and DSL-style code in Java, Groovy, and Ruby. It discusses the different types of DSLs, details on how to implement them in Java, Groovy, and Ruby, and example problem domains where DSLs make sense.

Code Metrics & Analysis for Agile Projects

What does code + methodology have to do with one another? Everything! Agile projects focus on delivering working code, and tools exist to allow you to verify some quality metrics for your code. This session is a survey of tools and metrics that allow you to determine the quality of your code and strategies to "wire it" into your agile project.

Debugging and Testing the Web Tier

As out applications have spilled from the server across the wire to the web tier, we increasingly must debug and test in the browser. This session covers debugging and testing tools for clients, JavaScript, and Ajax.

Implementing SOA

This talk avoids SOA hype and gets to the meat of the matter: how do you implement a Service-Oriented Architecture, what are the technological pitfalls, how do you test it, and what traps should you avoid. No marketecture: just implementation details.

Introduction to JRuby

This session describes JRuby, the 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. It covers the basics of programming with JRuby and examples of how to integrate it into existing Java projects.

Keynote: Software "Engineering" & Polyglot Programming

About bridges, languages, engineering, polyglot programming, and the near future.

Productive Programmer: Acceleration, Focus, and Indirection

This session discusses how to use the Productive Programmer principles of acceleration, focus, and indirection to become a more productive programmer. This session describes these principles, but the primary focus of this session is demonstration of these principles with real-world examples.

Productive Programmer: Automation and Canonicality

This session discusses how to use the Productive Programmer principles of automation and canonicality to become a more productive programmer. This session describes these principles, but the primary focus of this session is demonstration of these principles with real-world examples.

Rails for JRuby

This session explains all the hype surrounding Ruby on Rails, in a context familiar to Java developers. It covers convention over configuration, ActiveRecord, controllers, views, Ajax, scaffolding, testing, and deployment...on the JVM, using JRuby.

Regular Expressions in Java

Regular expressions should be an integral part of every developer?s toolbox, but most don?t realize what an important topic it is. Regular expressions have existed for decades, but many developers don't understand how to take full advantage of this powerful mechanism, either through command line tools and editors or in their development.

The Productive Programmer: Practice (10 Ways to Improve Your Code)

No one writes perfect code: even the best developers fall into bad habits and traps. These topics from The Productive Programmer illustrate blind spots and helps you write better code.


Ryan Breidenbach - Co-author of Spring in Action

Ryan Breidenbach

Developing Applications Using in Spring 2.0

In 2006, Spring 2.0 was released and Spring became ubiquitous in the enterprise Java space. So if you haven't taken a peek at Spring yet, what are you waiting for?!? If the answer is "This session," you have come to the right place. This session will familiarize you with the benefits Spring provides and why they have made the framework so successful. In addition, we will focus on the efforts that went into Spring 2.0 to make these benefits much more developer friendly. By the end of this session, you should have a grasp of how Spring 2.0 simplifies the utilization of Spring's core features such as bean wiring, AOP, and the simplification of using enterprise Java. If your head is not spinning too much.

Developing Web Applications with Spring MVC

Although Spring's rise to ubiquity was driven by its IoC and AOP services, it offers so much more. One of the most powerful of these services is Spring's MVC framework.

If you are familiar with other Java web frameworks such as Struts or WebWork, you will recognize that Spring MVC is a similar request-response web framework driven by a Front Controller, in this case the DispatcherServlet. But Spring also provides considerable functionality out of the box. One of the beauties of the Spring MVC is that, like the rest of Spring, all of its components are quite modular. This allows you to mix and match different implementations of the various MVC components as you see fit for you application.

In addition, Spring MVC provides rich capabilities for data binding. This allows you to transparently bind form parameters to your application objects without having to create any intermediate objects. Spring's validation features allow you to capture both binding and application errors. And with Spring 2.0's much improved JSP tag library, both creating forms and displaying validation errors is quite simple.

Harnessing the Power of Maven

2006 appeared to be the year that Maven achieved the momentum it needed to overtake Ant as the build tool of choice for Java developers. A lot of that has to do with the vastly improved Maven 2. But it lot of it has to do with the simplicity, organization and power that Maven brings to projects. The session will bring developers new to Maven with everything it has to offer. This includes creating your very first Maven project, learning the significance of the POM file, how to let Maven and its repositories manage your dependencies, and how to let Maven report of the health of your own projects. And for the Ant users in the audience, you will get to see a side-by-side comparison of the two build tools' build philosophies.


Scott Davis - Author of "Groovy Recipes" & TDD Expert

Scott Davis

Groovy and Java: The Integration Story

I'm attracted to Groovy because of its spirit of inclusiveness. Because it extends my platform of choice, not replaces it -- include a single JAR in your classpath and you are Groovy-enabled. Because it offers full bidirectional integration with Java. Because it offers a nearly flat learning curve for experienced Java developers. Come see how you can use Groovy to augment your existing Java codebase.

Groovy: The Next Generation of Java

This is the year of the dynamic scripting language. Ruby (and Rails) has won the hearts and minds of many independent software developers. JavaScript is experiencing a renaissance thanks to the wild success of AJAX and websites like Google Maps. And Groovy (JSR-241) brings the same level of excitement and "scripting goodness" to the Java platform.

Mocking Web Services

In this talk, we'll survey the web services exposed by leading websites (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay) and discuss how they can be easily mocked up for testing purposes and to aid offline development. You'll see working examples of RESTful, SOAP, and JSON web services, as well as strategies for unit and functional testing your asynchronous, service-oriented architecture.

Real World Grails

Scott Davis is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com. The website, in addition to being, umm, about Groovy, is implemented in Grails. This talk shows you how to get started with Grails, but also talks about the experience of using it in a live, production web site.

The Zen of REST

Google quietly deprecated their SOAP search API at the end of 2006. While this doesn't mean that you should abandon SOAP, it does reflect a growing trend towards simpler dialects of web services. Google joins a number of popular websites (Yahoo, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us) that offer all of the benefits of web services without all of the complexity of SOAP.


Venkat Subramaniam - Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

Venkat Subramaniam

Annotation Hammer

Annotation is an interesting feature in Java.
However, like any features, there are good uses and bad uses.
When should you use Annotation? This presentation will answer that question for you.

Domain Driven Design

Domain Driven Design (DDD) is an approach that places emphasis on the domain model and carrying it into implementation. DDD is mostly repackaging of fundamental OO Design. It brings new emphasis to what we should be already doing, but often find it hard and confusing given the realities and complexities of our real world. In this presentation we will take a close look at what DDD is and how to use it for agile development. We will discuss several design options, and also look at some examples of good modeling and layering.

Drooling with Groovy and Rules

Rule based programming allows us to develop applications using declarative rules. These can simplify development in applications where such rules based knowledge is used for decision making.

FP for Java Programmers

Most interest around Functional Programming (FP) has been academic until recently. Recent commercial languages are beginning to exploit FP features. Knowing more about FP will not only help us make better use of these features, but to
exploit those. In this session we will take a close look at FP.

Java 6 Features, what's in it for you?

What benefit do new Java 6 features offer you. Are there issues with using these features.
The objective of this presentation is not simply to introduce you to the features, but to
the effective use of these as well.

OSGi: A Well Kept Secret

In this presentation we will introduce OSGi and
discuss how it can help modularize and version
your enterprise Java applications.

Practices of an Agile Developer

You have worked on software projects with varying degree of success. What were the reasons for the success of your last project? What were the reasons for those that failed? A number of issues contribute to project success - some non-technical in nature. In this presentation the speaker will share with you practices in a number of areas including
coding, developer attitude, debugging, and feedback. The discussions are based on the book with the same title as the talk.

Programming with Mock objects

You are convinced that Test Driven Development is good for you and your project. You realize the benefits it has to offer. What's holding you back? All the code and components that your code so heavily depends on is most likely making you wonder if TDD is really for you. We will start out by looking at dependency and dependency inversion. Then we will discuss how mock objects can help separate our code from its dependencies.

Spring into Groovy

What do you get when you mix an agile, object-oriented, dynamic language with a lightweight, flexible, and extensible framework? You get a Groovier Spring. Spring allows you to develop using Groovy as much as Java. Groovy brings some neat concepts to the Java Platform that is hard to realize directly through the Java language. Using these capabilities can lead to elegant and easier Spring development.

get Fit

Unit testing tells you, the programmer, that your code (and the change) meets your expectations. How do you know if you are meeting your customers' expectations? Agile development is all about feedback and doing what's relevant to the customers, isn't it? Framework for Integration testing or Fit helps you to automate tests for customer expectations.




Brian Sam-Bodden

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Brian Sam-Bodden Java author, Ruby geek and Open Source Advocate
Brian Sam-Bodden is an author and recognized international speaker that has spent over twelve years working with object technologies, with an emphasis on the Java platform and in recent times falling in love with Ruby. He holds dual bachelor degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University in computer science and physics and is the president and chief software architect for Integrallis http://www.integrallis.com, where he focuses on building great applications with Java and Ruby. Brian has worked as an architect, developer, mentor, and trainer for several Fortune 500 companies in the tax, insurance, retail sciences, telecommunications, distribution, banking, finance, aviation, and scientific data management industries. As an independent consultant, he has promoted the use of open source in the industry by educating his clients on the cost benefits and productivity gains they can achieve. He is a frequent speaker at user groups and conferences nationally and abroad. Brian is the author of "Beginning POJOs: Spring, Hibernate, JBoss and Tapestry" and has also co-authored the Apress Java title "Enterprise Java Development on a Budget: Leveraging Java Open Source Technologies".



Brian Sletten

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Brian Sletten Forward Leaning Software Consultant
Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. He has a background as a system architect, a developer, a mentor and a trainer. His experience has spanned defense, finance and commercial domains with security consulting, network matrix switch controls, 3D simulation/visualization, Grid Computing, P2P and Semantic Web-based systems. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and currently lives in Fairfax, VA. He is a partner in Zepheira, LLC, a new services company focused on using semantic-oriented technologies to solve architectural and data integration problems not handled by conventional tools and techniques.


David Geary

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David Geary Author of Graphic Java and co-author of Core JSF
David Geary is the president of Clarity Training, Inc. (corewebdevelopment.com), where he teaches developers to implement web applications using JavaServer Faces and the Google Web Toolkit.

A prominent author, speaker, and consultant, David holds a unique qualification as a Java expert: He wrote the best-selling books on both Java component frameworks: Swing and JavaServer Faces (JSF). David's Graphic Java Swing was one of the best-selling Java books of all-time and Core JSF, which David wrote with Cay Horstman, is the best-selling book on JavaServer Faces.

David was one of a handful of experts on the JSF 1.0 Expert Group (EG) that actively defined the standard Java-based web application framework, and he's currently helping to define the next version of JSF on the JSF 2.0 EG.

Besides serving on the JSF and JSTL Expert Groups, David has contributed to open-source projects and co-authored Sun's Web Developer Certification Exam. He invented the Struts Template library which was the precursor to Tiles, a popular framework for composing web pages from JSP fragments, was the 2nd Struts committer and contributed to Shale.

A regular on the NFJS tour, David also speaks at other conferences such as JavaOne and JavaPolis. David has taught at Java University and was twice voted a JavaOne rock star, for presentations in 2005 and 2007.



Jared Richardson

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Jared Richardson Agile coach and co-author of Ship It
Jared Richardson, co-author of Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful
Software Projects
, is a speaker, consultant, and mentor with NFJS One. Jared has been in the industry for more than fifteen years as a consultant, developer, tester, and manager.

Jared can be found online at Agile Artisans.



Jeff Brown

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Jeff Brown G2One Director Of North American Operations - Groovy and Grails Developer
Jeff Brown is the VP of Professional Services at G2One and a member of the core Groovy and Grails development teams. For over 10 years Jeff has been involved in designing and building object oriented systems.

Jeff teaches a number of Java and object oriented training courses in addition to doing consulting and mentoring work for industries including Aerospace, Financial and Medical. Areas of expertise include Java, agile web development with Groovy and Grails, distributed computing, object database systems, object oriented analysis and design and agile development.


Neal Ford

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Neal Ford Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.
Neal Ford is an Application Architect for ThoughtWorks. He is an architect, designer, and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, and video/DVD presentations. Neal is also the author of Developing with Delphi: Object-Oriented Techniques (Prentice Hall PTR, 1996), JBuilder 3 Unleashed (SAMS Publishing, 1999), and Art of Java Web Development (Manning, 2003). His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Object Pascal, C++, and C. Neal’s primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 30 developers’ conferences worldwide.


Ryan Breidenbach

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Ryan Breidenbach Co-author of Spring in Action
Ryan Breidenbach has been developing software for over eight years with a current focus on enterprise Java applications and agile development. He is the co-author of Spring in Action. When he is not home spending time with his family, he can occasionally be found honing his skills at the poker tables.


Scott Davis

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Scott Davis Author of "Groovy Recipes" & TDD Expert
Scott Davis is an internationally recognized author and speaker. He is passionate about open source solutions and agile development. He has worked on a variety of Java platforms, from J2EE to J2SE to J2ME (sometimes all on the same project).

Scott's books include Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java, GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, The Google Maps API, and JBoss At Work.

Scott is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com, a news and information website that tracks the latest developments in Groovy and Grails. He also writes a regular column for IBM DeveloperWorks -- Mastering Grails.

Scott is a frequent presenter at national conferences (such as No Fluff, Just Stuff) and local user groups. He was the president of the Denver Java Users Group in 2003 when it was voted one of the top-ten JUGs in North America. After a quick move north, he is currently active in the leadership of the Boulder Java Users Group. Keep up with him at http://www.davisworld.org.


Venkat Subramaniam

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Venkat Subramaniam Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects, and speaks frequently at international conferences and user groups. He is author of ".NET Gotchas" (O'Reilly), coauthor of 2007 Jolt Productivity Award winning "Practices of an Agile Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf), and author of "Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf).