Session Descriptions

Dim Sum Grails: A Sampler of Practical Non Database-Driven Grails Applications

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece." (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)

Most Grails tutorials demonstrate how easy it is to build simple CRUD (Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete) applications. While skinning a database with a web front-end is undeniably one beneficial aspect of Grails, it isn't the only thing Grails is good for. As you'll see here, Grails can be used to build a wide variety of web applications. You won't see a single HTML table with "edit" and "delete" links, I promise.

Groovy Testing

"Tests don't break things; they dispel the illusion that it works." (Anonymous)

In this era of "Test-First" and "Test-Driven" development, the modern software engineer knows that testing is no longer an optional part of the process. You need to have the best tools at your fingertips: a set of utilities that maximize your results with a minimum of effort. Groovy offers Java developers an optimal set of testing tools.

Groovy XML Ninja Skills

"XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using enough of it." (Anonymous)

XML is everywhere. Whether you are dealing with local configuration files (web.xml, struts-config.xml) or remote web services (SOAP, REST, RSS, Atom), the modern software developer needs to be able to request, slice, and dice XML with ease. That requires a set of razor-sharp tools that reduce the inherent complexity of the problem, not multiply it. Once you see XML tremble in fear at the awesome power of Groovy, you'll wonder what you ever did without it.

Lizard Brain Web Design

"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone." (Bjarne Stroustrup)

The "lizard brain" is the oldest part of the human brain -- the part responsible for autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and navigating websites. OK, maybe not that last part, but your website should be easy to use. Stupid easy. Lizard brain easy. Any time your user spends figuring out how to do something -- even for a split second -- is wasted time due to poor design. Inspired by Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", this talk answers the question, "Why is that website so hard to use?"

The Amazing Groovy Weight-loss Plan

"The central enemy of reliability is complexity." (Dr. Daniel Geer)

Java is a powerful programming language. A smart developer can do nearly anything with Java. So the next question is, "How quickly can it be done? How many lines of code does it take to do common tasks?" Groovy greases the wheels of Java by decreasing the complexity of the language while preserving the raw power. At first glance, you might think that this talk is simply about how Groovy drastically reduces the lines of code you need to write. What this talk is really about is bringing simplicity, clarity, readability, and yes, beauty to your source code.

Emergent Design & Evolutionary Architecture

Most of the software world has realized that BDUF (Big Design Up Front) doesn't work well in software. But lots of developers struggle with this notion when it applies to architecture and design. Surely you can't just start coding, right? You need some level of understanding before you can start work. This session describes the current thinking about emergent design & evolutionary architecture, including both proactive (test-driven development) and reactive (refactoring, composed method) approaches to discovering design. The goal of this talk is to provide nomenclature, strategies, and techniques for allowing design to emerge from projects as they proceed, keeping you code in sync with the problem domain.

Real-world Refactoring

Refactoring is a fine academic exercise in the perfect world, but we don't really live there. Even with the best intentions, projects build up technical debt and crufty bad things. This session covers refactoring in the real world, at both the atomic level (how to refactor towards composed method and the single level of abstraction principle) to larger project strategies for multi-day refactoring efforts. This talk provides practical strategies for real projects to effectively refactor your code.

Test Driven Design

Most developers think that "TDD" stands for Test-driven Development. But it really should stand for "Test-driven Design". Rigorously using TDD makes your code much better in multiple ways.

Unit Testing that Sucks Less: Small Things that Make a Big Difference

Unit testing seems to a lot of managers and developers like pure overhead, but professionally responsible developers know that it is one of the keys to quality. This session covers a bunch of small tools that makes testing easier & faster. I talk about tools like Infinitest, Jester, MockRunner, Hamcrest, Groovy, RSpec/EasyB, Selenium, and others. While none of these tools is elaborate enough for it's own session, together they add up to more than the sum of the parts. This session shows tools and strategies to streamline testing, making easier and more palatable for both managers and developers.

Visualizations for Code Metrics

Judicious use of metrics improves the quality of your code. But interpreting metrics presents a challenge. You have a list of numbers for a project - what does it mean? And what does it tell me about the health of the project overall? This sessions shows how to produce visualizations for software metrics, making them easier to understand and more valuable. It covers metrics at the individual method level all the way up to the overall architecture of the application. This isn't just a talk about how some tools produce visualizations: this session shows you how to generate your own visualizations, allowing you to customize it to the level in information density that shows real value on your project. I show how to produce projected graphs from dependencies, heat-maps for cyclomatic complexity and code coverage, using XSLT to extract visual information from XML configuration documents, and others. Metrics can't help you if you can't understand them. By creating visualizations, it helps leverage metrics to make your code better.

Web 2.0 Punchlist: Making Your Web Applications Suck Less

When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation. I cover things like where import your JavaScript and CSS, how to handle images so that they are aggressively cached, how much you should care about XHTML, and lots more. This talk will give you a fit and finish check list you can apply to your shiny new web application to see if it's up to spec.

Flex for Java Developers

An introduction to Flex for Java developers.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with Flex and at least one other web application framework

GWT fu, Part 1

Learn to implement web applications with GWT.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with a component-based framework, preferably a desktop application framework

GWT fu, Part 2

Learn to do amazing stuff with GWT.

Prerequisite: GWT fu, Part 1 is not a prerequisite for this session, but it will help if you have some familiarity with GWT.

JSF 2.0: Advanced Topics

This session covers two of the most important features of JSF 2.0: composite components and built-in Ajax.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with JSF, or other component-based frameworks. Familiarity with Ajax. This session builds on the JSF 2.0 Introduction talk, so it is helpful, although not required, if you attend the intro talk before coming to this session.

JSF 2.0: An Introduction

This session introduces JSF 2.0 fundamentals, with emphasis on new features in JSF 2.0.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with JSF, or other component-based frameworks

Agility as a Tool: Getting Ready to Iterate

Many people simplistically apply agile recipes, assuming a one size fits all approach. This may lead to naive use beliefs like collocation breeds instant success. While sitting together always helps, it does not mean that people spontaneously collaborate to create sustainable value.

Instead of approaching agile methods like a recipe, this session will teach you to design agility that is a useful tool for your project community. We will cover practice selection ideas, tools for creating healthy development eco-systems and product discover tools. If you would like to improve the stickiness of your agility, stop in learn a pile of techniques to use before holding your first planning session.

Architecture and Agility Are Not Enemies

Being agile does not mean living life one iteration at a time. Agile projects without a long view can run into the common design problems of the past. Planning iteration by iteration is often foolish and feeds the myth that agile projects do not think beyond a few weeks. Successful agile projects plan within iterations and across iterations. The later planning is called release planning and it is the forum where agility first engages architecture and other cross cutting concerns.

Discovering Real Value with Story Maps and Personas

While actors and use cases often left users behind, personas and story maps bring the users to life and help mine real value. This session will teach you how to craft personas and use them to drive value into your development stream. The tools presented will help you better understand your buyers and users and build strong product backlogs and product road maps.

Producing Software Groove

Agility comes in many forms. While you may start out using XP or Scrum, long term success will mean finding a groove which fits your company. This session provides a path for adopting or adapting agility which draws on the strength of the successful practices being used.

Selling Agility: Experience from the Trenches

People ask me all the time, "How do you get people to buy in the use of agile methods?" While this is easier than it once was, there are still many challenges, and agile snake oil sales are on the rise. If you are looking to sell agility or deeper your agile investment (or your sales force), this session will provide you with tools that will help you frame your sell points, select your sales tools and communicate the value (of a practice) over the mechanics.

What Is Lean and Why Should You Care?

Whether it was intentional or not, the agile community has been borrowing successful ideas from the lean manufacturing for years. Lean practices, like finding and removing wasteful work, can be applied without needing special permission or certification. Ideas like kanban (visual planning aids) and kaizen (continuous learning) are simple, helpful tools that are easily applied and produce great results.

Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine

Cloud this, cloud that. It's all we are hearing about these days. And whether buzz-worthy or not, you need to get in-the-know so that you can talk effectively about how this could fit into the application strategy on your next project. Leverage 100s of hours of research distilled into a 90 minute presentation. Get bootstrapped with what cloud computing is and isn't, who the players are in this space, what unique features each offers, and then how Google is completely changing the game.

Git Going with Distributed Version Control

Many development shops have made the leap from RCS, Perforce, ClearCase, PVCS, CVS, BitKeeper or SourceSafe to the modern Subversion (SVN) version control system. But why not take the next massive stride in productivity and get on board with Git, a distributed version control system (DVCS). Jump ahead of the masses staying on Subversion, and increase your team's productivity, debugging effectiveness, flexibility in cutting releases, and repository redundancy at $0 cost. Understand how distributed version control systems are game-changers and pick up the lingo that will become standard in the next few years.

Prerequisite: Basic understanding of Subversion or similar version control system

Mastering Maven 2.0

Maven has been on the Java build tools scene for quite a number of years, but the adoption rate in enterprises is now going through the roof. Maven can seem daunting, but this presentation will equip existing Maven users with more efficient techniques and tools to overcome the biggest perceived Maven hurdles and build issues with ease.

We'll examine tools to help you find artifacts in central repositories, manage your corporation's internal Maven artifacts with a proxy tool such as Nexus, view and override dependency graphs, dependency management and multi-module best practices, create OS specific profiles, and leverage the latest Maven plugins for the top Java IDEs.

Prerequisite: Basic Maven knowledge

Open Source Debugging Tools for Java

This session will survey a wide range of tools across the Java space. We'll look at utilities such as VisualVM, jstatd, jps, jhat, jmap, Eclipse Memory Analyzer, jtracert, btrace and more.

Open Source is not just a suite of libraries you consume within your application, but now reaches into the space of tools to help you troubleshoot and improve your applications. The price of these tools eliminates barriers to their use and their open source nature allows you to mix and match them into compositions that work well for your application's unique debugging needs.

iPhone Objective-C with Java Web Services

iPhone development is all the rage both in the mobile entertainment, social networking, and productivity application spaces. As a Java developer, prepare yourself to be a participant in aspects of this new breed and platform of development. Hop on board with a quick start to iPhone application coding in Objective-C and integration with some of our favorite Java web service back-ends such as RESTful Grails.

The Busy Developer's Guide to Scala

Scala is a new programming language incorporating the most important concepts of object-oriented and functional languages and running on top of the Java Virtual Machine as standard "dot-class" files.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Advanced Platform Security

So you know the platform security model, and now you want to use it in new and interesting ways, like creating a custom Policy implementation, a custom Permission, or create a custom security context in which code will execute. Perhaps you even wish to make certain objects accessible only to those with the right permissions, or cryptographic key. Nothing could be easier, despite Java security's reputation as a dark and arcane place.

Prerequisite: The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Platform Security

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Collections

For so many Java developers, the java.util.* package consists of List, ArrayList, and maybe Map and HashMap. But the Collections classes are so much more powerful than many of us are led to believe, and all it requires is a small amount of digging and some simple exploration to begin to "get" the real power of the Collection classes.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Java Platform Security

Permissions, policy, SecurityExceptions, oh my! The Java platform is a rich and powerful platform, complete with a rich and powerful security mechanism, but sometimes understanding it and how it works can be daunting and intimidating, and leave developers with the basic impression that it's mysterious and dark and incomprehensible. Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this presentation, we'll take a pragmatic, code-first look at the Java security platform, including Permissions, the SecurityManager and its successor, AccessController, the Policy class and policy file syntax, JAAS, and more.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Java7

  Even though the Java 7 JSR has yet to be formed, some interesting things are beginning to emerge from Sun about what Java7 may include when its formal release contents are finally made public.

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.

Advanced Rules Programming with Drools

In this session you'll learn some of the more advanced features of Drools; a pure-Java Rule Engine. This session will walk through the construction of an advanced Rules application covering such topics as:

• Fine control and monitoring of a Working Memory session
• Using Decision Tables
• Advanced Rule Language Features
• Building Domain Specific Languages
• Managing your Rules

Prerequisite: Beginning Drools

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.

Increasing your Eclipse Productivity

Mylyn, Eclipse Plugins, Tips and Tricks

Refactoring the Enterprise with JRuby

Learn how JRuby can bring simplicity to the complex and rich APIs available in the Java platform. In this session you'll learn how to use JRuby to tackle some common tasks in Java SE and Java EE as well as how to abstract and simplify complex APIs.

Tools and Techniques to build Smart Java Applications

In this session we will explore the Java tools, techniques and algorithms that enable us to filter, classify, relate and discover patterns in our data that might not immediately obvious. With the emergence of social networking applications a great deal of data and hidden connections that can be leveraged to build better and smarter applications.

Hacking Your Brain for Fun and Profit

The single most important tool in any developers toolbox isn't a fancy IDE or some spiffy new language - it's our brain. Despite ever faster processors with multiple cores and expanding amounts of RAM, we haven't yet created a computer to rival the ultra lightweight one we carry around in our skulls - in this session we'll learn how to make the most of it. We'll talk about why multitasking is a myth, the difference between the left and the right side of your brain, the importance of flow and why exercise is good for more than just your waist line.

JavaScript: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Thanks to Ajax, JavaScript is cool again and developers are taking a second look at this much maligned language.

Project Bootstrapping

Ah, that new project smell, it's intoxicating! Full of hope, we trek off in pursuit of technical greatness. In this talk, we'll cover some of the important first steps of a new project including continuous integration, creating a testing culture and establishing low ceremony process.

Seven Habits of Highly Dysfunctional Teams

Being on a high performing team is a transcendent experience - unfortunately, many of us find more dysfunction than function. In this talk, we'll take a look at some of the common issues that face teams and discuss some ways of working towards a happy crew.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Developers

Thoughts lead to words, words lead to action, actions lead to habits. In this session we'll sharpen the development saw in the process of understanding what makes a hyper-productive programmer. The focus will consist of developer habits and development processes.

Architecture and Scaling

Scale... what is scale... how do you applications that are scalable. How do you know if the application scales?

Debugging your Production JVM

So your server is having issues? memory? Connections? Limited response? Is the first solution to bounce the server? Perhaps change some VM flags or add some logging? In todays Java 6 world, with its superior runtime monitoring and management capabilities the reasons to the bounce the server have been greatly reduced.

Hacking - The Dark Arts

A live Hacking demonstration exposing the tools and techniques used by Hackers.

Java Memory, Performance and the Garbage Collector

You are using Java, whew!!! No need to worry about memory, the garbage collector will handle that. Those who have had a memory issue in Java are not so naive any more. Often memory utilization and heap sizes are an after thought and are not recognized until the application is in production, often caused by application uptime, production request volume or production sets of data. When the OutOfMemory Error occurs, often the science of development seems to brake down and knobs are turned. First the (-mx) maximum heap space gets adjusted... More is better right. The next OutOfMemory, heads start scratching, code reviews start in earnest, and Google gets several new hits. Did you know that it is possible to get an OutOfMemory error without running out of heap space?

Security Boundaries

Security is a large concern in today's world of software development. Security is a multi-dimensional problem requiring skills at a number of different levels. This session is a security overview of a typical Java web development stack.

So you want to be an Architect

This session is a quick look at all aspects of being a corporate software architect. Whither you are a developer looking to move into the role of architect, needing to have an understanding of what is expected or already in the role of software architect looking for new and interesting ideas, this session is for you.

Spring 3 Without XML

Spring 3 is brand spanking new, with a number of fantastic features. With growth of large and complex Spring applications which struggle with xml manageability and with the added pressure of Guice and SEAM there is a push for less XML, with solution leaning towards annotations. Spring 2.5 adds to the toolset provided in Spring 2.0 to provide a development environment where XML is greatly reduced... or eliminated if you so choose.

REST : Information-Driven Architectures for the 21st Century

There is a shift going on in the Enterprise. While still used and useful, the promises of the SOAP/WSDL/UDDI Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) stack have failed to live up to their promise. A new vision of linked information is enveloping online and Enterprise users. The REST architectural style is squarely behind this thinking as a way of achieving low-cost, flexible integration, increased data security, greater scalability and long-term migration strategies.

If you have dismissed REST as a toy or are unfamiliar with it, you owe it to yourself to see what is so interesting about this way of doing things.

RESTlet for the Weary

If you have started to take a look at REST as way of exposing web services or managing information spaces, you may be frustrated by the support offered by legacy containers. There is no direct support for REST concepts in the J2EE specs (yet). XML-based configurations are so 1990's. Come learn about Restlets, a little API that has caught the attention of many in the RESTafarian community.

Prerequisite: REST (unless you are very comfortable with REST)

Rich Web Pages : Publishing Semantic Content with GRDDL and RDFa

The human web is reasonably well in hand by now. We are getting pretty good at building systems that people find valuable and entertaining. We have not spent as much time concerned about our software friends. There is a ton a rich content available on the web that is too difficult to extract in automated ways using just XHTML, the meta tag and microformats. This talk will introduce you to some emerging technologies from the Semantic Web camp to enrich your web pages with useful information for both automated extraction and improved browsing experiences.

Prerequisite: The Semantic Web: The Future Now would be helpful, but not required

SPARQL: Querying the Data Web

The human-friendly Web is about nicely-formatted, accessible content for users to browse. There is an emerging Data Web that relies on technologies from the Semantic Web stack to link increasingly rich connections between various data sources. SPARQL and RDF are the main tools for expressing and using this connectivity. This talk will introduce you to one of the practical and accessible aspects of employing these ideas on the Web and in the Enterprise.

Prerequisite: The Semantic Web: The Future, Now and Rich Web Pages : Publishing Semantic Content with GRDDL and RDFa would both be helpful but are not required

Semantic SOA : Meaningful Service Strategies

The goal for web services was always to reduce our burden by increasing the potential for reuse of business functionality. Somehow, we got lost along the way in a morass of confusing, unfulfilling and downright broken technologies.

While we are interested in pursuing REST-based systems for managing information, we need some strategies for tying it all together sensibly. If we abandon WSDL, SOAP and UDDI, what do we replace them with? This talk will walk you through combining resource-oriented strategies with technologies from the Semantic Web to describe, find, and bind to services in dynamic, flexible and extensible ways.

We will start to blur the distinction between data, documents, services and focus on information and how it is connected to what we already know.

Prerequisite: The Semantic Web: The Future Now, Give it a REST and SPARQL : Querying the Data Web would all be helpful talks to have attended

The Semantic Web : The Future, Now

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 a vision of machine-processable documents and metadata to improve search, knowledge discovery and data integration and management. The only problem is that there is no such thing. There is no Semantic Web, just the Web we have that is increasingly semantics-enabled.

Forget the hype. Come learn how the technologies of this vision are being used today on the Web and in the Enterprise by more people than you might think.