Session Descriptions

Easing into Agile

How do you get started with an Agile development methodology? Everyone has been talking about eXtreme Programming for years, but how do you get it introduced to your team? Many times, you're not simply transitioning from from one methodology to another -- you're introducing a methodology for the first time. Adding structure to a previously unstructured endeavor. Adding a touch of discipline where programmers once roamed free.

Holistic Testing

Mark Twain once said, "Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Do you feel the same way about Unit Testing? Are you actively testing your code, or are you just thinking about testing your code... some day... once you get some more free time...

Real World Web Services

In this talk, we'll survey the web services exposed by leading websites (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay) and discuss how they are driving the AJAX revolution. You'll see examples of RESTful, SOAP, and JSON web services, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Ajax, Flash, and Java - Choosing The Right Rich Client Technology for Your Next Project

Today's users are beginning to demand richer and richer application experiences. Plain html pages simply don't cut it anymore. Applications like Google Maps (Ajax) and Yahoo Maps (Flash) show how the UI experience can be pushed to the next level. As an IT manager, how do you decide which route to take however? Should you use Ajax because it is the new "it" technology. Is Flash a viable option with its 95%+ browser availability? Perhaps Java deployed through web start is really the best choice in contrast to what the buzz would lead you to believe. This presentation takes a look at these three core rich client technologies from both deployment/user experience and ease of development perspectives.

Creating Polished Swing Applications

Too often, Swing applications are slow, ugly, and hard-to-maintain. It turns out that it doesn't have to be this way. Swing can be used to create highly-responsive, beautiful applications that are very maintainable. If this isn't consistent with your own experience, don't feel bad; its not very obvious how to make Swing sing.

Introducing the Eclipse Rich Client Platform

Rich client application development using Java can be intimidating giving the vast flexibility in application design and structure. It also can be frustrating to create the large number of support services (persistence, menus, event and job frameworks) that a large scale rich client applications needs. The Eclipse Rich Client Platform is one project attempting to solve these issues by providing a core infrastructure that not only provides the day to day services a rich client application developer needs, but also providing a suggested path to guide you down the road of designing your application. This presentation introduces both the Eclipse RCP and the tools provided by the Eclipse IDE that assist developers in writing RCP apps.

Advanced Enterprise Debugging Techniques

This session discusses techniques and tools for debugging enterprise applications (without using System.out.println()!)

Clean Up Your Code: 10 Java Coding Tricks, Techniques, and Philosophies

This session delivers 10 techniques for improving your code, whether you are freshly graduated or a grizzled veteran.

Language Oriented Programming Part 1: Theory

This session shows how to use Java as the building block for domain-specific languages. It discusses the next revolution in programming: language-oriented programming and the nascent tools that support it.

SOA: Next Wave of Enterprise Development or Return of the Son of CORBA?

Is Service Oriented Architecture the next wave of distributed computing or just the same old crap in a shiny new package? This session provides an overview of what most people agree is the definition of SOA. I talk about SOA, ESB, CORBA, your MOM, and a bunch of other acronyms.

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.

Hands-on Rails

Come to this exciting preview of one of the leading web application framework contenders with the potential to be the Next Big Thing: Ruby on Rails. An innovative framework with an eye-popping array of ultra-cool features such as active record and native support for Ajax, Rails greatly simplifies web application development and puts the joy back in software development. Rails is easy, fun, and very productive; in fact, in the throes of Rails-mania, some converts have claimed that developing with Rails is at least 10 times as fast as your favorite Java framework. Could that be? Come see for yourself.

JSF: State of the Art

In 2005, JSF hit its stride, as evidenced from overwhelming support from both vendors and the open-source community. JSF 1.0 had plenty of holes, but open-source projects have arisen to address those needs. This session takes a look at three of those projects: Tomahawk (MyFaces component library) FaceletsSeam

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 Web UIs

User interfaces are usually the most turbulent aspect of an application during development. Constant tinkering with the UI means constant changes to your code, so as a UI developer, you want to minimize the scope and effects of those code changes.

Open-source Java provides two powerful software packages that help you manage UI complexity: Tiles and Sitemesh. Tiles composes webpages from discrete regions of your user interface known as tiles. A tile contains a JSP page for layout and one or more JSP pages for content. Sitemesh decorates webpages with decorators that can be associated with URL patterns. Once you set up your decorators, you can decorate pages that match a decorator's URL pattern.

Shale: Turbo-charge your JSF Apps

JavaServer Faces is a well designed user interface framework, but it lacks a number of features you might otherwise expect out of the box; for example, JSF does not explicitly provide support for client-side validation.

So, from the folks that brought you Struts, comes Shale, a collection of useful enhancements to JSF. A top-level Apache Software Foundation project, Shale adds some really cool features to vanilla JSF, including:

Web flow: script dialog flow Remote Method Calls: easily call JavaBean methods from JavaScript Tapestry-like views: code views in pure HTML Use Apache Commons Validator validators on the client or server, or both JSF testing framework: mocks for easy JSF testing

There's a lot of cool stuff in Shale that makes JSF a much more compelling proposition. Come see what it's all about.

Groovy 101: core Groovy

It has been said that Grails is the addiction and Groovy is the drug. If you want to start building slick web applications rapidly with Grails it helps to start with a solid understanding of the Groovy language itself.

Introduction to TestNG, the next generation testing framework for developers

No one will argue that JUnit has positively affected the quality of thousands of Java applications around the world. JUnit’s simplicity and ease of use ushered in a whole new era of code quality; however, as many developers have found, its simplicity has also limited its use. TestNG was designed from the ground up to overcome some of JUnit’s limitations; moreover, TestNG’s features make it a great tool to complement your JUnit tests.

Unit Testing Best Practices

In the years since JUnit’s introduction, a number of frameworks have been built to enhance its utility for testing and validating XML, controlling the state of a database, testing legacy code, performance testing, and functional web testing.

Unit Testing Java Objects with Groovy

What makes Groovy particularly appealing with respect to other scripting platforms is its seamless integration with the Java platform. Because it's based on the Java language (unlike other alternate languages for the JRE, which tend to be based on earlier predecessors), Groovy presents an incredibly short learning curve for the Java developer. And once that learning curve has straightened out, Groovy can offer an unparalleled rapid development platform.

Advanced Hibernate

Hibernate is easy to get started with, but can sometimes be hard to make efficient or secure. In fact, the default settings for Hibernate createapplications that will run slowly, cause unwanted round trips to the database, and may be more restrictive and/or permissive from a security standpointthan you would otherwise want.

Ajax Architecture

Ajax applications have unique architectural challenges and opportunities. This presentation will show you how to take advantage of the Ajax's strengths, and work around its quirks.

JavaScript for Java Programmers

This presentation covers JavaScript from the perspective of a Java programmer. We assume that you may be using an Ajax toolkit, but still need to be able to read, modify, and test the JavaScript code in your application. You will learn the common idioms of JavaScript by looking at working code from Prototype and Scriptaculous.

Spring AOP

Learn to use Spring AOP, aspect injection. and AspectJ integration

Spring Dependency Injection

Dependency Injection (DI) is the cornerstone of Spring. The core concept is quite simple, but (surprise!) actual practice can become complex. To take full advantage of Spring DI, you need to understand not only the basics on configuration, but also the container lifecycle model and the various hooks provided by the framework.

Spring Fundamentals

The Spring framework is one of the fastest growing open source frameworks. New job postings are gaining rapidly, and many customers are adopting Spring instead of heavier alternatives. In this session, we’ll introduce Spring. You’ll see how Spring can give you much of the power of EJB, without the complexity or pain.

Spring Security with ACEGI

Spring offers developers a simpler, more robust method for configuring applications. These benefits extend to security through the ACEGI framework. ACEGI makes the otherwise daunting task of securing your application logical and straightforward. More importantly, through its support for single sign-on provision through Yale's CAS system and its ability to provide instance-level authorization, Spring extends the common security model of most J2EE apps beyond what they are traditionally capable of.

J2EE Security @ Work: J2EE Meets JAAS

Have you wasted time writing lots of security-based code and ever wondered if there's a better way to add security to your application? Are you confused by declarative security? Have you read about JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Service) but wondered where it fits? Have you ever said, "Can I just see a working example"? If so, then this talk is for you.

Java/EE Web Services and SOA @ Work: Architecture & Development

Have you tried to deploy J2EE Web Services and thrown up your hands in frustration at the lack of tool support? Do you want to know how to develop and deploy Java EE-compliant Web Services so that they work every time? Would you like to see how to develop/deploy Web Services in Spring with XFire? Are you wondering if SOA is just hype and fluff? Do you think SOA is just marketing's re-packaging of Web Services? Would you like to know how Web Services and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) fit together? If so, then this talk is for you.

Java/J2EE Architecture @ Work: EJB 3 vs Spring and Hibernate

You've used EJB in the past and been disappointed - it was too heavy and difficult to use. Like Bruce Tate, maybe you've gone from "Bitter" to "Better, Faster, Lighter". With EJB 3 shipping in early 2006, maybe it's time to take another look. We'll compare EJB 3 with alternative frameworks - Spring and Hibernate - to see if EJB 3 has closed the gap.

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.

Applied Design Patterns

Just about every modern software developer has a copy of the Gang of Four "Design Patterns" book sitting on a shelf; many of them have actually read it. The dark secret of the patterns community is that there is often a large gulf between whiteboard simplicity and real-world complexity. Language choice plays a part in the design (and even importance) of patterns. The situation is made even more confusing by the fact that many of the core patterns have now been "voted off the island" for one reason or another. This talk will give a pragmatic overview of the motivations behind design patterns and will focus on applying a handful of the GOF patterns to example scenarios in Java, Ruby and C#. A quick introduction to the role AOP plays in changing the patterns landscape will also be covered.

Introduction to 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.

Java 5 Features, What's in it for you?

A number of new features have been introduced in Java. What benefit do these features offer you. Are there issues with using these features. For instance, when should you use annotation? The objective of this presentation is not simply to introduce you to the features, but to the effective use of these as well.

Open Source Tools for Agile Development

As a Java developer, you have taken the time to learn the basics of the language and relevant parts of its rich API. However, you need more than that to develop serious industrial strength applications. In this presentation, the speaker will introduce you to a number of open source tools which you can use to improve your application quality and your development process.

Portal Standards and implementation

Portals and Portlets allow you to personalize your web application. However, developing and deploying portlets across different portals can be a challenge. What is WSRP and JSR-168. How are these related and how are these different? Are these competing technologies or do they work with each other?

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.

Refactoring your code - a key step in agility

Refactoring is one of the core practices in Agile Software Development. Refactoring is based on some core principles that apply to more than writing good code. But, what's refactoring? Why should you do it? How do you go about doing that? What tools are available to successfully refactor your App?

Working with Rules Engines

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.

Introduction to Hibernate

O/RM (Object/Relational Mapping) seeks to eliminate repetitive or tedious work enabling the CRUD (create, read, update, delete) that underlies most applications. Hibernate is a popular, open-source O/RM tool that uses reflection (instead of code generation, like EJB, or bytecode injection, like JDO) to manage your persistence layer.

Politics of Persistence

This session will help a Java developer choose a persistence framework. After the session, you will • Understand the core strengths and weaknesses of the main persistence frameworks in the Java space • Understand where marketing influences can impact persistence • Know what’s going on behind the scenes to impact the persistence pictures • Answer questions about persistence frameworks that might not be mainstream

Three Technologies to Watch

The state of the art is progressing rapidly, and dynamic languages are driving the revolution. Find out about these topics that will be central to programming. We'll discuss continuation servers, metaprogramming frameworks and functional langauges.

What's New in Spring 2

In this session, we'll review the new features of Spring 2.0. If you've been using Spring 1.x, you'll want to hear about the improvements.

Where Agile meets Argyle: New processes in established companies

Agile programming is a collection of core principles and techniques that allow software developers to create lighter, more responsive applications, and to have fun doing it. Many established organizations are either openly or sub-conciously hostile to many of the principles of Agile development.