By Ted Neward

There's a set of fallacies that every enterprise developer has fallen for at some point in their enterprise development lives, and unless they've come to realize it early enough, all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences in the long run.

In this talk, we'll go over the Enterprise Fallacies, discuss why they're so insidious and easy to fall into, and how developers can go about making sure they avoid them in the future. Discussions will be relative to both .NET and Java, as well as the emerging Web services stack, as the Fallacies know no technical boundaries.

By Ted Neward

Security's become a hot topic among enterprise developers in recent years, but to many developers, security is still the white elephant in the middle of the room. Discussions about security usually begin with, "Uh, we'll worry about that later", or, "Start with two really large prime numbers.....". Security isn't as hard as developers make it out to be, but it is something that developers need to face and recognize.

In this talk, we'll extract the 10 Items on Security from Effective Enterprise Java and talk about them, giving developers the basic heads-up they need to have when building enterprise systems in Java.

By Ted Neward

Bring all of your enterprise Java questions to this open forum discussion hosted by the author of “Effective Enterprise Java”, Ted Neward.

This session will be a great opportunity to listen & participate in a discussion on all things relating to enterprise Java.

By Ben Galbraith

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.

In this session, I explore three topics that lead to much better Swing applications:

• Proper Swing threading
• High-quality third-party Swing look-and-feels
• Good practices for coding Swing applications

In the threading portion of the session, I explain Swing's event handling architecture and its implications for Swing applications. Understanding this topic is crucial to creating highly-responsive Swing apps. I demonstrate how to use this knowledge in the form of many live-coded examples, and I show how frameworks like SwingWorker and FoxTrot can make this easier. Java's default look-and-feel, Metal, is awful (and in my opinion, the "Ocean" theme in JDK 5.0 doesn't do enough to improve it); you should stop using it immediately. But creating good-looking applications is sadly more than slapping in a look-and-feel; you must also take care to understand the principles behind attractive layouts. I spend the second part of this session exploring how to make your Swing applications look great through a combination of third-party look-and-feels and layout techniques.

By Ben Galbraith

Are you spending more time plumbing your Swing applications than solving business problems? Has your Swing application grown out of control? This session is for you.

In the first part of the presentation, I analyze the architectural problems that plague many Swing applications and present architectures that overcome these problems. These architectures are presented in terms of principles along with a reference implementation. You can therefore either adapt the principles to meet the needs of your existing applications, or incorporate the specific ideas of the reference implementation into your new projects. Fortunately, there are some existing frameworks that have done some of the architectural work already. I present some of these frameworks in the rest of the presentation.

By Ben Galbraith

For many of us, XML has become a ubiquitous presence in application development, whether parsing, validating, or manipulating it. For many of us, all that XML is coupled with pain, in the form of tedious APIs (like, say, the W3C DOM API) and confusing technologies (oh, I don't know, W3C XML Schema?).

In this session, I share the following tips for making the XML in our lives a little easier to deal with: - Use StAX instead of SAX - Use StAX to create XML - Use JDOM instead of W3C DOM - Use XPath to select XML - Use Jaxen to enable XPath over custom trees - Use RELAX NG instead of DTD or WXS - Use Trang when DTD/WXS output is required - Use Sun's RELAX NG Converter when WXS input is required - Consider RELAX NG's compact syntax - Use Schematron to extend schema languages - Consider XML namespaces for versioning - Ignore unknown namespaces

By Ben Galbraith

The Eclipse project's SWT GUI toolkit provides one of the only viable alternatives to Swing for creating so-called rich client applications in Java. Whereas Swing paints its own widgets and has distinguished itself with a complex (and often obtuse) API, SWT relies on the host operating system for widget rendering and sports a simple, clean API. If your goal is to create a Java application that "looks" like a normal Windows application (or OS X, or Linux), SWT will revolutionize your world. In this session, I introduce SWT from the ground up. I start at a high-level, but quickly move into the details of SWT's API. By the presentation's end, attendees will have a solid understanding of SWT.

The Eclipse project's SWT GUI toolkit provides one of the only viable alternatives to Swing for creating so-called rich client applications in Java. Whereas Swing paints its own widgets and has distinguished itself with a complex (and often obtuse) API, SWT relies on the host operating system for widget rendering and sports a simple, clean API. If your goal is to create a Java application that "looks" like a normal Windows application (or OS X, or Linux), SWT will revolutionize your world. In this session, I introduce SWT from the ground up. I start at a high-level, but quickly move into the details of SWT's API. By the presentation's end, attendees will have a solid understanding of SWT.

By Ben Galbraith

This session picks up where SWT Fundamentals leaves off. Among the advanced topics I discuss are creating custom SWT widgets and exploring tight native integration. I combine another compelling topic with the advanced SWT material: JFace. SWT is a more akin to AWT than Swing; its concerned more with wrapping native functionality than providing any high-level abstractions. JFace is an API on top of SWT that provides such abstractions. The combination of SWT and JFace is comparable to Swing. My coverage of JFace includes an introduction to several of its frameworks, such as the Viewer and Window frameworks, along with many examples. Learning JFace will enable you to write complex SWT applications much faster.

This session picks up where SWT Fundamentals leaves off. Among the advanced topics I discuss are creating custom SWT widgets and exploring tight native integration. I combine another compelling topic with the advanced SWT material: JFace. SWT is a more akin to AWT than Swing; its concerned more with wrapping native functionality than providing any high-level abstractions. JFace is an API on top of SWT that provides such abstractions. The combination of SWT and JFace is comparable to Swing. My coverage of JFace includes an introduction to several of its frameworks, such as the Viewer and Window frameworks, along with many examples. Learning JFace will enable you to write complex SWT applications much faster.

By Ben Galbraith

You can do some pretty cool things with XML these days (despite what some curmudgeons in the technology world may claim). In the past few years, XML has solidified its place as the lingua franca of data sharing and data manipulation. But XML as a data transfer language is only marginally interesting. Things get really exciting when XML is dynamically transformed into other formats. In this session, I focus on two XML formats which can be readily transformed into high-quality presentation-centric output formats. XSL-FO is a typesetting format for XML that can be readily converted into PDF (or Postscript and some other formats). SVG is a vector graphics language in XML -- a sort of open-source version of the popular Macromedia Flash format. SVG files can be converted into beautiful, completely scalable -- and interactive - - images.

You can do some pretty cool things with XML these days (despite what some curmudgeons in the technology world may claim). In the past few years, XML has solidified its place as the lingua franca of data sharing and data manipulation. But XML as a data transfer language is only marginally interesting. Things get really exciting when XML is dynamically transformed into other formats. In this session, I focus on two XML formats which can be readily transformed into high-quality presentation-centric output formats. XSL-FO is a typesetting format for XML that can be readily converted into PDF (or Postscript and some other formats). SVG is a vector graphics language in XML -- a sort of open-source version of the popular Macromedia Flash format. SVG files can be converted into beautiful, completely scalable -- and interactive - - images.

By Ben Galbraith

As recent high-profile web apps such as Google's GMail have shown, modern browsers are capable of natively rendering web apps with highly dynamic and compelling UIs - fetching server data without page refreshes, animating and manipulating page contents on-the-fly, even offline use. The line between web and "desktop" apps is blurring.

Experienced web developer Dion Almaer (editor of TheServerSide.com) and noted Java desktop expert Ben Galbraith will describe and demonstrate these new techniques, including how to adapt modern web frameworks such as JSF and Tapestry to ease both the creation and maintenance of these types of applications.

By David Geary

Okay, so you know a little about JSF. You understand managed beans, action outcomes and how to attach standard JSF validators to components in a JSP page.

But there is a great deal of functionality that the average web application supports that JSF doesn't provide out of the box. For example, wouldn't you like to have JSF automatically place asteriks in front of labels for required fields? You are going to implement client-side validation, which JSF does not support out of the box, aren't you? Of course, you're going to test your application, right? And don't forget to trap unauthorized use of the back button.

How do you do all of that stuff in a JSF application? If those are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, then this session is for you. We will explore the outer reaches of JSF development to illustrate how you can bend your next JSF application to your will.

By David Geary

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.

This is a code-intensive, fast-paced look at Apache Shale. Forty-plus slides and five demos makes for an action packed session that illustrates the cool features that Shale provides.

By David Geary

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.

Come see how to use Tiles and Sitemesh with a guided tour from the inventor of Tiles, who has recently become a Sitemesh believer.

By Andrew Glover

The knowledge of how to effectively spot smelly code and replace it with proven patterns will ultimately lead to a more stable, maintainable and elegant code base.

Often times, candidate code for refactoring is based upon a source file's smell, which its spotting can take time to acquire and is largely based upon subjective determinations. The proper use of code metrics, such as Cyclomatic Complexity, Fan-In, Fan-Out, and Depth of Inheritance can also facilitate the discovery of candidate code which is in need of refactoring.

For example, Cyclomatic Complexity is adept at spotting methods containing a high degree of conditional logic, which, consequently, can be replaced with polymorphism as elaborated in Martin Fowler's seminal work, Refactoring with the Replace Conditional with Polymorphism pattern. Additionally, excessively deep hierarchy trees create problematic testing targets, which can be broken out into separate objects with Fowler's Replace Inheritance with Delegation and Collapse Hierarchy patterns. Fan-In and Fan-Out are quite effective at pinpointing brittle code, which can be refactored into a more stable state with a plethora of patterns including Extract Hierarchy and Extract Class.

By Andrew Glover

The open source DbUnit framework provides an elegant solution for controlling a database dependency within applications by allowing developers to manage the state of a database throughout a test. With DbUnit, a database can be seeded with a desired data set before a test; moreover, at the completion of the test, the database can be placed back into its pre-test state.

Most enterprise applications are constructed with a database in mind. Databases, however, create interesting dependency scenarios when it comes to effective white box testing. On one level, isolating application code with mock objects from a data store is an effective means of testing such code. Nevertheless, this level of code segregation is not always easy. Unit testing of EJB Entity beans is practically impossible without a container and an associated data store. Furthermore, applications using JDO-like frameworks also have slight difficulties in creating isolation levels without databases.

The open source DbUnit framework provides an elegant solution for controlling a database dependency within applications by allowing developers to manage the state of a database throughout a test. With DbUnit, a database can be seeded with a desired data set before a test; moreover, at the completion of the test, the database can be placed back into its pre-test state.

By Andrew Glover

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.

In this session we’ll learn about TestNG’s flexible fixture model, its test categorization capability, dependent methods, and TestNG’s powerful parametric testing facility. We’ll also see how both TestNG and JUnit can play together in a build process.

By Stuart Halloway

Java has always provided a model for concurrency and threads. With Java 1.5, this model received a major facelift. Learn how to use the new concurrency utilities to build responsive, scalable, and correct concurrent applications.

Java's support for threads is broad and deep. From the early days of the platform, programmers have used threads, synchronized blocks, and monitors to build safe multi-threaded applications. Java 1.5's new concurrency utilities greatly reduce the need to use these primitives directly. Now, Java provides a set of lock classes and task scheduling tools that provide much more leverage in writing real applications. We'll explore java.util.concurrent, and also see how the Java Memory Model has been corrected in 1.5.

Most of the advantages of java.util.concurrent can also be had in previous version of Java. We'll discuss Doug Lea's concurrency utilities and the backport of java.util.concurrent to 1.4. Both of these are appropriate for production use.

Finally, we'll look at common mistakes in multi-threaded programming. The most common mistake is using threads when you don't need them. We'll look at alternatives to threads, and how to choose between them.

By Stuart Halloway

For centuries people have used crypto to build (and break) secure systems. Computers have only raised the pitch of conflict, providing enormous cryptographic power at commodity prices. Most programmers do not write their own crypto libraries, instead relying on the services of an operating system or virtual machine. But even with all this support, building secure systems is a daunting task.

This talk will cover three things all programmers need to know: 1. the basic tools of computer crypto 2. the programmatic APIs to these tools 3. common programming mistakes that can undermine otherwise secure systems You will learn the basics of hashing, message digests, public key encryption, symmetric key encryption, certificates, and key management. With each, you will see programmatic examples, with advice for correct usage.

By Stuart Halloway

The Java platform is built from the ground up with security in mind. This talk will introduce the security features of the J2SE, building quickly from the basic classes to realistic examples.

You will learn the core APIs:

SecurityManager, AccessController, Permissions and Policy

JAAS Subjects, Principals, and LoginModules

You will then see how to invoke these APIs in real application scenarios. You will learn how to:

Partition your applications to safely invoke downloaded code

Read and write Java policy files

Extend the architecture with custom permissions

Provide secure services through PrivilegedActions

Use JAAS to authenticate and authorize users

By Stuart Halloway

JUnit is great. Jython and JRuby are even better. Unit testing libraries look the same everywhere, so why not use the one that lets you get your job done faster?

Unit testing has taken the world by storm. Almost every major language has a JUnit-like library. And here's the good news: These libraries are so similar that once you learn one, you can use any of them.

Given that many languages interoperate directly with Java, you aren't limited to JUnit. You can pick the library that provides the best language level support for writing concise, easily maintainable unit tests. Circa late 2005, there are good arguments for the unittest module in Jython, and Test::Unit in JRuby.

The talk is divided into three parts:

1. A crash introduction to unit testing Java code. We'll cover test-driven development, test cases, assertions, fixtures, and test suites. We'll be using Jython and JRuby but the concepts are exactly the same in any language
2. A look at the Python and Ruby features that make Jython and JRuby compelling choices. We'll see how tests are faster to develop and easier to maintain than JUnit tests. And perhaps surprisingly, we'll also see how tests scale better when applications get large.
3. A candid comparison of Jython, JRuby, and JUnit, including advantages and disadvantages of each. One size does not fit all.

By Stuart Halloway

Reflection is writing code that manipulates itself. Well-written reflective code automates a broad class of repetitive, error-prone programming tasks. Poorly-written reflective code obfuscates programs and destroys the benefits of the type system. We'll focus on the former.

REFLECTIVE TASKS COVERED IN THIS TALK

• Discovering class members
• Dynamically accessing fields, methods, and constructors
• Bypassing the Java language protection modifiers
• Converting between objects, XML, and relational data
• Generating new classes at runtime
• Intercepting method calls and simple aspects
• The reflection security model

By Stuart Halloway

(3 Hour Session) One of Java's greatest strengths is its flexible deployment model. In this session you will learn how Class Loaders facilitate deployment, and how to troubleshoot Java and J2EE Class Loading problems.

We will begin by looking at the basic class loading model provided by the java launcher, including the classpath, extensions path, and bootstrap path. Next, we will see how J2EE, Ant, browsers, and other container applications extend this model, using SecureClassLoader and URLClassLoader to dynamically load new classes at runtime. These techniques allows side-by-side deployment of multiple versions of the same class, and redeployment of changed classes without shutting down the Java virtual machine.Java's class loader architecture provides a dynamic and extensible mechanism for building applications. You will learn how to use class loaders to deploy multiple versions of classes side-by-side in the same JVM, and how to redeploy components withtout shutting down servers. You will also learn how to troubleshoot class loading problems such as inversion. You will learn to use the context class loader to correctly implement factory methods, and how to load non-code resources.

By Stuart Halloway

(3 Hour Session) One of Java's greatest strengths is its flexible deployment model. In this session you will learn how Class Loaders facilitate deployment, and how to troubleshoot Java and J2EE Class Loading problems.

We will begin by looking at the basic class loading model provided by the java launcher, including the classpath, extensions path, and bootstrap path. Next, we will see how J2EE, Ant, browsers, and other container applications extend this model, using SecureClassLoader and URLClassLoader to dynamically load new classes at runtime. These techniques allows side-by-side deployment of multiple versions of the same class, and redeployment of changed classes without shutting down the Java virtual machine.Java's class loader architecture provides a dynamic and extensible mechanism for building applications. You will learn how to use class loaders to deploy multiple versions of classes side-by-side in the same JVM, and how to redeploy components withtout shutting down servers. You will also learn how to troubleshoot class loading problems such as inversion. You will learn to use the context class loader to correctly implement factory methods, and how to load non-code resources.

By Jason Hunter

Java's new Metadata facility introduced in J2SE 5.0 defines a way to attach decorations to classes, fields, methods, and even packages that can be extracted by the compiler or runtime tools to provide advanced functionality. Think of metadata as an extended @deprecated flag, or think of XDoclet++. In this tutorial session you'll learn how Metadata fits in the Java platform (and how it compares to the C# platform). We'll cover how to use the metadata attributes provided in the core J2SE libraries and how to write your own. We'll also show a bit of what's coming in JSR-181, tasked to define standard metadata attributes for web services.

Attendees should be skilled Java programmers ready to see what's possible in the latest release and learn to make the most of it.

By Jason Hunter

XQuery is a new language from the W3C that lets you query and manipulate XML -- or anything that can be represented as XML, such as relational databases. As a Java developer -- especially a server-side Java developer -- XQuery is key to searching and manipulating large XML repositories or performing any XML-centric task.

This talk introduces XQuery. I'll explain the XQuery language; I'll show how to call XQuery from Java; and as the creator of JDOM, I'll also explain when to use XQuery instead of JDOM, and when to use both.

Attendees should have an interest or need in managing large sets of XML, but need not have any past experience with XQuery. After the session, attendees will be able to program XQuery and know which implementations to trust.

By Jason Hunter

The new Java 5 release introduces a number of significant Java language enhancements: generics, typesafe enums, autoboxing, an enhanced "for" loop, a static import facility, and a general-purpose metadata facility. This talk gives an overview of the changes and helps you understand what all the funny new syntax means.

The main new language topics covered:

• Generics, also called "parameterized types", which let you specify the type of objects used in a collection, among many other things.

• Autoboxing, that lets you implicitly convert from primitives to reference types, and vice-versa.

• An Enhanced For Loop, that lets you iterate over arrays or collections with half the code as before.

• Typesafe Enums, to create object-oriented, extensible enumerated values.

• Static Imports, to put into scope static methods and fields.

• Varargs, that allows methods to accept an arbitrary number of parameters.

• A Metadata Facility, allowing decoration to classes and methods for later tool consumption. Covered in more depth in the "Java Metadata" talk.

• Random new Library Features, like the ability to control external process launching, output formatting, and input scanning.

This talk describes the proposed changes and shows how they work together to improve the Java language. We also take breaks to see how closely Java matches the C# designs!

Attendees are assumed to be competent Java programmers.

By Jason Hunter

Web Caching is very important for high traffic, high performance web site but few people know all the professional-level strategies. In this talk I'll share some of the tricks of the trade, including advanced tips from Yahoo's Mike Radwin.

We'll start with the basics: using client-side caches, conditional get, and proxies. Then we'll talk about more advanced features: how best to handle personalized content, setting up an image caching server, using a cookie-free domain for static content, and using randomization in URLs for accurate hit metering or sensitive content.

Attendees should have experience or interest in how the web works and in cajoling the web into doing their bidding.

By Jason Hunter

There are many interesting and useful algorithms that people just don't remember or never learned. The Boyer-Moore string search algorithm is one prime example. The randomized skip list is another. Both solve common problems with wonderful flair and finesse -- and performance-wise they blow the pants off brute force solutions. This session covers these two algorithms plus several others. It's like your college algorithms course but with a practical bent and absolutely zero proofs. Extra bonus: The Google PageRank algorithm.

This session covers these two algorithms plus several others. It's like your college algorithms course but with a practical bent and absolutely zero proofs. Extra bonus: The Google PageRank algorithm.

By Ramnivas Laddad

J2EE has become the main new platform for enterprise application deployment. Good performance is an important business requirement. Supporting this requirement needs application profiling during the development phases and performance monitoring after application deployment. Come to this session to understand challenges and choices in monitoring J2EE applications.

Performance monitoring solutions must work under constraints imposed by the environment. Further, they must balance conflicting requirements such as overhead vs. richness of information. All of these need careful understanding of both requirements and solutions as well as the costs of any tradeoff decisions.

This session presents various tools and techniques available for monitoring J2EE applications. We will consider requirements of performance monitoring solutions in different scenarios. We will also discuss underlying enabling technologies such as Java Virtual Machine Profiling Interface (JVMPI), Java Virtual Machine Tool Interface (JVMTI), JFluid, JMX, design patterns, and aspect-oriented programming (AOP). During the session, we will demonstrate many of the tools and technologies discussed.

By Ramnivas Laddad

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) enables modularizing implementation of crosscutting concerns that abound in practice: logging, tracing, dynamic profiling, error handling, service-level agreement, policy enforcement, pooling, caching, concurrency control, security, transaction management, business rules, and so forth. Traditional implementation of these concerns requires you to fuse their implementation with the core concern of a module. With AOP, you can implement each of the concerns in a separate module called aspect. The result of such modular implementation is simplified design, improved understandability, improved quality, reduced time to market, and expedited response to system requirement changes. Come to this session and learn all about how AOP can help you simplify developing complex systems.

AspectJ (http://eclipse.org/aspectj) is the leading implementation of AOP for the Java programming language. AspectJ is a new language as well as its implementation. The output produced by the AspectJ compiler is compatible with the Java byte code specification. Further, AspectJ is well integrated with the most commonly used IDEs, which makes the Java developer more productive.

This session is targeted at the developer with no or little familiarity with AOP and AspectJ. It will introduce AOP’s concepts and the AspectJ programming language, along with many examples and live coding to solidify the concepts learned. After attending the session, you will have a clear idea about AOP's value and its practical applications.

By Ramnivas Laddad

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) enables modularizing implementation of crosscutting concerns that abound in practice: logging, tracing, dynamic profiling, error handling, service-level agreement, policy enforcement, pooling, caching, concurrency control, security, transaction management, business rules, and so forth. Traditional implementation of these concerns requires you to fuse their implementation with the core concern of a module. With AOP, you can implement each of the concerns in a separate module called aspect. The result of such modular implementation is simplified design, improved understandability, improved quality, reduced time to market, and expedited response to system requirement changes. Come to this session and learn all about how AOP can help you simplify developing complex systems.

AspectJ (http://eclipse.org/aspectj) is the leading implementation of AOP for the Java programming language. AspectJ is a new language as well as its implementation. The output produced by the AspectJ compiler is compatible with the Java byte code specification. Further, AspectJ is well integrated with the most commonly used IDEs, which makes the Java developer more productive.

This session is targeted at the developer with no or little familiarity with AOP and AspectJ. It will introduce AOP’s concepts and the AspectJ programming language, along with many examples and live coding to solidify the concepts learned. After attending the session, you will have a clear idea about AOP's value and its practical applications.

By Ramnivas Laddad

Refactoring allows reorganizing code while preserving the external behavior, while AOP facilitates modularizing crosscutting concerns in a system through use of a new unit of modularity called aspect. Aspect-oriented refactoring synergistically combines these two techniques to refactor crosscutting elements. Individually, refactoring and AOP both share the high-level goal of creating systems that are easier to understand and maintain without requiring huge upfront design effort. A combination of the two -- aspect-oriented refactoring -- helps in reorganizing code corresponding to crosscutting concerns to further improve modularization that is easy to understand, highly consistent, and simple to change.

Aspect-oriented refactoring provides means beyond conventional refactoring techniques. While steps in conventional refactoring modularize code to a certain point, the use of AOP squeezes out the code that cannot be further refactored. Aspect-oriented refactoring offers substantial improvement to the code in a variety of situations: exception handling policies, local contract enforcements, resource management and optimization schemes, concurrency control, worker object creation, and so forth.

This presentation will examine fundamentals of aspect-oriented refactoring, a few common patterns, and a few examples in J2EE space. The presentation features live coding to illustrate the ideas learned.

By Ramnivas Laddad

The Java generics facility in Java 5.0, similar in spirit to C++ templates, enables implementing parameterized types. Using this facility, you can get more help from the compiler to write type-safe code and avoid many ugly casts. While Java generic facility is simpler than C++, make no mistake; it brings its own set of intricacies! Find out all about this important feature in Java 5.0.

This talk will present Java generics in depth -- from language constructs including the wildcard syntax to “under the hood” handling of generic types in the Java VM. This session features live coding to reinforce the concepts presented.

By Ramnivas Laddad

Design patterns -- object oriented, concurrency control, and J2EE -- all have certain crosscutting elements present. The obvious result of conventional implementation is unclear implementation that is tedious to implement and tough to change. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) offers a way to simplify implementation of these design patterns. Further, AOP offers new design patterns of its own that allow for new ways of implementing functionalities. This session shows how the use of AOP can simplify implementation of design pattern.

Implementing design patterns using AOP offers multiple benefits. First, like other applications of AOP, it modularizes the implementation of the design patterns. The modularization localizes any changes, such as introducing optimization and switching from one concurrency control scheme to another without system-wide re-implementation. Second, new design patterns can be introduced in systems without invasive changes. Third, use of AOP to implement design patterns results in reusable code components. In effect, AOP transforms the reusable concepts in design patterns into reusable code. Further, use of AOP does not modify the intent and philosophy of the target design patterns, thus preserving the investment in understanding the value and consequences of those design patterns.

In this session, we will discuss how fundamentally AOP transforms the pattern implementation. We will look at examples from all the kinds of design patterns mentioned -- object-oriented (GoF), concurrency control, J2EE, as well as aspect-oriented design patterns.

By Brian Sam-Bodden

Hibernate is rapidly becoming the tool of choice when it comes to Object-Relational Mapping in Java. For simple applications with fairly simple object models and database schemas, using Hibernate is fairly straight forward. Unfortunately for most of us real applications have complex object-models that need to be wired to sometimes ancient and convoluted database schemas.

In this session we explore some of the advanced features of Hibernate and how you can use Hibernate to solve the hard problems of Object-Relational Mapping.

By Brian Sam-Bodden

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.

Software development is expensive, when business rules are hard-coded in your application's source code, changes and additions to those rules translate to wasted time and money. Good object-oriented, component-based approaches can alleviate the burden of keeping up with changes in the business world but they still require that expert knowledge of the changes be passed from the decision makers to the business analysts and finally to programmers that need to implement these changes. Business Rule Engines and Business Rule Languages are based on the basic premise of separation of concerns by empowering business domain experts to express the rules of business in a way that it is directly usable by applications. 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.

By Brian Sam-Bodden

XML is quickly becoming the common ground for disparate systems to exchange information and most Java developers deal with XML almost on a daily basis, whether is in deployment descriptors and configuration files or as the data format at the center of their applications.

XOM is a new XML object model that strives to be easy to learn and easy to use. Based on similar principles to JDOM it takes XML programming in Java to the next level by taking correctness and simplicity as its guiding principles while striking a balance between the speed of SAX-based parsing and the manipulation abilities of DOM-like APIs.

By Brian Sam-Bodden

Ant has revolutionized the way we build applications in Java and it has become a de facto standard in the Java world. As applications grow in complexity some developers are finding themselves dealing with ever growing and complex builds. Complex builds have to deal with Multiple Operating System, multiple Application Servers, multiple APIs and multiple stages of development.

This talk would highlight some of the growing pains typically encounter in the evolution of an application build system and possible solutions and best practices that can be applied to several of these scenarios. With the arrival of the Ant version 1.6 many of the lessons learned with large projects have been now incorporated. Ant 1.6 can help you deal with complex builds efficiently.

By Bruce Tate

This session, for the Spring beginner, helps you: • Understand dependency injection and inversion of control • Know the meaning of lightweight containers and Spring • Understand the basic pieces of Spring • See core Spring modules in action, including Persistence, AOP, transactions.

Attendees need not know anything about Spring. This session does talk about integration with core J2EE frameworks like JDBC and transactions.

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 uses concepts like dependency injection and aspect oriented programming to ease standard enterprise development. Spring developers write plain, ordinary Java objects (POJOs), instead of sophisticated components. In this session, you’ll see a basic Spring application. You’ll also see some details about some of the enterprise integration strategies, including:

• Spring AOP • Transactions • Persistence • Model/view/controller

When the session is over, you won’t be an expert, but you should have a much clearer understanding of what Spring does, what it doesn’t do, and why it’s growing so rapidly.

By Bruce Tate

All programming languages have a limited life span, and Java is no different. This is a philosophical session rather than a programming session. Sooner or later, Java will lose its leadership position. This session will explore Java's strengths and weaknesses. We'll try to understand whether conditions are ripe for alternatives to emerge, and what those alternatives may be.

The Java programming language has been tremendously successful. Many of the roots of its success may be surprising to the audience. But every major programming language has a limited life cycle. While it’s true that Java and .NET seem to be the only games in town, some alternatives are beginning to emerge.

In this session, we’ll discuss some of the limitations of the Java language, and the impact that they might have on the productivity of Java developers. We’ll then look at some of the innovations around other frameworks and languages, and some of the features of those languages that boost the productivity of other non-Java developers:

• Typing, and why it matters • Code blocks and closures • Regular expressions • Innovative frameworks

Finally, we’ll take a look at where developers may look at using other languages. Clearly, most of the work that we do will be in Java for the foreseeable future, but certain project classifications may make it much easier to embrace alternatives, for good competitive effect.

By Bruce Tate

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

This free-form session is intended to help attendees choose or validate a persistence framework. In it, the instructor will take questions from the audience, and tailor the session to the questions asked. Bruce will focus on three persistence frameworks: EJB, JDO and Hibernate. He’ll talk about the evolution of each of the frameworks. He’ll talk about the fundamental design philosophies of each, and what makes each unique and strong.

But understanding technical strengths is not enough in the area of persistence. To make the best possible choice, a developer or architect must also understand the politics of persistence, and the marketing pressures that lead to the success or failure of each framework. The proposed common standard across JDO and EJB will get special consideration.

This format has been very popular among nofluffjuststuff attendees. It’s highly tailored to each audience, but still flows with good structure. When the session is over, you’ll have a better understanding of the major persistence frameworks in the Java space, and what makes each valuable. You’ll also understand how much of a role market share and technology play in the success or failure of a persistence framework.

By Dave Thomas

Ruby recently enjoyed its tenth birthday. Instead of cake and candles, the community celebrated by releasing a wave of new libraries and frameworks that make Ruby programming even easier. This talk features some of the best of these, as we explore Ruby.

We'll spend about half the session getting to know Ruby: the syntax, type system, blocks, iterators, and so on. Then we'll dive in and develop some real-world code using web services, RSS, and databases. If you want to come to the Rails talk, and you're not that familiar with Ruby, this talk is a good starting point.

By Dave Thomas

The Ruby on Rails framework has exploded onto the scene over the last few months. Propelled by some genuine benefits, and fueled by a whole lot of controversy, Rails seems here to stay. So, is it a Java killer? (No.) Is it a great way to develop certain classes of web application? (Yes.) Does it really deliver the 10-fold increase in developer productivity that some have claimed? (It depends...)

If you can't help thinking that there must be an easier way of developing web projects, come and join us as we construct an MVC-based Ruby on Rails application using the very latest libraries and tools. You'll get a taste of Ruby, and also a feel for some of the power and productivity gains offered by this remarkable framework. You'll need a grounding in Ruby to get the most from this talk; if you're not already a Ruby developer you might want to attend the Facets of Ruby talk before coming to this one.

By Dave Thomas

Are you frustrated by experts who can't tell you what to do, or by junior team members who refuse to see the big picture? How can you best develop careers: both yours and those of your teammates and managers? How can we learn to apply experience more effectively, and why do the many approaches designed to tame complexity actually end up increasing it?

Dave Thomas, of The Pragmatic Programmers, describes the solutions to these and other problems as he turns the Pragmatic Spotlight (and a good dose of twisted humor) on formal learning models, the Nursing profession, and streamlining sheep.