Greater Oregon Software Symposium

April 20 - 22, 2007 - Portland, OR


Embassy Suites Hotel - Downtown Portland
319 SW Pine Street
Portland, OR   97204
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Howard Lewis Ship

Creator of Apache Tapestry

Howard Lewis Ship is the creator and lead developer for the Apache Tapestry project, and is a noted expert on Java framework design and developer productivity. He has over twenty years of full-time software development under his belt, with over ten years of Java. He cut his teeth writing customer support software for Stratus Computer, but eventually traded PL/1 for Objective-C and NeXTSTEP before settling into Java.

Howard is respected in the Java community as an expert on web application development, dependency injection, Java meta-programming, and developer productivity. He is a frequent speaker at JavaOne, NoFluffJustStuff, ApacheCon and other conferences, and the author of "Tapestry in Action" for Manning (covering Tapestry 3.0). Lately, he's been dipping his toes into alternate languages, including Clojure.

Howard is an independent consultant, offering Tapestry training, mentoring and project work as well as training in Clojure. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Suzanne, and his children, Jacob and Olivia.



Presentations

Pragmatic Unit Testing with TestNG and EasyMock

You've heard about unit testing but were daunted when it came time to put the pedal to the metal. That's because JUnit is just one tool and there's others you need to learn about, including the wonderful and wierd EasyMock and the easy and powerful TestNG.

Unit testing with JUnit only gets you so far; even when you've refactored your code and hidden all your implementations behinds interfaces you are still stuck with the problem of testing the individual pieces. If you've hit this point and despaired, know that there are tools to help ... including the wierd and wonderful EasyMock. We'll discuss unit testing in general, and how EasyMock is used to to generate mock objects, allowing you test each class in isolation. We'll also leave JUnit behind and investigate using TestNG, a modern and improved test framework. We'll then learn how to tame EasyMock's awkward API with some modest refactoring and naming conventions.

Introduction to Tapestry 4

An introduction to the Apache Tapestry web application framework, which will explain the concepts and features of the framework with some simple applications. We'll discsuss Tapestry forms, request cycle, component object model. The use of several important components, including BeanForm and Table will be highlighted, along with meta-programming using the Trails framework.

Tapestry is a powerful open-source Java web application framework that stands apart from most other technologies used for creating web applications ? it is based on highly reusable components, which are assembled to form complete pages. This session will get you started with Tapestry, showing how to build a simple form-based application. Along the way, we'll see how Tapestry simplifies your job: We'll see how Tapestry HTML templates are easier to create and maintain than JavaServer pages (JSPs). We'll see how Tapestry's built in error reporting lets you find and correct errors with startling speed. We'll see how Tapestry takes over responsibility for building and interpreting application URLs, eliminating large amounts of boring, error-prone, manual coding. Most importantly, we'll see how Tapestry bridges from the stateless world of HTTP and servlets into a more natural, more productive world of actual object oriented engineering ? allowing you to build applications in terms of objects with methods and properties (a true revolution if you are used to traditional servlets).

We'll also take a peek into more advanced aspects of Tapestry, such as its input validation subsystem that provides server- and client-side validation, as well as more advanced Tapestry components such as Table (a powerful data grid), and the Trails meta-framework that creates complete applications without almost no coding. Once you've learned a little bit about Tapestry, you might find it hard to go back to your old approach!

Introduction to Tapestry 5

Tapestry 5 is a complete rewrite of Tapestry from the ground up. It takes everything good about Tapestry and cranks the volume up to eleven, while removing the frustrating parts of using Tapestry. This session takes the wraps off this new and innovative technology, showing off important new features such as live class reloading (the ability to change your Java classes and continue using the application without interruption or redeployment), the simplified coding model, and the total lack of XML. This session is of interest to those already using Tapestry 4, and those new to Tapestry and ready to jump on the bandwagon.

Tapestry 5 really does take everything great about Tapestry and crank it up, all with the goal of making your job as a web developer easier. Being able to change your classes at will within a running application is just the tip of the iceberg; Tapestry 5 is designed to break down the barriers to developer productivity by simplifying every aspect of creating a web application.

Tapestry 4's base classes and abstract methods are all gone, replaced with pure POJOs and a handful of annotations. All the XML configuration of Tapestry has been removed as well. Tapestry 5 practices convention over configuration with a vengeance, introducing smart defaults and intelligent logic to let Tapestry do the right thing.

Books

by Howard M. Lewis Ship

Tapestry in Action (In Action series) Buy from Amazon
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  • The creator of Tapestry details how to use this new framework's components to create rich web-based GUIs using links, images, and HTML forms. The challenges of web application development are discussed, such as managing server-side state properly, application localization, and maintaining synchronization between the client web browser and the application server. At the same time, the benefits of a clean separation between presentation logic and business logic and how well Tapestry succeeds in keeping these two concerns apart are identified. Written for new Tapestry users and even developers new to creating web applications in general, this guide includes extensive notes on development "gotchas," including common Tapestry errors and how to fix them. Advanced techniques are covered as well, including creating entirely new components, integration with traditional servlet and JSP applications, and creation of client-side JavaScript. Finally, a complete J2EE application, the Virtual Library, is presented and analyzed in detail.