Matt Raible

Presentations

Developing Web Applications with Spring and Ajax

In this session, you will learn what Ajax is and how it is revolutionizing the way thatweb applications are developed. In a similar way, the Spring Frameworks is greatly simplifying the code that we write Java web applications with.

Combining Ajax and Spring can not only make you more productive, but can also greatly enhance your user's experience with your application. This session will show you how to combine the two technologies, as well as provide several tips and tricks to simplify Ajax development.

Test-Driven Development with Spring and Hibernate

One of the hardest parts about J2EE development is getting started. There is an immense amount of open source tools for web app development. Making a decision on which technologies to use can be tough--actually beginning to use them can be even more difficult.

Once you've decided to use Struts and Hibernate, how do you go about implementing them? If you look on the Hibernate site or the Struts site, you'll probably have a hard time finding any information on integrating the two. What if you want to throw Spring into the mix? For developers, one of the best ways to learn is by viewing sample apps and tutorials that explain how to extend those applications. In order to learn (and remember) how to integrate open source technologies such as Hibernate, Spring, Struts, and Ant/XDoclet, Raible created AppFuse.

The beauty of AppFuse is you can actually get started with Hibernate, Spring, and Struts without even knowing much about them. Using test-driven development, AppFuse and its tutorials will show you how to develop a J2EE web application quickly and efficiently.

Spring's AOP and Transaction Frameworks

Aspect-Oriented Programming is a great way to implement cross-cutting concerns (i.e. caching,logging, security, transactions) into your applications. Transactions are an essential piece in enterprise applications for ensuring data integrity. This session covers two topics: Spring's AOP and Transactions Framework.

In the first half, you will learn about AOP and how Spring's API helps you implement interceptors to reduce code duplication in your applications. In the second half, you will learn about Spring's Transaction Framework and how it compares to J2EE's API.

Seven Simple Reasons to Use AppFuse

AppFuse is an open source project/application that uses best-of-breed Java open source tools to help you develop web applications quickly and efficiently. Not only does it provide documentation on how to develop light-weight POJO-based applications, it includes features that many applications need out-of-the-box: authentication and authorization, remember me, password hint, skinnability, file upload, Ajax libraries, signup and SSL switching. This is one of the main features in AppFuse that separates it from the other "CRUD Generation" frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Trails and Grails. AppFuse is already an application when you start using it, which means code examples are already in your project. Furthermore, because features already exist, the amount of boiler-plate code that most projects need will be eliminated.

In this session, you will learn Seven Simple Reasons to Use AppFuse. If you don't use it to start your own projects, hopefully you will see that it provides much of the boiler-plate code that can be used in Java-based web applications. Since it's Apache Licensed, you're more than welcome to copy/paste any code from it into your own applications.

Migrating from Struts Action 1 to Struts Action 2

Struts has outgrown its reputation as a simple web framework and has become more of a brand. Because of this, two next generation frameworks are being developed within the project: Shale and Action 2.0. Action 2.0 is based on WebWork, and though it's backing beans are similar to JSF, its architecture is much simpler, and easier to use.

Migrating to Struts Action 2.0 is more about unlearning Struts than it is about learning the "WebWork Way". Once you understand how simple WebWork is, you'll find that Struts Action 2.0 is a powerful framework that supports action-based navigation, page-based navigation, AOP/Interceptors, components and rich Ajax support.

Come to this session to see code comparisons and learn about migration strategies to use the kick-ass web framework of 2006.