Gateway Software Symposium

March 7 - 9, 2008



Event Details

Location

St. Louis Marriott West
660 Maryville Centre Drive
St. Louis, MO 63134
View Map
NOTE: You are viewing details about a past event. We will be back in St. Louis March 7 - 9, 2008. You may view the event details here ».

Session Descriptions

Alex Miller - Sr. Engineer with Terracotta Inc.

Alex Miller

Cluster your Cache with Hibernate and Terracotta

Terracotta (an open source technology) provides a clustered, durable, virtual heap. You can reduce the load on your database by allowing Terracotta to handle sharing and persistence of temporary conversational state in your web application. One option is to simply cluster your existing Hibernate L2 cache (for instance with ehcache).

A higher performance option is to disconnect your POJOs from the Hibernate session and manage them entirely in Terracotta shared heap until they are ready to be written back to the system of record. This option can yield extremely high performance while simultaneously reducing the load on your database, allowing you to scale your system with significantly less hardware.

Design Patterns Reconsidered

The Design Patterns book launched a revolution in object-oriented design and provided a vocabulary for OO developers to communicate their ideas. However, in some cases, patterns used blindly can lead to awkward, confusing, or hard to maintain code. It is time for some common patterns used in Java to be reconsidered so that we can derive the benefits from patterns while minimizing their concerns.

This talk will re-evaluate key patterns like Singleton, Template Method, Visitor, and Proxy. These patterns have downsides and in some cases, do more harm than good. Examples of each pattern will be give in Java and examined for clarity, testability, and flexibility. Important problems will be discussed and examples of alternate solutions will be given.

Exploring Terracotta

Terracotta is an open-source Java clustering technology. It creates a virtual, durable Java heap that is shared across a cluster of Java Virtual Machines. This is done by dynamically instrumenting bytecode at load time to intercept calls to read and write fields, and also to enter and exit monitor locks. Information about these calls is then transmitted to the Terracotta Server (which can also be clustered) and out to other nodes in the cluster as needed. The advantage of this approach is that many Java programs can be clustered without code changes by providing just external Terracotta configuration. Many performance optimizations are performed to minimize communication and locking costs. Terracotta is commonly used for session sharing in web applications, distributed caching, and distributed workflow processing.

This presentation will give an overview of the Terracotta technology, how it's implemented, and common use cases that can benefit from the technology. We will look at some code and cluster some Java applications during the presentation.

Java Collections API

Did you know that Java 5 and 6 added 8 new interfaces and 16 new collection implementations to the JDK, more than doubling the size of the collection API? Collections 201 gives you an update on all of the interfaces, implementations, and utilities and gives you guidance on picking the perfect collection. In particular, Java 5 introduced a new major collection type Queue and a whole new java.util.concurrent package with data structures optimized for concurrent use.


Brian Sletten - Forward Leaning Software Consultant

Brian Sletten

Give it a REST

As developers, we sometimes get to make choices about the technologies we use, sometimes not. We base these decisions on personal experiences, recommendations from others and a general sense of where the industry is going.

Web Services have been all the rage for several years now. We have been told time and again that we should be building systems around them; as an industry, we've never been more confused. Perhaps it is time to Give it a REST.

REST - Live!

You've read the articles, the books, the Ph.D. thesis and all of the meta-commentary about building RESTful APIs, but you're still not sure where to begin.

This is an interactive session and has almost no slides. You should come prepared to discuss ideas and maybe pair program with me and everyone else in the room. Bring your ideas for open source projects that we might want to expose through a resource-oriented model. Bring your concerns about your domains that you are convinced don't fit this model.

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: Give it a REST (unless you are very comfortable with REST)

What's Going On? : Complex Event Processing w/ Esper

We write very complicated software, don't we? In our systems, we detect when simple things happen. Customers log in, people buy things, a stock is sold at a particular price, inventory shifts locations... all of these events mean little things, but what about the larger picture? Complex events are particular patterns of simpler events that suggest something deeper is happening. Do you know how you'd discover these bigger picture occurrences? Come hear how the Esper open source software represents a new class of complex event processing (CEP) frameworks that can be added to even high volume, high transaction systems.


David Geary - Author of Graphic Java and co-author of Core JSF

David Geary

Facelets

Facelets is a combination of Tiles and Tapestry, and it's the hottest JSF-related open source project on the planet. It's popularity is well deserved, and in fact, much of what is in Facelets today will make its way into the JSF 2.0 spec due out in 2008. So not only can you come to this session and see some really cool demos that you can put to use in the real world, but you'll also be learning JSF 2.0 before it's even been defined! How's that for a ROI?

Prerequisite: Some knowledge of JSF is essential. If you're familiar with a templating framework, such as Velocity or Tiles, that's a plus, but not required.

Filthy Rich Clients with the Google Web Toolkit, Part I

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is truly a revolutionary framework that lets you develop Ajaxified web applications without knowing anything about Ajax or JavaScript. But the GWT goes way beyond basic Ajax by letting you implement desktop-like applications that run in the ubiquitous browser.

Filthy Rich Clients with the Google Web Toolkit, Part II

In the second part of this talk, you will learn how to extend the GWT by implementing custom widgets, including a scrolling viewport and a drag and drop framework. After discussing custom widgets, you will see how to integrate database access into your GWT applications, and how to deploy your GWT applications to external servers.

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.

Rich Faces

This talk explores the RichFaces Ajax framework, which is really two frameworks: Ajax4jsf and RichFaces components. In this session you will see how to implement low-level Ajax functionality using Ajax4JSF, and how to use high-level Ajax components from RichFaces.

Prerequisite: Some knowledge of JSF is required, in addition to familiarity with Ajax.

Seam

Have you ever stopped to think that you need to learn two frameworks to develop a non-trivial, database-backed, web application? Struts and iBatis; JSF and Hibernate; Tapestry and EJB3.0. Two frameworks. And then you have to learn to use them together. Why do we have to learn two frameworks just to retrieve "Hello World" from a database and show it in a view. Isn't that crazy?

Now you can use one framework, and use one component model. One. Isn't that nice?

Seam, a framework built on JSF and EJB3.0, unifies the JSF and EJB component models. Seam is a steam roller, quickly gathering market share among JSF newbies and longtime believers alike. Come see what it's all about.

Prerequisite: Some knowledge of JSF is required. If you don't know what a managed bean is, for instance, then attend JSF Whirlwind before this session.



Jeff Brown - G2One Director Of North American Operations - Groovy and Grails Developer

Jeff Brown

Advanced Web Development With Grails

Grails makes web application development both fun and easy. This session dives beyond the basics to cover advanced details of Grails that bring the really exciting features to your applications.

Prerequisite: Grails - Agile Web 2.0 The Easy Way

Agile Test Driven Development With Groovy

Dynamic languages bring a lot of interesting elements to the table for teams interested in doing Test Driven Development (TDD). Groovy lends itself very well to TDD and this session demonstrates many features of the language and its libraries that help teams build more testable systems and build better tests.

Grails - Agile Web 2.0 The Easy Way

Grails is a full stack MVC framework for building web applications for the Java platform. Grails makes web application development both fun and easy. This session covers all of the fundamentals of building web applications with Grails.

Groovy And Your Build

There are numerous roles that Groovy may play in your build process to greatly simplify the management of the build while bringing more capabilities. This session will detail a lot of the things that Groovy can do to improve your build and lessen the amount of effort you spend on your build.

Prerequisite: A Thorough Introduction To Groovy



John Heintz - Principal Consultant with New Aspects of Software

John Heintz

Adding Behavior to Java Annotations

Java's Annotations provide a way to add data to program elements. Annotations are used to configure containers, describe persistence configuration, set security roles, and are defined by nearly every recent JSR standard. This presentation explains the processing options available for consuming Annotations and demonstrates the techniques with live code demonstrations.

Glassbox: Open Source Java Monitoring and Troubleshooting

In this session you will learn about the Glassbox open source troubleshooting and monitoring tool. Glassbox enable detection of common application problems such as database failures, slow operations, thread contention, and excessive distributed calls. Glassbox enables low overhead monitoring and troubleshooting without needing to "bake in" instrumentation up front.

Tool support for Agile Databases: Introducing Liquibase

This presentation introduces and demonstrates Liquibase: a new Java tool to support automating database refactoring and deployment.


Ken Sipe - Technology Director, Perficient, Inc. (PRFT)

Ken Sipe

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 which are scalable. How do you know if the application scales?

Hacking - The Dark Arts

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

Iteration 0

The success of an Agile / SCRUM project is a successful start. The first interaction is often referred to as iteration 0. Other iterations have a set of stories with clear acceptance certain which establishes the velocity of the team and its effort. What then is accomplished in iteration 0? How do we get an Agile process started.

JMX and Spring: Manageability for Spring-based Applications

This session describes management of Java resources using the Java Management Extensions JMX API. JMX provides a unified framework to instrument Java systems with monitoring and management capabilities.

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?

Spring 2.5 - Spring without XML

Spring 2.5 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.

Spring+JPA+Hibernate: Standards Meeting Productivity for Java Persistence

Well the standards created EntityBeans.... yea. and the community created Hibernate. Fortunately the standards body learned some lessons and created JPA. JPA requires a vendor implementation and none make a better choice then Hibernate. Combined with Spring this trio is a powerhouse when it comes to developer productivity on applications requiring persistence.


Mark Richards - SOA and Enterprise Architect, Author of Java Transaction Design Strategies

Mark Richards

EJB3 Core Specification (JSR-220)

EJB3 (JSR-220) offers some great improvements over the prior EJB specs in terms of development simplicity and new features. In this session we will explore in detail some of the new features of the core EJB 3 specification. Included in this session will be a hands-on discussion and demonstration of session beans, dependency injection, interceptors (aop), and Message-Driven Beans (MDB). For the interceptors discussion I will be showing how to define interceptors for enabling a method trace, mocking objects, and sending JMS message notifications to be later picked up by the MDBs I will be creating. During the session I will demonstrate the new features of EJB 3 through interactive coding examples. Note: this session does not cover the new Java Persistence API (JPA) - only the core specification.

Enterprise Messaging Using JMS (Part 1)

The chances are good that at some point in your career you will need to use messaging to pass information between applications, subsystems, or external systems, particularly with service-oriented architecture on the rise. The Java Messaging Service (JMS) allows Java applications to implement messaging using a standard API, thereby removing the dependency on any particular messaging provider. In Part 1 of this session we will take a look at some of the basics of messaging, including sending and receiving messages, message types, and request/reply messaging. I will begin the session by going over the basics of messaging and the JMS API. Then, through interactive coding using OpenJMS I will demonstrate how to connect to JMS providers, send messages, receive messages, and use message properties. Please note that this is a two part session.

Java Persistence: Approaching the Silver Bullet

Java Persistence has come along way since the days of straight JDBC coding and custom framework development. We have at our disposal several outstanding open source frameworks such as Hibernate, Toplink, iBatis, and OpenJPA (just to name a few), and we now have a promising and emerging standards-based solution called Java Persistence API (JPA). However, all to often we find in the Java persistence space that it is a world of one-size-does-not-fit-all. We continually struggle with traditional ORM solutions like Hibernate when it comes to reporting queries, complex queries, complex relationships, and stored procedures, and we also struggle with managing the enormous amount of SQL required for solutions such as iBATIS or JDBC-based frameworks. In this coding-intensive session we will take a detailed look at identifying and overcoming the challenges we face when using frameworks such as Hibernate, iBATIS, and JPA, and how to combine the various persistence frameworks to create an effective Java persistence solution that approaches (but of course does not reach) the silver bullet.

SOA Unplugged

Awareness about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown significantly in the past several years. Unfortunately, along with that growth has come a significant amount of confusion about what SOA really is. SOA has become such a ubiquitous buzzword that it now has many faces and means different things to different people. CIO's, managers, vendors, business users, architects, and developers all see SOA differently which creates a sea of confusion about what is and isn't SOA. In this highly interactive and thought provoking session we will look beyond the hype and marketure of SOA and explore SOA from an architecture and development point of view - in other words, SOA as an architecture pattern. During this session we will look at SOA use cases, services, integration, implementation, guiding architecture principles of SOA, and attempt to answer the following question: What is and isn't SOA?

Transaction Design Patterns

Most web-based applications rely solely on the database to manage transactions, thereby freeing the developer from having to worry about transaction management. While this works in some circumstances, there are times when the use of transactions is vital to the integrity and operations of an application and its corresponding data. In this session I will demonstrate through real-world coding examples why transactions are such a critical part of the application development process. I will review the basics of both programmatic and declarative transactions, then introduce three transaction design patterns and explain when they should be applied, how to use them, and what problems they solve. By the end of this session you will see that by using transaction design patterns you can build an effective transaction management strategy for your application with very little effort.


Mark Volkmann - Software Consultant and Partner at OCI

Mark Volkmann

Implementing Languages with ANTLR 3

ANTLR 3 (http://antlr.org) is a Java-based tool that generates language parsers in a variety of programming languages including Java. This talk will walk through implementation of a domain-specific language (DSL) using ANTLR.

ANTLR differs from most other parser generators in that it supports
unlimited lookahead to select between grammar rule alternatives.

While languages such a Ruby and Groovy can also be used to implement
DSLs, they bring with them the baggage of their own syntax rules.
ANTLR allows you to make the syntax of your DSL be exactly what you want to be.

We'll start with lexer rules to break a character stream into tokens,
write parser rules that build an abstract syntax tree,
and write tree parser rules that walk the AST and
execute the code that was fed to the lexer.

We'll also demonstrate use of ANTLRWorks which is a
free graphical editor and debugger for ANTLR grammars.
It is particularly useful in stepping through the construction of ASTs.

After attending this talk you'll be ready to begin using ANTLR
to implement your own languages.

Prerequisite: none



Michael Nygard - Agile technology leader and dynamicist

Michael Nygard

Failures Come In Flavors (part 1)

The typical JEE application does not reach the fabled "five nines" of availability. Far from it. It's more like "double eights". Come see why enterprise applications and web sites are only serving users 88% of the time instead of 99.999%.

Part 1 of 2

Failures Come In Flavors (part 2)

What can we do about the dismal uptime of typical applications? We are asked to provide "five nines", but only reach 88%, on average. Come learn how to prevent the Stability Antipatterns from biting you. Apply these Stability Patterns to contain damage, recover from shocks, and survive disasters.

Part 2 of 2

The 90-Minute Startup

Cloud computing is taking the world by storm. Amazon's Web Services, EC2, and S3 provide completely virtual infrastructure, letting startup and existing companies create sites and web applications faster than ever before.

In this session, Michael will use cloud computing to create and deploy a fully-functional web site. You will learn how to create and run your own virtual infrastructure in the clouds.


Nathaniel Schutta - Author, speaker, software engineer focused on user interface design.

Nathaniel Schutta

Designing for Ajax, part 1

So you've convinced the boss that your new web application just has to have Ajax...but now what? With dozens of libraries making even the most blinkish of interactions trivial, how do you decided where to sprinkle the magic Ajax dust? This talk will give a plain old boring "web 1.0" an Ajax facelift with a focus on improving the user experience providing you with a game plan for introducing Ajax to your world.

Designing for Ajax, part 2

We'll pick up where Part 1 left off working in even more advanced approaches such as offline support with Google Gears.

Improving Code Quality

It seems that software follows the second law of thermodynamics - in other words, code tends towards disorder. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, and we have a number of tools and techniques that we can apply to keep our code in tip top shape. This talk will discuss ten things you can do to fight back!

Project Smells

We all know that code can have a certain...odor but frankly so can projects. Everyone has their favorite horror story or tale of a death march. In this talk, we'll discuss common project smells and what you as a developer can do to maintain your sanity - and your hair line!


Richard Haefel - VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.

Richard Haefel

10 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

An effective software architect understands that every application is different and requires unique choices regarding programming language, middleware, integration, data access, user interface design, etc. Richard Monson-Haefel has distilled knowledge from his own experience and from personal interviews with the World's best software architects to define 10 principles every software architect should know in order to be effective.

Developing Rich Internet Applications

With literally hundreds of RIA products (e.g., Adobe Flash, Nexaweb, Backbase) and open source Ajax projects (e.g. Dojo, GWT, Prototype) to choose from. Picking the right RIA technology for the job requires months of research. Richard Monson-Haefel has been researching and writing about RIA alternatives for two years and has already done the research so you don't have to.

Understanding Open Source Licensing

What does GPL, LGPL, MIT, Apache licenses, copy left, and dual licensing mean? Richard Monson-Haefel explains both the legal and technical implications of the major open source licenses in plain English. He explains when and how you can use open source in the enterprise and in the development of software products and how to protect your organization from abusing open source licensing.



Scott Davis - Author of "Groovy Recipes" & TDD Expert

Scott Davis

Grails for (Recovering) Struts Developers: A Groovy Alternative

Struts enjoys an unprecedented marketshare in the Java web development space -- 60%-70% according to most surveys. As newer, modern web frameworks come to the scene, very little attention is paid to the real costs of migrating an existing Struts application. This talk shows you ways to mix Groovy into a legacy Struts application, dramatically reducing both the lines of code and the complexity. We'll also introduce you to Grails (a Groovy-based web framework) whose URL-mapping capabilities allow it to replace your Struts application without breaking legacy URLs.


Groovy, Grails and Google Maps: Mashups 101

Groovy is a new dynamic language that dramatically speeds up Java development. Grails is a complete web framework in a box, including a web server and a database. Google Maps allows you to add maps to your webpage in a few lines of code. Put all three together and you are built for speed.

Groovy, The Red Pill: Metaprogramming, the Groovy Way to Blow a Buttoned-Down Java Developer's Mind

This talk focuses on the ways that Groovy can turn a traditional Java developer's world-view upside down. We'll start by talking about how you can thumb your nose at The Man by leaving out many of the main syntactic hallmarks of Java: semicolons, parentheses, return statements, type declarations (aka Duck-typing), and the ever-present try/catch block. Then we'll look at features like operator overloading and method pointers that Groovy welcomes back into the language with open arms.


Groovy, the Blue Pill: Writing Next Generation Java Code in Groovy

There are wild-eyed radicals out there telling you that Java is dead, statically-typed languages are passe, and your skills are hopelessly out-of-date. Those extremists are the same ones who don't bat an eye at throwing out years of experience to learn a new language from scratch, pushing aside a familiar IDE for a new one, and deploying to a whole new set of production servers with little regard to legacy integration.

While this "burn the boats" approach to software development might sound exciting to some folks, it's giving your manager the cold shakes right now. What if I told you that there was a way that you could integrate seamlessly with your legacy Java code, continue to use your trusty IDE and stable production servers, and yet take advantage of many of the exciting new dynamic language features that those fanatics keep prattling on about? You'd probably say, "Groovy!" I would, too...


KEYNOTE: How to Lie with Open Source

Following in the fine tradition of such books as "How to Lie with Statistics", "How to Lie with Charts", and "How to Lie with Maps", this provocative talk explores our most cherished myths, misunderstandings, and outright lies about Open Source software. Without a firm grasp of the truth, it is difficult to recognize FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) as "Facts Under Duress". And if you don't know the truth, how can you lie about it?

Real World JSON

JavaScript Object Notation is becoming a familiar delivery platform for Web 2.0 content. JSON gives you all of the flexibility of a RESTful web service without the hassle of trying to deal with deeply nested, complex XML in a language that is conspicuously lacking in native XML support. In this talk, we look at popular websites (like Yahoo!) that offer JSON output. We look at client-side JavaScript code that effortlessly consumes JSON in the browser. We even look at ways to easily generate JSON from Java Servlets (using JSON.org libraries) and the native support for JSON that Grails offers out of the box.

YSlow: Building Your Website for Speed

How optimized is your website? YSlow, a FireFox/FireBug plugin, doesn't pull any punches. It gives any website an A, B, C, D, or F rating based on 14 individual analysis points. You'll be amazed (or depressed) at what YSlow thinks of your site. In this talk, we'll walk through these points step by step, learning what Yahoo! (the creator of this utility) does to keep its web properties running as quickly as possible.


Ted Neward - Enterprise, Virtual Machine and Language Wonk

Ted Neward

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 Annotations

Want to get the soup-to-nuts story on Java annotations? In this presentation, we'll first talk about what annotations provide to the Java language. After setting ourselves a conceptual basis to operate from, we'll look at the language definition for Java annotations, from how to use them to how to define them. Finally, we'll take a look at the other side of annotations, consuming them at source-level (using "apt", the annotation processing tool), class-level (using a bytecode toolkit such as BCEL), and at runtime (using enhancements to the Reflection API made in Java5).

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to ClassLoaders

If you've ever gotten a ClassCastException and just knew the runtime was wrong about it, or found yourself copying .jar files all over your production server just to get your code to run, then you probably find the Java ClassLoader mechanism to be deep, dark, mysterious, and incomprehensible. Take a deep breath, and relax--ClassLoaders aren't as bad as they seem at first, once you understand a few basic rules regarding their operation, and have a bit more tools in your belt to diagnose ClassLoader problems. And once you've got that, and hear about ClassLoaders' ability to run multiple versions of the same code at the same time, and to provide isolation barriers inside your application, or even compile code on the fly from source form, you might just find that you like ClassLoaders after all... maybe.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Concurrency (Part 1: Threads)

Java's threading capabilities took a serious turn for the better with the release of Java5, thanks to the incorporation of the java.util.concurrent packages, a set of pre-built components for thread pooling and execution, synchronization, and more.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Concurrency (Part 2: Concurrency)

Java's threading capabilities have been a part of the Java platform since its inception, yet for many Java developers, using Threads still remain a dark and mysterious art, and synchronization beyond the use of the "synchronized" keyword is almost unknown.

Prerequisite: The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Concurrency (Part 1: Threads)

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Hacking (on) the JDK

Ever since its 1.1 release, the Java Virtual Machine steadily becomes a more and more "hackable" (configurable, pluggable, customizable, choose your own adjective here) platform for Java developers, yet few, if any, Java developers take advantage of it. Time to take the kid gloves off, crack open the platform, and see what's there. Time to play.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Native Code

As much as the Java Virtual Machine and libraries provide a comfortable womb in which to write code, moments appear in every Java developer's life when they just have to call down to code that exists at the native, C-executable, level. Java provides a standard API for doing this--Java Native Interface--but its use is at once both darkly mysterious and... well... painful.

The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Performance and Scalability

Wondering why your enterprise Java app just... sucks? Trying to figure out why you can't get more than 10 concurrent users online at the same time? Looking for ways to try and spot the slowdowns and ways to fix them?


Venkat Subramaniam - Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

Venkat Subramaniam

Acceptance Testing Application Behavior

How do you ensure your applications meet the expectations of your key customers? In this session we will explore using the FIT tool and Behavior Driven Design tools to do exactly this.

BDD in Java and Groovy

In this presentation we will take a look at what BDD is and look at tools
to create them in Java and Groovy.

Caring about your Code Quality

We all have seen our share of bad code. We certainly have come across some good code as well.
What are the characteristics of good code? How can we identify those? What practices can promote
us to write and maintain more of those good quality code. This presentation will focus on this
topic that has a major impact on our ability to be agile and succeed.

DSL in Groovy

DSL or Domain Specific Languages focus on a domain or problem at hand. They're expressive, but their
restricted scope keeps them simple and small from the user point of view. However, designing them is not easy.
In this presentation we will explore the features of Groovy and show how they can be used to create DSLs.

Dynamic Languages in a Spring Application Architecture

Dynamic languages provide some great capabilities for adding dynamic behavior to your Spring applications. In this presentation we will take a look at the various options for mixing dynamic languages with Spring.

Know your Java?

Java has been around for well over a decade now. It started out with the goal of being simple.
Over the years, its picked up quite a bit of features and along comes complexity. In this presentation
we will take a look at some tricky features of Java, those that can trip you over, and also look at some
ways to improve your Java code.

Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi Service Platforms

OSGi is a specification that helps with versioning Java modules at runtime.
Spring helps with dependency injection of Java components and beans.
Spring has embraced OSGi and allows you to integrate different OSGi implementations into your
Spring applications. In this presentation we will look at the rational for mixing Spring and OSGi
and look at code examples of the same.




Alex Miller

close

Alex Miller Sr. Engineer with Terracotta Inc.
Alex Miller is a Sr. Engineer with Terracotta Inc, the makers of the open-source Java clustering product Terracotta. Prior to Terracotta, Alex worked at BEA Systems on the AquaLogic product line and was Chief Architect at MetaMatrix. His interests include Java, concurrency, distributed systems, query languages, and software design. Alex enjoys writing his blog at http://tech.puredanger.com and has spoken at a number of Java user group meetings and conferences.




Brian Sletten

close

Brian Sletten Forward Leaning Software Consultant
Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. He has a background as a system architect, a developer, a mentor and a trainer. His experience has spanned defense, finance and commercial domains with security consulting, network matrix switch controls, 3D simulation/visualization, Grid Computing, P2P and Semantic Web-based systems. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and currently lives in Fairfax, VA. He is a partner in Zepheira, LLC, a new services company focused on using semantic-oriented technologies to solve architectural and data integration problems not handled by conventional tools and techniques.


David Geary

close

David Geary Author of Graphic Java and co-author of Core JSF
David Geary is the president of Clarity Training, Inc. (corewebdevelopment.com), where he teaches developers to implement web applications using JavaServer Faces and the Google Web Toolkit.

A prominent author, speaker, and consultant, David holds a unique qualification as a Java expert: He wrote the best-selling books on both Java component frameworks: Swing and JavaServer Faces (JSF). David's Graphic Java Swing was one of the best-selling Java books of all-time and Core JSF, which David wrote with Cay Horstman, is the best-selling book on JavaServer Faces.

David was one of a handful of experts on the JSF 1.0 Expert Group (EG) that actively defined the standard Java-based web application framework, and he's currently helping to define the next version of JSF on the JSF 2.0 EG.

Besides serving on the JSF and JSTL Expert Groups, David has contributed to open-source projects and co-authored Sun's Web Developer Certification Exam. He invented the Struts Template library which was the precursor to Tiles, a popular framework for composing web pages from JSP fragments, was the 2nd Struts committer and contributed to Shale.

A regular on the NFJS tour, David also speaks at other conferences such as JavaOne and JavaPolis. David has taught at Java University and was twice voted a JavaOne rock star, for presentations in 2005 and 2007.



Jeff Brown

close

Jeff Brown G2One Director Of North American Operations - Groovy and Grails Developer
Jeff Brown is the VP of Professional Services at G2One and a member of the core Groovy and Grails development teams. For over 10 years Jeff has been involved in designing and building object oriented systems.

Jeff teaches a number of Java and object oriented training courses in addition to doing consulting and mentoring work for industries including Aerospace, Financial and Medical. Areas of expertise include Java, agile web development with Groovy and Grails, distributed computing, object database systems, object oriented analysis and design and agile development.


John Heintz

close

John Heintz Principal Consultant with New Aspects of Software
John D. Heintz is a Principal Consultant with New Aspects of Software where he is responsible for finding clean solutions to complex business and technology problems.

In 12 years of professional work John has built many component and distributed systems, led agile teams, and mentored /trained on many technologies. John has deep experience with high-leverage technologies like Spring, JPA, Ruby, AOP, AJAX, REST/HTTP, and SOA systems.



Ken Sipe

close

Ken Sipe Technology Director, Perficient, Inc. (PRFT)
Ken Sipe is a Technology Director with Perficient, Inc. (PRFT), IBM's largest service partner, where he leads multiple teams in the development of solutions in the SOA, Web 2.0 and portal domains, on both the Java and .Net platforms.

Ken was the founder of CodeMentor, where he was the Chief Architect and Mentor, leading clients in the execution of RUP and Agile methodologies in the delivery of software solutions. He is a former trainer for Rational in OOAD and RUP, and a CORBA Visibroker trainer for Borland. He continues to enjoy providing training and mentoring in all aspects of software development.

Ken has a deep need to be highly diversified. Ken often works with IT executives on high-level strategic roadmaps, currently geared around service oriented architectures (SOA). Ken also likes to keep his hands "dirty" in the code, which has him on a regular basis, pairing or otherwise producing code. Ken is regularly requested by clients that know him to "rescue" projects, either through the streamlining of processes or the rapid production of code.

Ken is a certified JBoss developer and is a frequent participates on open source projects. Ken is currently interested in the growing maturity of SOA solutions in the open source space, such as the ESB solutions like ServiceMix and Mule, or rules engines such as JBossRules.



Mark Richards

close

Mark Richards SOA and Enterprise Architect, Author of Java Transaction Design Strategies
Mark Richards is a Director and Sr. Solutions Architect at Collaborative Consulting, LLC, a Boston-based Business and Architecture Consulting Firm, where he is involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of Service Oriented Architectures in J2EE and other technologies. He has been involved in the software industry since 1984, and has significant experience and expertise in J2EE architecture and development, Object-oriented design and development, and systems integration. Mark served as the President of the Boston Java User Group in 1997 and 1998, and the President of the New England Java Users Group from 1999 thru 2003. Mark is currently working on the 2nd edition of the "Java Message Service" book from O'Reilly. He is also the author of "Java Transaction Design Strategies", contributing author of "NFJS Anthology Volume 1", contributing author of "NFJS Anthology Volume 2", and contributing author of the upcoming "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" book from O'Reilly. Mark has many architect and developer certification, including ones from IBM. Sun, The Open Group, and BEA. He is a regular conference speaker at the No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium Series and speaks at other conferences and user groups around the country. When he is not working Mark can usually be found hiking with his wife and two daughters in the White Mountains or along the Appalachian Trail.


Mark Volkmann

close

Mark Volkmann Software Consultant and Partner at OCI
Mark Volkmann has been a software consultant for Object Computing, Inc. (OCI) in St. Louis since 1996. He has been developing software in Java since 1995.

Mark has created and teaches many courses in Java, XML and Ruby. They include: Introduction to Java, Java Syntax for Non-C Programmers, Java Programming, Advanced Java Programming, Creating Graphical User Interfaces Using Java (Swing), eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XML Programming Using Java and Web Services Using Java, and Ruby Programming.

Mark is a member of the St. Louis Java User Group steering committee and a regular presenter for that group. He has written for XML Journal. Mark has also presented at XML DevCon conferences, No Fluff Just Stuff Java symposiums
and the St. Louis Ruby User Group.



Michael Nygard

close

Michael Nygard Agile technology leader and dynamicist
Michael strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers across the country. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Michael has spent the better part of 20 years learning what it means to be a professional programmer who cares about art, quality, and craft. He's always ready to spend time with other developers who are fully engaged and devoted to their work--the "wide awake" developers. On the flip side, he cannot abide apathy or wasted potential.

Michael has been a professional programmer and architect for nearly 20 years. During that time, he has delivered running systems to the U. S. Government, the military, banking, finance, agriculture, and retail industries. More often than not, Michael has lived with the systems he built. This experience with the real world of operations changed his views about software architecture and development forever.

He worked through the birth and infancy of a Tier 1 retail site and has often served as "roving troubleshooter" for other online businesses. These experiences give him a unique perspective on building software for high performance and high reliability in the face of an actively hostile environment.

Most recently, Michael wrote "Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software", a book that realizes many of his thoughts about building software that does more than just pass QA, it survives the real world. Michael previously wrote numerous articles and editorials, spoke at Comdex, and co-authored one of the early Java books.


Nathaniel Schutta

close

Nathaniel Schutta Author, speaker, software engineer focused on user interface design.
Nathaniel T. Schutta is a senior software engineer in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with extensive experience developing Java Enterprise Edition–based Web applications. He graduated from St. John’s University (MN) with a degree in Computer Science and has a master’s of science degree in software engineering from the University of Minnesota. For the last several years, he has focused on user interface design. A long-time member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group, Nathaniel believes that if the user can’t figure out your application, then you’ve done something wrong. Along with his user interface work, Nathaniel is the cocreator of the open-source Taconite framework, has contributed to two corporate Java frameworks, has developed training material, and has led several study groups. During the brief moments of warm weather found in his home state of Minnesota, he spends as much time on the golf course as his wife will tolerate. He’s currently exploring Ruby, Rails, and (after recently making the switch) Mac OS X. Nathaniel is the coauthor of the bestselling book, Foundations of Ajax.


Richard Haefel

close

Richard Haefel VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.
Richard Monson-Haefel is the author of Enterprise JavaBeans (Editions 1 - 5), Java Message Service and one of the world's leading experts and book authors on enterprise computing. He was the lead architect of OpenEJB, an open source EJB container used in Apache Geronimo, a member of the JCP Executive Committee, member of JCP EJB expert groups, and an industry analyst for Burton Group researching enterprise computing, open source, and Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. Today, Richard is the VP of Developer Relations for Curl, Inc. a RIA platform used in enterprise computing. You can learn more about Richard at his web site http://www.monson-haefel.com




Scott Davis

close

Scott Davis Author of "Groovy Recipes" & TDD Expert
Scott Davis is an internationally recognized author and speaker. He is passionate about open source solutions and agile development. He has worked on a variety of Java platforms, from J2EE to J2SE to J2ME (sometimes all on the same project).

Scott's books include Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java, GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, The Google Maps API, and JBoss At Work.

Scott is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com, a news and information website that tracks the latest developments in Groovy and Grails. He also writes a regular column for IBM DeveloperWorks -- Mastering Grails.

Scott is a frequent presenter at national conferences (such as No Fluff, Just Stuff) and local user groups. He was the president of the Denver Java Users Group in 2003 when it was voted one of the top-ten JUGs in North America. After a quick move north, he is currently active in the leadership of the Boulder Java Users Group. Keep up with him at http://www.davisworld.org.


Ted Neward

close

Ted Neward Enterprise, Virtual Machine and Language Wonk
Ted Neward is an independent consultant specializing in high-scale enterprise systems, working with clients ranging in size from Fortune 500 corporations to small 20-person shops. He speaks on the conference circuit, including the No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium tour, discussing Java, .NET and XML service technologies, focusing on Java-.NET interoperability. He has written several widely-recognized books in both the Java and .NET space, including the recently-released "Effective Enterprise Java". He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two sons, four video-game consoles, thousands of books (on programming and otherwise), and eight PCs.



Venkat Subramaniam

close

Venkat Subramaniam Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects, and speaks frequently at international conferences and user groups. He is author of ".NET Gotchas" (O'Reilly), coauthor of 2007 Jolt Productivity Award winning "Practices of an Agile Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf), and author of "Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer" (Pragmatic Bookshelf).