Session Descriptions

"Bottom 10" Reasons Agile Teams Fail

Agile methodologies such as eXtreme Programming and SCRUM are hot topics today -- and they are also hot targets. When things go wrong on an agile project, it's far too convenient to blame the methodology.

Learn from Ruby, Code with Java

By jumping from Java to Ruby and Ruby on Rails, are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

In this discussion, we'll discuss the benefits of Ruby and Ruby on Rails and the drawbacks of the way we currently build Java applications. Then we'll show you exactly how the situation can be corrected, and possibly even reversed. Can the Java platform achieve what Rails does? I'm going to risk saying: "Absolutely the most important parts can."

iBATIS and the Enterprise Database

This presentation will focus on database challenges that object oriented developers often face in an enterprise environment. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tools are not ideal for all databases, and therefore alternatives such as iBATIS must be sought.

Guerrilla Web Techniques

Frameworks? We don't need no stinkin' web frameworks. OK, so maybe that's overstating the case. Web frameworks do plenty of good things, but sometimes they can also be golden handcuffs. Too many web developers fall into the trap of thinking, "If it can't be done by my web framework, then it simply can't be done."

Holistic Testing

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

Real World Web Services

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

Rolling Your Own Google Maps

The release of Google Maps was a "Wizard of Oz / Technicolor" moment for web developers everywhere. It didn't just change the way we look at mapping sites; it forever changed the way we look at all web sites. It put AJAX on the map, both figuratively and literally.

Testing the Web Tier

Hopefully your test plan involves more than, "Well, it compiled..." JUnit is fast becoming a required part of the modern Java developer's toolkit. Unit testing your Java classes is a great start, but your test plan shouldn't stop there.

This talk will introduce several additional testing tools for the web developer -- HttpUnit, Canoo WebTest, and JMeter. These tools allow you to test a live website with no changes to the production code. Even better, you can test sites that have been implemented in technologies other than Java.

Ajaxian Faces

JavaServer Faces is a perfect platform for implementing Web 2.0 interfaces with Ajax. This session explores how you can use these two potent technologies--JSF and Ajax--together to create applications that look and behave like desktop applications but run in the browser.

JSF: State of the Art

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

JavaServer Faces: A Whirlwind Tour

In April 2005, annual growth rates for jobs in JavaServer Faces, Struts, and Ruby on Rails were all at about 0%. Today, Struts' growth rate still hovers around 0%, but JSF and Rails have taken off. At the end of 2007, both JSF and Rails were growing at a rate of between 400-500% annually (according to indeed.com).

JSF has passed the adoption tipping point, and is now the Java-based framework of choice, as is evidenced by its ecosystem. From vendors such as MyEclipse and RedHat to open source projects such as Seam, Facelets, and Ajax4JSF, JSF is where the action is.

Come see why JSF is so popular. In this code- and demo-intensive session, I'll show you the fundamentals of JSF.

Prerequisite: Some knowledge of Java-based web applications, such as Struts, is a plus, but is not required. If you have a significant experience with JSF, you probably already know most of what's covered in this session.

Shale: Turbo-charge your JSF Apps

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

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

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

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

The Google Web Toolkit, Part One

Developing highly interactive web applications, for the most part requires knowledge of a wide array of technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, JSP, JSF, etc.

With the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Google turns that notion of development on its head. Instead, you implement Ajax applications by writing almost entirely in Java. You use an AWT-like API, which the Google compiler compiles to JavaScript that runs on the client.

Groovy 101: core Groovy

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

Introduction to TestNG, the next generation testing framework for developers

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

Unit Testing Java Objects with Groovy

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

Agile Metrics and Diagnostics: Knowing When and What to Measure

Some Agile teams are still using Waterfall metrics, others aren't measuring anything at all. There's little help to be had: few hard-and-fast Agile Metrics have emerged as effective measures. This might seem surprising, but perhaps the temporary and contextual nature of agile metrics explains the emergence of a more heuristic approach.

The best teams are creating metrics on demand, in support of their goals, applying their understanding of Agile principles and values to create useful measurement tools on the fly. We propose to call these local, contextual measurement tools diagnostics to distinguish them from more long-term metrics used to measure contribution to overall organizational goals.

Since Team metrics or diagnostics are highly contextual, they need to be evaluated carefully to know if they are useful. We will present both long term metrics used by the business, and potential diagnostic measures used by the team. We will present a tool for evaluating diagnostic metrics for Agile teams, and use it to evaluate a few team metrics proposed by participants.

Automating Business Value with FIT and FitNesse

The presentation will briefly discuss stories, the origin and authoring of story tests, and a demonstration of how FIT and FitNesse (FIT living within a Wiki) can be used to automate acceptance tests.

Creating, Telling, and Tracking User Stories

The participants of this session will become agile customers and product owners, using personas to create stories for a sample product development.

Losing Battles and Winning Wars: Adopting Agile

Adopting agile is different for each company, but most companies will go through some amount of change during the adoption of agile.

Ready, Set, Agile?

As with many methodologies, moving agile into an organizations poses larger challenges. Before jumping in, it helps to ask a few questions before "racing toward agility". This session will provide 3 tactical steps that can help your adoption of agile.

“Show Me the Numbers” - Agile Planning Tools and Techniques

This session will focus on tools and techniques for tracking an agile project plan from creation to project completion.

Trends in Enterprise Java

There are a number of trends occurring that are rapidly changing the way we think about and develop Enterprise Java applications. Trends such as

• Annotations, Dependency Injection, and AOP
• Web 2.0 turning the internet into an application platform
• Domain Driven Design
• SOA
• Open Source in emerging economies
• the rise of scripting languages

... and others are changing the nature of software development in Java.

Java5: The Language, The Libraries, The VM

Java5 introduced a whole slew of new features, including annotations (JSR 175), new language features (the enhanced for loop, generics, static imports, and more), new library support (java.lang.instrument, among others), and some interesting enhancements to the virtual machine itself.

Effective Enterprise Java: State Management

Managing state--both transient state (like your shopping cart) and your durable state (like your order placements, your inventory management forms, and so on)--is tricky in an enteprrise application. In this talk, we'll examine some of the trickiness, both high-level and low-.

Java6: Exploring Mustang

Mustang, the Java6 release, is out, and even if you're not looking to adopt the new platform right away, it's important to know what's there so you can start to plan for it. In this presentation, we'll go over the major new features of the Java6 platform, including the new integrated XML services capabilities (JAX-WS and JAXB), dynamic/scripting language support (javax.script), new JVM "attach" capabilities, new annotations supported by the javac compiler, and more.

Pragmatic XML Services

There's a lot of talk about web services, and most of it falls into one of two categories: lots of low-level talk about vendor-specific tools and extensions, or lots of high-level talk that never shows you a line of code. XML services aren't that hard, and in this talk, we'll see how, why and when to do one.

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.

Intro to Java Persistence API (JPA)

In addition to providing a simplified API, the new EJB3 specification (JSR-220) defines a standard ORM Java Persistence API (JPA) that is rapidly gaining in popularity. As you will see in this session, JPA bears a striking resemblance to popular ORM solutions like Hibernate and Toplink. In this session we will explore in detail the new Java Persistence API offered by JSR-220. We will start by discussing the overall design and architecture of the JPA and how the major components within JPA interact. We will then look at defining mapping objects (entities) and how to use the EntityManager to manage these entities. Through interactive coding examples we will investigate the pros and cons of detached entities and merging, how to map and use entity relationships (1-1, 1-N, N-1, and N-N), discuss Lazy Loading, and finally see how to use XML mappings rather than annotations. More advanced features of JPA will be covered in a separate session.

Making Architecture Work Through Agility

As companies continue to change the way they do business, so must the IT systems that support the business. Changes due to regulatory requirements, competitive advantage, mergers, acquisitions, and industry trends require flexible IT systems to meet the demands of the business. Software Architects must therefore make their architectures more agile to meet the flexible demands of today's business. Through real-world examples and scenarios we will explore some of the challenges facing Software Architecture and discuss several concrete techniques for applying agility to both the architecture process and the technical architecture itself. We will also look at various architecture refactoring techniques, and discuss the pros and cons of each. By attending this session you will learn how to apply various agile techniques to improve your architectures and overcome some of the challenges facing software architecture in today's ever-changing market.

The Enterprise Service Bus: Do We Really Need It?

There has been a significant amount of buzz in the community and industry about the definition and role of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), particularly within the area of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). In this product-agnostic high energy session we will take a step back and consider whether we really need an ESB. Through real-world application and architecture scenarios we will see where an ESB would be helpful and where it would be overkill. We will take a look under the hood and find out just what an ESB is really doing, and take a quick look at JBI (JSR-208) and see the impact it has on the ESB worls. Then, using product-agnostic coding examples we will learn what an Enterprise Service Bus is supposed to do, then answer the question about whether the ESB is just a bunch of hype or if we really need it.

New and Exciting in Spring Framework 2.0

Spring Framework is the leading full-stack Java/Java EE application framework. Now Spring 2.0 is here, with three attributes which capture what users can expect in this major new release: Simple, Powerful, and Proven.

Spring Web Flow

Spring Web Flow has created a lot of excitement in recent months by bringing the ability to model a "flow" or "conversation" in a declarative fashion, when creating Java web applications.

Foundations of Ajax

Seemingly overnight, Ajax has gone from an obscure acronym to, well, having conferences devoted to it. People are often surprised when they learn that Ajax isn't really anything new - so if it's yesterday's technology, why all the hype? This talk will examine the course of events that led up to the current love affair with richer client applications. We'll talk examine the technologies that power an Ajax application and discuss how to work with them - and then we'll examine a number of frameworks that will do much of the heavy lifting for us!

Pragmatic Usability (aka, Software Engineer's Guide to Usability)

While some companies have the luxury of a full time usability team, most of us have to make do on our own. Sure, it might be easier (and more comfortable) to focus on all the hip back end goodness, but if your user interface makes users yack, your product is doomed.

Applied AOP

Most people new to Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) are fed up with separation of concerns zealots explaining how great their techniques are at dealing with... logging. Ok, you get it. Logging is a cross-cutting concern that can be appropriately modularized. What else does AOP have to offer? A lot, it turns out. This talk will give an introduction to the motivations of AOP as well as a series of concrete examples drawn from enterprise and client side Java. Come learn how AspectJ-flavored AOP can begin to benefit you immediately either in development or production environments. Learn how to enforce architectural policies, find Swing threading issues, reduce the invasiveness of the Observer design pattern or even improve the reusability of your domain models. Now that Spring 2.0 provides support for AspectJ, the time has never been better to learn about these new (but backwards compatible) ways of thinking about building software.

Applied Design Patterns

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

Applied REST

REST sounds like such a simple thing. But, what is it really? How do you convince your boss to let you try it when she has been sold on the equation SOAP = SOA + P(rofit)? How do you go about building, deploying, publishing and orchestrating web services without the (Un)Holy Trinity of SOAP, WSDL and UDDI?

Introduction to NetKernel : Software for the 21st Century

Imagine the simplicity of REST married to the power of Unix pipes with the benefits of a loosely-coupled, logically-layered architecture. If that is hard to imagine, it may because the architectures available to you today are convoluted accretions of mismatched technologies, languages, abstractions and data models.

NetKernel is a disruptive technology that changes the game. It has been quietly gaining mind share in the past several years; people who are exposed to it don't want to go back to the tired and blue conventions of J2EE and .NET. Not only does it make building the kinds of systems you are building today easier, it does it more efficiently, with less code and a far more scalable runway to allow you to take advantage of the emerging multi-core, multi-CPU hardware that is coming our way.

Come see how this open source / commercial product can change the way you think about building software.

Get Groovier with Grails

Inspired by the Ruby on Rails project, Grails brings the ease of web development and "convention over configuration" to the Java platform. We will learn how to create web applications using Grails, how to integrate it with Hibernate, and how to Ajax it, all using the built in features of Grails. This section assumes that you are familiar with Groovy or you have attended the “Groovy for Java Programmers” session. The session will be example driven with live coding where we will build a web application from scratch.

Open Source Tools for Agile Development

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

Practices of an Agile Developer

You have worked on software projects with varying degree of success. What were the reasons for the success of your last project? What were the reasons for those that failed? A number of issues contribute to project success - some non-technical in nature. In this presentation the speaker will share with you practices in a number of areas including coding, developer attitude, debugging, and feedback. The discussions are based on the book with the same title as the talk.

Refactoring your code - a key step in agility

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

Working with Rules Engines

Rule based programming allows us to develop applications using declarative rules. These can simplify development in applications where such rules based knowledge is used for decision making.