February 11th, 2003 - Patrick Linskey, VP of Engineering,
SolarMetric
Earlier this year, the
Java Data Objects
(JDO) specification was approved through the
JCP
in a landslide vote 14-0. The Java Data Objects
specification
provides a standard way for persisting objects and is showing a
great deal of promise by increasing application portability, reducing development cycle time, and improving code
quality. Applications written with JDO can be ported seamlessly across any data store without any recompilation or
changes at the source level. Developers using JDO are seeing 20-40% decrease in coding. Java Data Objects works
equally well in managed environments as well as non-managed environments. The following topics
presented:
- Introduction to the JDO standard;
- The benefits of the JDO API;
- A comparison of JDO to other persistence APIs;
- The JDO enhancement process;
- JDO's public interfaces;
- Examples of how to persist data using JDO;
- Examples of how to retrieve data leveraging the JDO Query
Language (JDOQL);
- A description of how to use JDO with EJBs.
March 11, 2003 - Chris Scheuble
- Installation for
Apache Jakarta
Tomcat
Marnie,
ExitCertified
- Introduction to Java
Servlets
& Java Server Pages
April 8, 2003 - Chris
Scheuble - Installation for JBoss
JBoss
is an award winning Java application server developed in open source.
Known for its ease of use, modularity and simplicity, JBoss is a cutting edge Java app server. Just as we installed
Tomcat in March I will show how to install JBoss on the same laptop PC. JBoss offers an EJB container where Tomcat
does not. JBoss still uses
Tomcat
for web services.
Presentation Documents
Ric Goell - Best
Practices for Caching
Ric Goell,
Sr. Manger of Development for
Oracle
's 9iAS
Web Cache
, has been
in the IT industry for 15 years. Prior to his current role at Oracle, Ric worked at Webvan where he was responsible
for the development of a highly scalable Web based application.
Dynamic content provides users a more personal and rich
Web experience. This content is typically generated through business logic and database queries on application
servers. Dynamic content is expensive to generate and the systems that perform these computations were designed to
support tens to hundreds of users rather than the thousands seen today. Dynamic content caching has arisen to combat
this problem. The key challenges in dynamic content caching are the volatility and variation of the content.
Dynamic pages are more volatile not only because they change more frequently, but also because their changes are
often unpredictable in advance. To maintain cache content consistency, flexible content invalidation is
indispensable. Dynamic pages tend to be personalized, too, making them inefficient to cache at the whole page level.
However, even in the most dynamic and personalized pages, many parts of the page can be shared and this is the key.
Edge Side Includes (ESI) is a standard markup language designed to solve this problem by separating highly volatile
and variant page fragments from relatively stable contents. This talk examined the advantages and disadvantages of
caching at different layers in the application stack and provide a brief overview of Oracle's approach to Web
caching. Additionally, best practices and uses for the ESI and Edge Side Includes for Java (JESI) standards were
discussed.
Presentation Documents
Oracle raffled a
Oracle9i JDeveloper
book and provided CD's for
Oracle9i Database
on
Linux
and CD's for
Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE
,
Oracle9iAS TopLink
,
Oracle9iAS Web Cache
,
Oracle9i JDeveloper
. These were full featured CD's that do not expire! (They were not valid for production systems.)
May 13, 2003 -
Charlie Gonzales -
BEA Systems
Simplifying IT Infrastructure
- Simplifying Enterprise Computing through Application Infrastructure
- BEA Enterprise Platform Advantage
Charlie Gonzales BIO
Presentation Documents
June 10, 2003 - Chris
Scheuble / Marnie Knue-Merkel
"Going from MS to Java Frameworks"
- Bill Willis, Director of Engineering,
ObjectVenture Inc.
"Technology that finally delivers on the promise of true object
reuse"
This solution combines pattern definitions and
J2EE
objects - not only allowing developers to create objects but to also
describe how they interact.
A technical presentation on simplifying the delivery of enterprise
and web-based applications with our integrated design and development environment, ObjectAssembler. In this
presentation we would demonstrate how
ObjectAssembler
:
- Uses software design patterns represented in XML to build
design models and generate the base application,
- Provides real time component (EJB,
JSP
,
Servlet
,
JavaBean
and Struts) validation against a components respective
specification using our Intellisynch technology,
- Synchronizes the source code and with its visual
representation of the patterns, components and assemblies that make up the application as it is being constructed
or modified
- Supports round trip engineering between
UML
and Java using our UML Bridge.
Trial CDs containing ObjectAssembler Enterprise Edition were available at the meeting. A few remote control cars and
two copies of "
J2EE Core Pattern Catalog
"
were also be raffled off!
July 8, 2003
Ted Neward
,
DevelopMentor
"
Tiger
- Java 1.5 New Features"
It is anticipated that the Tiger release will be mainly
targeted at the following major themes:
- Reliability, Availability, Serviceability
- Monitoring and Manageability
- Scalability and Performance
- XML and Client Web Services
- Ease of Development
The reliability, availability and serviceability theme
and monitoring and manageability theme is in response to the needs of the growing installed base of mission critical
applications using the
Java
platform.
The scalability and performance theme is focused on
improving the server side and client side
Java
applications runtime.
The focus on XML and web services clients is to ensure
that client application written in the
Java
language can take full advantage of these technologies.
Finally, the
Java
language and platform have been designed with ease of
development in mind, this role of this theme is to drive further enhancements in this area for individual developers
and developers of tools.
The Tiger release will be fully compatible with earlier
J2SE
releases.
Various existing JSR API initiatives will be evaluated as potential
candidates for Tiger. Amongst the possible candidates for evaluation are:
- Management Extensions
- Decimal Arithmetic Enhancement
- Generic Types
- XML RPC
- XML Digital Signature
- XML Digital Encryption
- JDBC Rowset Implementations
- Application Isolation
- Platform Profiling Architecture
The final specification for Tiger may not include all of these JSRs,
and may include some JSRs not present on this list.
August 12, 2003
Tim Schafer
- "Jython"
Jython
is an implementation of the high-level, dynamic,
object-oriented language
Python
seamlessly integrated with the
Java
platform. The predecessor to
Jython
, JPython, is certified as
100% Pure Java
.
Jython
is freely available for both commercial and
non-commercial use and is distributed with source code.
Jython
is complementary to
Java
and is especially suited for the following tasks:
- Embedded scripting - Java
programmers can add the Jython libraries to their system to allow end users to write simple or complicated scripts
that add functionality to the application.
- Interactive experimentation - Jython provides an interactive interpreter that can be used to
interact with Java packages or with running Java applications. This allows programmers to experiment and debug any
Java system using Jython.
- Rapid application development - Python
programs are typically 2-10X shorter than the equivalent Java program. This translates directly to increased
programmer productivity. The seamless interaction between Python and Java allows developers to freely mix the two
languages both during development and in shipping products.
The "Starter Session" presentation
covered
Python's
syntax
,
object orientation
and features.
The "Advanced Session" presentation
covered
Jython's
Java
integration, calling
Java APIs
,
inheriting from Java Classes
,
Servlets
with
PyServlet
,
embedding Jython
,
compiling to byte code
with
Jythonc
. Trial CDs for the following were
available at the meeting:
Pizza and drinks were sponsored by
TEKsystems
and
The Scheuble Group
.
We raffled off "
Java & XML Data Binding
" & "
Toad Pocket Reference for Oracle
".
September 9, 2003
Dan Velasco
- Struts & Tiles
Struts
is an open source framework for building web applications. The core of
the Struts framework is a flexible control layer based on standard technologies like Java Servlets, JavaBeans,
ResourceBundles, and Extensible Markup Language (XML), as well as various Jakarta Commons packages. Struts
encourages application architectures based on the Model 2 approach, a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller
(MVC) design paradigm.
Tiles
is a popular
JavaServer Pages
(JSP) tag library with components for screen definitions, templating,
layouts, dynamic page building, and reuse. Tiles framework was previously called Components framework.
Trial CDs for the following
were available at the meeting:
Pizza and drinks were
sponsored by
TEKsystems
and
The Scheuble Group
.
We raffled off "
JXTA IN A NUTSHELL
".
October 14, 2003
Tim Schafer
-
Hibernate
is a powerful, ultra-high performance object/relational
persistence and query service for
Java
. Hibernate lets you develop persistent objects following
common
Java idiom
- including association, inheritance, polymorphism,
composition and the Java collections framework. Extremely fine-grained, richly typed object models are possible. The
Hibernate Query Language
, designed as a "minimal" object-oriented
extension to
SQL
, provides an elegant bridge between the object and
relational worlds. Hibernate is now the most popular
ORM
solution for Java.
The "Starter Session"
presentation introduced us to mapping objects to relation data sources which happen to currently proliferate the
electronic universe.
The "Advanced Session"
presentation discussed both
conceptually and technically in full detail the pros & cons for each of the following features included in the
Hibernate technology. Hibernate Feature
List
Transparent persistence without bytecode processing
Object-oriented query language
Flexible object / relational mappings
Simple APIs
Automatic primary key generation
Object/Relational mapping definition
HDLCA (Hibernate Dual-Layer Cache Architecture)
Ultra-high performance
J2EE integration
And more....
Trial CDs for the following were available
at the meeting:
Sandwiches and drinks were sponsored by
TEKsystems
and
The Scheuble Group
.
We raffled off "
Mac OS X for Java Geeks
".
November 11, 2003
Chris Scheuble
,
The Scheuble Group
- "Introducing Log4J"
Nick Chalko
,
Chalko.Com
- "Configuring Log4J
Beyond the Generic"
Log4J
Inserting log statements into your code is a low-tech method for
debugging it. It may also be the only way because debuggers are not always available or applicable. This is often
the case for distributed applications. With Log4J it is possible to enable logging at runtime without modifying the
application binary. The Log4J package is designed so that these statements can remain in shipped code without
incurring a heavy performance cost. Logging behavior can be controlled by editing a configuration file, without
touching the application binary. Logging equips the developer with detailed context for application failures. On the
other hand, testing provides quality assurance and confidence in the application. Logging and testing should not be
confused. They are complementary. When logging is wisely used, it can prove to be an essential tool.
The "Starter Session"
presentation introduced us to a MVC structured Java application that desperately needs a better logging method then
System.out.println(...). Log4J was used to demonstrate how to enable a better logging method to your Java
applications.
The "Advanced Session"
presentation discussed technical aspects of configuring Log4J.
- Setting the Log4J to look for changes in the config file.
- Using appender for text file, html file, xml file, WinNT event
log
- Using the "SQL"+Foo.class.getName() pattern
Sample properties file:
Trial CDs for the following were available
at the meeting:
Sandwiches and drinks were sponsored by
TEKsystems
and
The Scheuble Group
.
We had a copy of "
Agile Database Techniques
" from WILEY for review. Also raffled off
"
Java Examples In A Nutshell
" from O'Reilly.
December 9, 2003
Marnie Knue-Merkel
, Exit Certified - "Message-Driven Beans Introduction"
Message-Driven Beans
The "Starter Session"
presentation introduced us to Message-Driven Enterprise Beans.
A message-driven bean is an enterprise bean that allows
J2EE applications to process messages asynchronously. It acts as a JMS message listener, which is similar to an
event listener except that it receives messages instead of events. The messages may be sent by any J2EE
component--an application client, another enterprise bean, or a Web component--or by a JMS application or system
that does not use J2EE technology.
The "Advanced Session"
presentation is open discussion.
Trial CDs for the following were available at the meeting:
Sandwiches and drinks were sponsored by
TEKsystems
and
The Scheuble Group
.
We raffled off "
Java Web Services
" from O'Reilly.
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