Java User Group Meetings in June

This month I made a attempt to make several user group meetings in the Dallas area. The first one was the Java-Mug meeting last week. This month topic was Groovy. I like the concepts of Groovy that allows it to integrate with Java so well. I don't know how much I'll use it in project yet but I will keep it in mind.

The next one that I went to was the Grails talk at the Spring Users group. Grails seems a little like what we did in another project with PHP. It was never published and wasn't as complete as Grails but the same ideas. I might use Grails if I use Groovy for some quick prototyping. I'll just have to see...

The next day I went to the Next Big JDK Thing. They are starting a multi-month discussion on JRuby. My goal was to find out about JRuby and how it fits into Java. However, for what I saw it looks a little hacky. The Java connects are cumbersome and just doesn't visually fit in my opinion. The odds of me using JRuby is very slim. However, I can't wait for the November meeting on JavaFX...

Brian

Lone Star NFJS Conference Day 3

Day 3 of the Lone Star conference. I started out yesterday attending Brian Sam-Bodden two lectures about Hibernate. I wanted to look at using Hibernate and learn about the concepts. Brian did not let me down. This is exactly what I needed. I was able to learn about Hibernate and some of the basic techniques. He also gave examples of when to use the different configurations. During his second lecture he gave 10 ways to use hibernate more effectively. Hibernate is not a solution for every case but I fully understand when and where this product would be of value. If I am going to build a OLTP site I will probably use Hibernate. If I am building a site that is more reporting based or will be handling larger datasets then I will probably use iBatis or another solution.

After lunch I wasn’t sure which one to attend. After talking with other attendees I decided to go with Mark Richards talk about Java Persistence – Approaching the Silver Bullet. Yes, I know that this makes my third persistence lecture in one day but this is an area that I’m focused on at the moment in my career.

Mark’s talk further examined the differences between iBatis and JPA (Hibernate). He showed examples why to use one or the other in a very clear format. This drove home the point that Brian Sam-Bodden had this morning and also highlighted some of the deficiencies of each type of solution. Mark also pointed out that these may not be the only solution you may need and gave a list of the top 25 persistence frameworks that should be investigated.

Since I was on the java persistence bandwagon today I just decided to stay in the same room and listen to Mark’s second lecture about Transactional Design Patterns. This was a good discussion about the right way to implement a transaction. Did you know there are 3 transaction design patterns to implement a transaction correctly. All that I really considered before was the one (start trans) do something (complete trans) else (rollback). Ask me about this if you want to know more or get Mark’s book http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/JTDS.

This was a long weekend and my brain is hurting with all of the knowledge it tried to soak up in a short period. However, I feel that this was a fantastic event and I can’t wait for next year. I know that I’ll be a better programmer because of it.

Brian

Lone Star NFJS Conference Day 2

Day 2 started out with a little drooling... I'm mean Drools rules engine. I wanted to attend this talk by Brian Sam-Bodden to evaluate it's possible use with the business rules that tends to be wrote over and over in most programs. I think that it is possible but I don't really have a warm fuzzy about using Drools yet as I don't know if this is a technology to stay long term. Side note: What is long term in this business? Who knows.

The next conference was the one that I was waiting for the Spring Security talk. Looking back I wish that I attended more of the Spring conferences (the other two) but it's ok. I learned a lot from the ones that I attended. Anyway, Craig Walls discussion on the spring security helped me to understand from a high level view how to implement the security models around my code. Thanks Craig for you dedication to Spring. I will be using this in some not so future projects.


The last two talks that I attended were by Neal Ford. Neal is a fabulous speaker. He keeps your attention with examples and illustrations. Neal talked about test driven design and then code metrics. Both discussions were very enlightening. This may be the session that will have the biggest impact on my coding. I have been thinking that there is a better way to develop, test at the same time and regression test. This is it! I can’t wait to start my new future of coding. Thanks Neal!

Lastly, we had the Birds of the Feather meeting. This is where we sit down with some of the speakers and talk one-on-one. They had the sessions Architecture, Dynamic languages and Spring/Hibernate. I went with the one for Spring. Not because of Craig Walls but because this gave me a little more in depth look into Spring. A good side effect of this is that I was able to meet Brian Sam-Bodden and get to know him a little more. It may not have been as beneficial as the classes themselves but I still enjoyed it.

Keep posted for tomorrows update.
Brian

Lone Star NFJS Conference

Today is the second day of the java No Fluff Just Stuff conference. I have to complement Jay for putting on a good conference so far. Right now I'm waiting for the second session to start with Craig Walls talk on the Spring Security. This is the topic that I have been waiting for.

Yesterday I went to the JSF talk by David Geary. I liked that presentation and it gave a good overview of JSF. I don't know If I subscribe to JSF yet but at least I know more about it then I did a week ago. The next session that attended was the RIA talk from Richard Moson-Haefel. I commend Richard for being very enthusiastic about the RIA concepts but I just don't agree with some of his theories about pushing most of the computation to the client side because the industry will move back to client only apps. I think that some RIA is a good idea but just us it in the right place.

The last presentation that I attended yesterday was the talk from Craig Walls on Spring Web Services. I don't have any current plans to use WS yet but I love the ideas in Spring and if I need to implement WS I'll look at Spring WS in more detail. Thanks again Craig.

After that we had dinner and then the Keynote from Neal Ford: Ancient Philosophers & Blowhard Jamborees. This was truly the best of the day. Definitely a wake up call for all US programmers, developers and architects. The talk had humor, history and a look at what is going on in our industry.

I can't wait for the rest of this weekend. Keep posted for my next entry

One day away from Lone Star Java Conference

One day away from the Lone Star Java conference here in Dallas, TX. I'm looking forward to it. I have picked out my classes and will be ready to attend tomorrow at 12:00. I'll update the blog about each conference and the speakers.


Brian