If you’re in business you need computer systems to support your team. Systems to find previous dealings with a customer, systems to allow your team to work together, systems to stop people finding out things that they shouldn’t.
Once your business passes the 100 employee mark and is heading for ‘Enterprise’ scale, chances are you need custom software written just for you, in addition to he ’shrink wrap’ stuff you’ve been able to get away with until now.
Most custom Enterprise software is written in (or uses a large element of) Enterprise Java.
Enterprise Java is hard to get started with - it’s a big and complex framework because it solves big and complex problems. The Spring framework makes it easy.
OK, so we’re Spring nuts. But nuts only because it’s solved problems for FirstPartners over the last 4 years. What we like:
Spring allows you to use just enough Enterprise Java to solve your problem
Spring complements Enterprise Java, not replaces it.
Spring gives you a gentle slope to using Enterprise technologies.
Spring works well with Java, Oracle, .Net , (J)Ruby and pretty much any mainstream technology - including most of the widespread Java Frameworks like Struts and Hibernate.
So you wait ages for one Spring Event in Ireland, then two come along at once. We’ve written about Rod Johnson speaking in Dublin on Tue March 11th. Now there is a full day Spring Event in Belfast the day before (March 10th). And it’s sponsored by Momentum NI, so it’s free. And the Hilton Hotel is right beside Belfast Central train station, so it’s easy to get to from Dublin.
The full agenda is here (more details below), but given the importance of Spring to the Enterprise world, and the fact that the top four Spring guys are speaking, we reckon that it the Enterprise event of the year. The booking form is here.
Spring Ireland 2008
10th March 08:3010th March 17:30
Hilton Belfast, 4 Lanyon Place, Belfast (Beside Central Train station)SpringSource is proud to announce Spring Ireland 2008. Join us for a free one-day conference with presentations from the SpringSource team including a keynote from Rod Johnson.
Keynote: Spring into the Future - Rod Johnson
The Spring Framework began in 2002 with Rod’s best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development; one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE, Rod is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on Java and J2EE development.With the rapid expansion of SpringSource and move to new corporate HQ in Silicon Valley, this is a rare UK opportunity to hear Rod provide his views and explore the future of J2EE application development.
What’s New in Spring 2.5 - Sam Brannen
Sam is a lead architect at SpringSource and one of the most experienced developers within the organisation.This session provides delegates with an overview of the new features available in Spring 2.5. Specifically, highlighting the simplified and extensible configuration support provided via configuration annotations and new XML configuration namespaces, new Java 6 support, updates to Spring AOP, improved JDBC and JPA support, annotation-driven web MVC controllers, the new annotation-based TestContext framework for unit and integration tests and more!
SpringSource Professional Services – Greg Southey
Greg has built SpringSource’s UK Professional Services organisation into the leading Spring consultancy business in the world.
This is a brief resume of some of the 97 major projects completed by the UK Professional Services team in 2007. Delegates will hear about the business drivers behind some major development projects, the business issues faced and how they were resolved in partnership with the client.
Spring as a Full Stack Web Framework - David Syer
As Principal Consultant at SpringSource, Dave leads the way in the understanding of satisfying business requirements using the Spring Portfolio. His easy manner cloaks a prodigious knowledge of application development.
This session explores the “full stack” web framework trend and answers the question: how does Spring stack up? This session defines what a full-stack web framework is, then provides a fair technical comparison between a Spring-centric web development stack and the alternatives. Delegates will head about the feature-set of modern “full stack” web frameworks, and what Spring has that differentiates itself from the pack.
Spring in Ireland – Ian Graham
Ian Graham, Momentum, will explore the use of Spring in Ireland and introduce case studies from companies who are using the Spring family of products.
Round Table Discussion - Rod Johnson, Rob Harrop, Dave Syer, Sam Brannen & Greg Southey
Your chance to ask Rod and his team anything that’s on your mind regarding Spring!
Flash is created by cool people who wear black and use Apple Macs. If you’re not sure as to what flash is, the chances are that if you’ve seen something on the web recently that made you go ‘wow’ for it’s coolness, then it was built using Adobe Flash.
To add substance to this froth Java people can use Flash (instead of normal web pages) to create cool pages that do useful stuff. For example Google Analytics uses Java and Flash to create a stunning User Interface. Even though Ajax and DHTML give you a lot of interactivity on your web pages, Flash goes one better at the small cost of not being as good for SEO and requiring a plugin (that most people already have installed).
So, what are you to do if you want to combine the coolness of Flash with the heavy lifting of Enterprise Java on the Server? The two main options are:
Flex from Adobe is one way for Java people to create flash. The core toolkit is free, but the editor costs about $500 and that’s before you pay for using it on your servers. More details in the previous blogposts on Adobe Apollo and Adobe Flex.
Open Laszlo Project is open source all the way, but does’t have a drag and drop editor (i.e. it’s more technical than graphical). Still , it allows you to create some cool effects , such as this Flash Clock.
More (In progess) notes on Open Java and Flash are on the wiki. In an impulse buy , I bought the OpenLaszlo in Action yesterday. As an EBook , with rebate (coupon LZ35607 before the end of August) it costs about 10 Euro. Initial impressions are good (both for the book and Open Laszlo) , but I’m still working my way through it (so don’t quote me on it).
Disclaimer: I get a rebate if you buy the book from Amazon, but not if you buy the (Cheaper) E-Book direct from Manning. I bought the E-Book this time, but have got free books from Manning in the past for having reviewed (as yet unpublished) JBoss items.
From Jake, organiser of the Dublin Java User Group.
Subject: Conference Announcement - Call for Speakers
From: Jakub Korab Date: August 15, 2007 06:41 AM R
I am happy to announce what I hope will be the first in a series of major Java events here in Dublin. In conjunction with IrishDev the Dublin JUG will be hosting the Irish Java Technologies Conference in early November. This 2-3 day event aims to bring together the big names in Java right here in Dublin.
We are currently in the process of organizing speakers for the event. If you have any suggestions of technologies/topics that you would like to hear discussed, particular speakers you would like to hear, or would like to present on a topic, please email myself or .
(Struts is one of the most popular way for companies to build their websites. This was to be posted on Bill moaning about Struts 1 problems, but Bill’s blog isn’t accepting comments at the moment.)
Bill,
I hate to spoil your Struts 1 party , but most of these problems have been known for some time (and the Struts team would be the first to articulate them). Struts 2 is a huge improvement and , as you mention, there are good alternatives out there (including Spring MVC).
The problem is that migration from Struts 1 to (for example) Struts 2 , while easy, still carries a risk for the project in question. It can be hard to convince the business decision maker when all they see is pain (’so you’re going to break the existing site?‘) for very little gain (’where’s the immediate payback of upgrading?‘).
My advice is to stick with Struts 1 on existing projects. Use Struts 2 (or even better, Appfuse) on new projects. And for new code on existing projects, consider running them both side by side. They’re all tried and tested solutions.
The course (summary below) is a private session. If there’s enough interest I’ll setup a public training session, or cut it back to 1 hour and do it as a ‘free’ intro session. If you can’t wait for that, Mark Proctor’s blog has a lot of useful rules information, and Tim Shadel has the pdf of a presentation that he gave in Phoenix Arizon on his blog.
Knowledge and Process Management
JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam
Executive Briefing
Description: Success or failure in your business depends on dealing with information faster and better than your competitors. This briefing shows you how the JBoss Business Stack (Rules , jBPM and Seam) can do this and how to apply it to your organisation. Crucially, the briefing shows you when not to use these and details the alternative approaches.
The briefing will give delegates an overview of JBoss Rules within a web / enterprise development environment, how to architect an distribute rules within multi-tier applications and how to link these components with existing sources of information using Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).
Audience: This Briefing is suitable for IT Managers and Directors, IT project managers and technical staff who need an insight into the latest JBoss technologies and business processes, and business managers who need to be aware of the new application models and to give buy-in and commitment to applications developed within it.
Duration: Half-day
Objectives: On completion of this Briefing, delegates will:
Understand the benefits JBoss technologies offers your business and the key areas where it should be used.
Know how to successfully use JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam with new and existing systems and technologies, including the use of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).
Be able to boost projects using pre-built components and frameworks and be able to choose the right one for their needs.
Be aware of the main precepts of good application design within the Java component framework, as well as knowing the main Enterprise Java architecture components, terminology and acronyms and their interaction.
Understand how end-to-end applications are built using the JBoss frameworks (Rules, jBPM, Seam) and appreciate their organisational impact.
Presenter Biography
Paul Browne has 13 years experience delivering IT Projects in the Financial, IT/ Telecoms, Pharmaceutical and Public sectors. An author on JBoss Rules for O’Reilly Books, he has delivered courses for Limerick Institute of Technology, Siemens, Dell, Trigraph and IACT. Holding a Degree in Business from UUC, he is awaiting conferral of an Msc. in Advanced Software Engineering from UCD.
Lost in the hype around Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is the fact that the idea is really really simple. It’s all based on the idea that most applications (and that includes websites) are built either to be used by people , or used by computers. The pictures below (a free preview from the Enterprise Java Briefing) show what I mean.
In a ‘normal’ application, such as a online banking website, we need to remember what the user did last (are they logged in, what account are they looking at, are they in the middle of making a payment). If we didn’t , the user would get annoyed about having to repeat themselves every step of the way. It would also make for pretty complicated screens, to allow the user to enter all the information in one go. Instead , we allow the user to enter information in several steps, and remember where there are each time.
In an application designed to be used by computers, we don’t have to worry about this. We can force the computer to give us all the information required all in one go - username , password, bank account to take money from , bank account to give money to, date to execute transaction. For a computer , this is actually easier ; we make one call to our banking service and we are told it has succeeded or failed. It’s also easier for us to build our service:
Each service (transfer money, book flight , execute share trade) only does one thing.
Because each service ‘forgets’ after each call, we don’t need to worry about trying to remember what we were doing before.
Because we have no memory, services are very scalable; we can make several copies of the same service and put them in a pool. Any client can talk to any service - no waiting for a particular server to become available.
So that’s Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) : programs that do one thing (a bit like a function call to a method) exposed that other computers can call. So what’s the big deal? Like all good ideas , a simple concept goes a long way.
Take a look at the picture below. It’s like a Visio diagram, but in fact it’s drawn by the Eclipse Based JBoss IDE. It shows a workflow for an online commerce store - pretty easy to understand. This example uses JBoss Java Business Process Managment (jBPM), but companies such Tibco, Cape clear and Oracle BPEL have similar products.
Here’s the clever bit; each of these steps is executed by one of the services that we talked about earlier. This means that if the business process changes (and it will), then all you have to do is re-arrange the diagram ; little or no coding changes should be required.
This abilility to mix , match, combine and remix services leads us to a lot of other good things (and we’re only scratching the surface here).
Because our services don’t have to run on the same machine, we can use SOA to create a distributed application. This is the concept behind the BPEL (Business PRocess Engineering Language)
Services tie well to Ajax and Web 2: Our Ajax web page or portlet can call as many services as it requires to get the job done (it’s one of the reasons Tibcom is sponsoring the open source DWR project)
We can call many services at once. If these this service calls are xml based ,or we send these calls as a message then we can filter, duplicate, pass and other distribute these calls as we set. These are the ideas behind Apache Synapse, Apache Servicemix and the Enterprise Service bus (ESB) in general.
Most people building systems run into the following problems again and again:
How to capture Business rules , in a way that both the Business users and the computer can understand.
How to capture the flow of actions in a system, in a way that both Business users and the computer can understand. This flow is across multiple users, and may extend over days or weeks.
How to deliver a system to the user (e.g. Via the Web), but to give the user a rich interface , similar to what they are used to on the desktop.
How to maintain and enhance older systems , now that Java has been mainstream for more than years.
How to take advantage of the new Features afforded by Java 5 and EJB 3, and what business problems to the solve.
How to build components for reuse in all environments (Web , Enterprise, Command Line and Desktop).
How to map information in a Java System to and from a Database (Persistent Storage or Legacy System).
How to deliver value to the business at every point in the project.
How to use the many resources and solutions already available in the Java community.
It’s to address problems like these , that I’ve been asked to put together a Advanced Java training. It’s early days yet, but I’d like to get your input as to what you’d like to see on such a course.
Full details of the Advanced Java course are available on the knowledgebase / Wiki. Leave your comments here.
Update: I posted a similar question on the (technical) O’Reilly Books Java blog. If you’re interested in seeing the responses , click here.
Or to be more accurate ‘Google Spreadsheets mean the end of Java as we know it’.
Think about this. Who pays your wages Mr Java-Developer-who-has-just-had-a-couple-of-years-at-the-top-of-the-pile? Clients, or if you’re in a larger organisation , the business folks (i.e.’internal’ clients). Do you think any of them care about Java? Do any of them know what Java is? All they want is to get things done, quickly , and with as few mistakes as possible.
These business people would be happy to run their organisations on Spreadsheets. Do you remember the cartoon where Dilbert convinced the pointy haired boss that he could fly the plane using Excel? There’s more than a element of truth to this. I know of at least one US Fortune 100 company that (until recently) conducted most of it’s operations on little more than Microsoft Office and duct-tape. It worked, not very well, but it worked.
Until now , the next line would be ‘Excel (or any other type of Spreadsheet) is not secure / scalable / sharable / not web friendly’. That was until Google launched their Docs and Speadsheets. It’s an online version of Office with some spreadsheet functionality. Play with it a bit and you’ll see that there’s plenty missing. But this being Google , I’m willing to put good money on
(a) new features rolled out (think steamroller) and
(b) These Spreadsheets being massivly scalable / secure / sharable.
This being Google, there is also an API (developer page here). It’s got massive holes in it (e.g. you can’t yet use it to create a new spreadsheet). But when Microsoft bring out their version of online spreadsheets (and they will) not only will they clone the Google API (to get market share), they’ll need to go one further and introduce new features / remove the usage restrictions in order to compete.
So, secure, scalable, sharble online spreadsheets are here to stay. So lets take a look at Mr. (or Ms.) Pointy haired boss thinking about their new project:
Hmm, I think we need to be able to gather which health plans our employees are enrolled in.
OK, I’ll throw together a spreadsheet to show people what I want
Before I’ll give to our friendly Java developer and let him ‘do’ a website from it. Soon I’ll just share this on Google.
Great , Loads of people are now using it, I’ll just the (Ruby / PHP / Insert other language here) guy to add one or two extra features.
Most Excellent. Why don’t we spin this off as a Web 2 company and sell it to EBay??
There you have it, Massively scalable , Highly secure websites (see Google Authentication API), without needing to know anything about EJB, JMX , JBoss, JDBC or any of the hard won knowledge that us Enterprise Java Developers have built up over the last 7-8 years. I’m exaggerating, but not much.
What do you think? Is Enterprise Java dead, or is Web 2 just another boost and a slightly different way of doing things for us Java people?
Java is read once , run almost anywhere. The ‘Almost’ is because (for various technical reasons) the difficulty in getting reasonably priced web hosting. Have your tried getting some recently - impossible to find , or at least impossible to find at the prices PHP and Ruby guys can get theirs?
The 2nd most useful Java-Oracle Tool that I’ve used this year is schema spy.
How often have you taken over a project without any documenation? Even worse , there is a database involved, and everybody just ‘knows’ (or pretends to know) where things are. What if all the orginal developers are gone and nobody is left to explain things? I can find my way around most legacy Java code , but databases leave me cold.
Still not convinced - take a look on the Schema Spy website. The level of information that this tool gives you takes you from knowing nothing about the database to knowing almost everything.
Interested in trying it out? Follow these simple steps - Download it from http://schemaspy.sourceforge.net/ - Change the configuration to point to your database - Install the Graphviz component (available here) - Run the tool and await your fully documented database.
Just to shame the commercial competition , as well as Oracle , Schema Spy supports DB2, hsqldb , Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Sybase. It’s written by John Currier and is well worth a donation.
In case you’re wondering, the most useful Java-Oracle tool for 2006 is Oracle’s project raptor. Schema spy runs it a very close second. Considering that it’s a Billion dollar company Vs one man , I’d chalk that up as a victory for the little guy!
Below is an extract of a report Distributed by Computer People. It’s a breakdown of all the Java Job Adverts for the last 6 months in the London Contract / Permanent Market. While it should be treated with caution as (a) it’s sales and marketing material and (b) the London / UK market will differ substiantially from Dublin. For example , I would not expect to see as many Sybase roles in Dublin as London, due to the use of Sybase in the London Financial markets.
Example from the figures: Of all java jobs advertised in the UK , 36,86% were also looking for J2EE (Enterprise Java) Skills.
Link to Enterprise Java Workshop, to be led by Dr. Bruce Martin in Dublin on the 6th - 9th March.
Is anybody going? Is it worth $1995 USD for 4 days? (and I’m not going to get sniffy about us using Euro over here ) Who is this course aimed at? In some ways this course is like Corba: very relevant to the very small niche that use these technologies, but the broader line of ‘best practice’ has moved on.
An extract from the Agenda is below. It seem to broadly match what Sun looks for in it’s Enterprise Java Architect Certification. As such it shares the plus and minus of this approach : You get the Orthodox Entreprise Java Approach, or at least the approach being plugged by Sun about 3 years ago.
The trouble with this approach is that the Enterprise Java world has moved on. Hibernate has pushed aside Entity Beans , so much so that Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 is a complete turnaround it it’s direction. Spring has got a lot of traction as an EJB-Lite (and I mean that with the most positive connotations). Enterprise Java Patterns are much better understood (just search the IBM site), if not more widely understood.
Where’s the Ajax and the impact of multiple, small , web requests on application scalability? The JSON (as part of the Web Services)? Does it cover Java Server Faces and the emerging Ajax enabled Java Presentation Frameworks? What about workflow and rule engines and Java Messaging Services (JMS)? How about the tool integration to make your teams life easier when building the designs that you , as an Architect , have come up with? I don’t see Security in there , nor any of the other JSR (Java Specification Requests) that have come out of the broader Java community in the last 3 years.
And that’s before I go on about the only ‘technology alternative’ being offered is .Net - the PHP , Ruby and Oracle guys will have something to say about that! All have strong cases to make on a project by project basis. What about off the shelf products (both open source and commercial) that could , depending on the project, give you most of the functionality you need and you just have to customise the remaining 20%?
Maybe I’m being unfair, and the above is not the aim of the course.
For info, it’s on in the Gresham hotel on Dublin’s O’Connell Street from the 6th to the 9th of March. If you want a good solid foundation in Enterprise Java, and if somebody else is paying for it then it’s probably to be recommended. It might even help you get certified as a ‘Sun Enterprise Java Architect’. But unless you’re in an outstanding group, don’t expect it to be cutting edge.
Are you going - prove me wrong and leave a comment!
Project Module
Introduction
The Value Propositions of J2EE and EJB
J2EE vs..NET
Requirements of the Auction Application
Group Discusssion: J2EE or not, EJB or not
Activity: Identify the Auction Objects
Vertical Slices
Activity: Identify Vertical Slice
Communicating Architectures
Persistence Module
Pros and cons of JDBC
Object Relational Mapping
Java Data Objects (JDO)
EJB 2.x CMP Model and Relationships
EJB 3
Other O-R mapping solutions
Group Discussion: Persistence Matrix
Activity: Persistence Strategy for the
Auction
Advanced Transaction and Concurrency
Control topics
Yes, form an orderly queue for autographs - the article in Business Plus magazine is finally available in the February edition (currently in Newsagents). It’s called ‘Everything you know about the Web is wrong’ and tries to introduce some of the concepts behind Ajax to a wider Audience.
I have a colleague who is as much an advocate of the IntelliJ IDE for Java, as I am for Eclipse. So far, in the ‘My Java Tool is better than yours’ game, I can claim the low cost (free), the number of plugins (huge) and number of developers using it (no figures, but I suspect Eclipse is now the development platform of choice). His trump card for Intellij is that ‘you download it and it just works’ - no messing around with installing plugins for stuff like JSP and Enterprise Java editing.
While plugins are always going to be slightly messy (you don’t get the gain of extensibility without some pain in the form of configuration), the Eclipse Callisto release , due in July, is another step in the right direction. It is a simultaneous release of 10 major Eclipse projects, including BIRT (reporting tools), Data Tools, Eclipse Web Tools, the Visual Editor , Test and Performance Tools and the Graphical Modelling Framework.
It may not be a ‘download from one place and it just works’, but by removing any integration issues, it will make your life easier.
We found that over the last 5 years , 80% of the solutions we were building were the same. How many ways are there to take information from the web, apply some business rules or logic to it, and then save it into a database?
Currently the knowledge repository contains information on Enterprise Java , XML , Eclipse, Oracle, Architecture, Project Management as well as a lot of useful links for Dublin, Ireland and Technical specific areas.
The public area to the site can be found here. All information is generic, non-client specific, and can probably already be found on the web, although it is much easier to read it here!
) Who is this course aimed at? In some ways this course is like Corba: very relevant to the very small niche that use these technologies, but the broader line of ‘best practice’ has moved on.