TechJava

Yesterday, as reported earlier a great session on Java EE 5 featured by Adam Bien took place in Lehmanns Buchhandlung in Hamburg. It was a full success, having approx. 100 developers taking part. Adam asked for the experiences with Java EE and it seemed to be a bunch of professionals. The session slides contained only headings, the rest of the story has been done in NetBeans 6.1 and Glassfish. The entire session has been executed on pretty high speed – to be honest, Adam spoke that quick I just could understand. The session took place in the bookstore, that basically sells two types of books: computer and medical. Adam noticed that the shelf to the right of him contained books on psychiatry, and pointed each time he wanted to express that the antipattern leads to…

Regarding the content, Adam focused on two main directions: the basic enterprise patterns and enterprise anti-patterns (this could be a good book title, btw.). General ideas, like support of DRY principle, convention over configuration and IoC, that are on my opinion the greatest achievements of Java EE 5 has been explained in a very plastic way. Especially, Adam really showed, that the bad-artifacts that made J2EE development boring disappeared in Java EE (or may be better to say: can be avoided). The last part of the talk was attended to the nonfunctional activities around the developed software. Adam focused on testing, management, monitoring, performance, etc… It was pretty interesting to see that Java EE community listens to the developer voices and push the technology towards modern, pragmatic and efficient programming platform.

During and after the session one could ask questions around the topics. Adam told a lot during the answers and proved again his excellent expertise in the Java in general and Java EE in particular. I really enjoyed the session and hope that the next one will not let us wait for several years again. Adam spoke about possible JavaFX session – this would be also very interesting.

( more photos in my photostream)

As announced in a previous post, Egon Boerger introduced his current work on Semantical Model of BPMN. The computer scientist, known by most of us through his work on Abstract Sate Machines (ASM), focused in his talk on the try to improve the BPMN with a unambigious and clear meaning. Especially, he showed in a very plastic way, how a formal specification can foster the understanding of a standard like BPMN. In doing so he reveal several weak points of BPMN concerning the meaning of splits/merges. Especially, those become a real problem if you use BPMN like a workflow language.

The main message of Egon was the need of formal specification and separation of specification from implementation. He showed how this can help in order to define the semantics. I was glad, that he confirmed some statements I’m discussing in my thesis.

Another positive message was that he is in touch with the OMG and SAP guys and his propositions are not only know in academia, but also in the standardization organization like OMG. He reported about some positive feedback from them, and spoke about some contributions to the BPMN 2.0.

I really enjoyed the session, because I like this old-school-style computer scientists. They spread their meta-thinking of a very high level and precision, that sometimes drives us progmatic guyes crazy. In the same time, they establish a natural meaning of quality and foster the reasoning about the topic, we are dealing with everyday…

( more photos in my photo stream)

May 19th, 2008 seems to become an important day for the computer science in Hamburg.

Modelling BPEL Using Abstract State Machines

May 19th, 15:30 – 16:30
Ditze Hörsaal, Schwarzenbergstr. 95, 016 (AudiMax I building), 21073 Hamburg
by Prof. Egon Börger from the University of Pisa, Italy. ( original announcement)

It starts with an invited talk of a Prof. Dr. Egon Börger, famous computer science researcher, applying the concepts of Abstract State Mashines to the software and hardware design at Hamburg University of Technology.

Pragmatic Java EE 5 Hacking – Rethinking Best Practices

May 19th, 20:00 – 22:00
Lehmanns Fachbuchhandlung (am Hauptbahnhof)
Kurze Mühren 6, 20095 Hamburg
by Adam Bien ( original announcement)

On the same day the meeting of the Java User Group Hamburg takes place at Lehmanns Fachbuchhandlung. This time an invited talk on “Progmatic Java EE 5 Hacking” by Adam Bien. Java Champion Adam Bien is a self-employed consultant, lecturer, software architect, developer, and author in the enterprise Java sector in Germany who implements Java technology on a large scale. He is also the author of several books and articles on Java and J2EE technology, as well as distributed Java programming. His books include J2EE Patterns, J2EE HotSpots, Java EE 5 Architectures, Enterprise Architectures, Enterprise Java Frameworks, SOA Expert Knowledge, and Struts, all published in German.

Java EE 5 is a revolution, not an evolution. Perhaps it goes not far enough – however some best-practices and patterns need to be pimped up, re-thought or pruned. After a short introduction into Java EE 5 / Java EE 6 (with a from scratch creation of a simple application with all “enterprise features”). The talk will provide the concept, patterns, best practices and discuss the context, advantages as well as shortcomings and provide suggestions / solutions for Java EE 5/6. This session will be interactive / openspace like. I’m really open for constructive criticism and will try to answer all questions with …code and real world context. Some upcoming Java EE 6 features will be presented as well.

So, see you there…

Yesterday, the first “Eclipse Stammtisch Hamburg” took place in Bolero in Ottensen. It was a full success, about 50 people were there. I was glad to see people I known from Eclipse Democamp again. I liked the location, having a separated room, big enough for another 50 people. I spoke with Ralph on the intended frequency of the event – it could be good to have it four times a year.
The rest of the pictures can be seen in my FlickR gallery.