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Posts about photography, contract bridge, astrophotography, astronomy, Java development, internet systems.

“Bean Validation” Emmanuel Bernard

Registration lobby at Caesar's Palace

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

What’s the point of a bean validation framework? I’ve been wondering that for a while now. Emmanuel points out that it’s mostly to keep from repeating yourself in code.

Validation itself is obvious … keep crap out of the database, apply constraints to data fields, give […]

“Building Next-Generation Web Applications with the Spring 3.0 Web Stack” Jeremy Grelle

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Jeremy is going to help us battle complexity in web applications. (It’s hard to find a web framework that isn’t its own layers of complexity.) He’s the lead for Spring Faces, Spring JavaScript, and a JSF 2.0 expert group member, and he’s a former “rock star.”

The Spring Web stack is […]

“Building Server Platforms with OSGi and Equinox” Rob Harrop

BIRTExchange at TheServerSide (not related to the talk)

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Rob wrote his talk for EclipseCon which is next week, so we get an early peek. He’s the lead developer from dm Server at SpringSource.

I’m a complete noob to OSGi, so I’m not familiar enough to see what’s really important or significant […]

“The Keys to Agile Software Development” Jon Kern

The tech crew enjoys some breakfast before the morning keynote.

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Jon’s a fine fellow, but his talked (to me) seemed mostly to be stating the obvious.  I’ll just provide his “Rules to Code By:”

It’s the Business, Stupid
Not all shiny new toys should be fondled
A fool with a tool is still […]

“The Amazing Groovy Weight-Loss Plan” Scott Davis

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Scott Davis was the perfect presenter for the deadly “after lunch” session period. Interesting that his Groovy introduction is in a breakout room rather than the main ballroom, and there is not an empty seat in the house. Everyone is fascinated by these new powerful JVM languages, including me.

Scott started […]

“Spring for the Advanced Java Developer” Rod Johnson

Notes from a session at TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Rod addressed some emerging best practices based around annotation-based application configuration using Spring 2.5 and later.

The emerging best practice is to use the @Autowired annotation rather than @Resource. He demonstrated how to disambiguate bean references with @Qualifier. He also showed how to create your own custom annotations […]

“How Spring Fits into the Java Landscape” Rod Johnson

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

At a keynote talk, you expect sweeping generalizations and “big picture” insights.

Rod pointed out some things that I have watched happening over the past two decades, namely the rise and fall of complex monolithic software systems as an expensive luxury that falls in favor of simplicity along with economic cycles.

“Enterprise […]

“Leveraging Groovy for building Java applications” Hans Dockter

Notes from a talk at TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

Hans is the project lead for a build system called Gradle. He presents it as a step beyond Ant and Maven.

I think he has a point. His system uses Groovy scripts as build scripts instead of XML. The advantages of having a full language available in build […]

“Sexier Software with Java and Flex” James Ward

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium March 2009

I was interested in this talk because we use a lot of Flex in MyAds for MySpace. Ward is an Adobe guy.

He began with some flashy demos, an interesting way to enter car accident information for an insurance form on a web site, and a desktop application called SalesBuilder.

Flex components: […]

“Intro to JRuby” Neal Ford

Notes from TheServerSide Java Symposium, March 2009

Why Ruby? He talks about the known good language features, but the biggest reason is Rails. Ruby is actually an older language than Java.

JRuby 1.1 incorporates a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, and in many tests is faster than the Matz Reference Implementation.

In answer to a question, JRuby would exclude some gems […]