Reza Rahman's Java Blog

Speaking at JBossWorld

2009-10-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

I spoke at JBossWorld last month. I gave my personal favorite Java EE 6/Spring framework comparison/contrast talk. The crowd at JBossWorld was fantastic and I got to talk to some EJB 3 in Action readers. I really love this talk because it gives me a chance to cover in-depth what I see in the two mainstream Java server-side stacks that I care about. In particular, I had a more philosophical bend on this talk that goes to the heart of each stack as opposed just a superficial talk about mechanical features. I hope to give this talk again soon and really liked how it panned out this time, despite the chronic SpringSource objections to this talk and complaints that it's somehow "unfair" to them.

Such is how some people think I guess and that's a real shame. Not everything in life is about cynical pursuits, selling something or making money (in fact I can only imagine how hollow and meaningless that might feel). It is sometimes possible to set ones selfish interests aside and analyze for the sake of pure inquiry to try to find the truth about something one cares about. I think that is when we are all at our very best as scientists, engineers, craftsmen and artists...that's our craft at its very best, not at its cynical worst.

At any rate, besides the conference it was great to hang out with the usual suspects at JBoss - Dan Allen, Emmanuel Bernard, Bill Burke, Jay Balunas, etc. It was also great to finally meet Pete Muir, the head honcho for Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE (JSR 299) reference implementation from JBoss. I thought he was a first-class engineer and a true gentleman.

JavaOne Round Up

2009-10-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

Speaking at JavaOne was great.

Considering it was my first time it went great, even the collaborative ones with Debu and David that requires a little bit of juggling. I talked to a whole bunch of people from all over the globe, including my good friend Dan Allen of Seam in Action, Ken Saks (EJB 3.1 and GlassFish lead), Mike Keith (EJB 3.0 lead), Linda DeMichael (JPA 2, EJB 3.0 lead), Adam Bien (fellow EG member of EJB3.1/Java EE 6, Java champion), Emmanuel Bernard (Bean Validation lead) and so many others. David blogged about it a little here on our EJB 3.0 embedded containers talk. San Fran itself was great...I found quite a few places to hang out in the evening and listen to some hard edged music :-). China town was great too...

While I was out there, I also spoke at the San Francisco JUG. I did my Spring/EJB 3 integration talk and shared talks with Talip Ozturk of Hazelcast. The talk went great and the crowd was great. Shaun Abram, the fellow independent consultant that invited me there blogged about the talk here. Vinay Nag blogged about it too here. Thanks guys!!

While I was at JavaOne, I also talked to Steve Montal, Scott Ferguson and Emil Ong about working on the EJB 3.1 Lite container of Resin for it's impending Java EE 6 Web Profile certification next year (finally!!). Emil attended my SF JUG talk too and gave me very good feedback. The Resin guys rock! Caucho rocks and we're sure to make some waves in server-side Java together in the next year :-).

Speaking at JavaOne 2009

2009-03-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

Your humble author is very proud and excited to declare that he will be speaking at two sessions for JavaOne 2009! One of them is a technical session while the other is a birds-of-a-feather. The technical session is the JPA/database performance tuning talk I recently gave at the Harrisburg JUG. I am co-presenting the session with EJB 3 in Action lead author Debu Panda from Oracle. The birds-of-a-feather session is on the uses of embedded EJB 3 containers. I am co-presenting with David Blevins of Apache OpenEJB for this session. Apache OpenEJB is one of the originators of the EJB 3 embedded container concept being standardized in EJB 3.1. I will also try to be part of the EJB 3.1 and Java EE 6 "meet the experts" sessions that are very likely for JavaOne this year.

If you are attending JavaOne 2009, please do consider attending the sessions. I would love to chat with you. I and Debu will also try to schedule a JavaOne book signing via Manning. Remember, the lull of a recession is a great time to update skills and make new connections, not to mention taking a brief break in San Francisco away from work.

Speaking at TheServerSide Java Symposeum

2009-03-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

I am very excited to say that I will be speaking at TheServerSide Java Symposium in March at Las Vegas. Over the past few months, I've developed a close relationship with the folks at TSS having written my EJB 3.1 Preview Series and Java EE 6 Preview article. I hope to be even more involved in online communities like TSS, JavaLobby and JavaRanch going forward.

I will be speaking on Spring/EJB 3 integration. This is the same talk I gave at the Connecticut JUG conference last year. Although I know a few folks that have done this kind of integration, the talk would be a great way for me to gauge community interest in this topic as a precursor to getting more engaged with an initiative for EJB 3.1 Lite native support on the Spring framework. I have been talking to the SpringSource folks about it and hope that the effort might be sponsored/supported by these folks. I am also giving a more informal "fire-side chat" on Java EE 6.

If you are attending the conference, please do consider coming to the sessions. I would love to chat with you on either topic or anything else you might want to talk about. Remember, the lull of a recession is a great time to update skills and make new connections, not to mention taking a brief break in Las Vegas away from work.

Spring JPA Support Talk at the Charleston JUG

2009-03-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

On February 26th, I went back to the Charleston, SC JUG to fill in for a speaker that dropped out at the last minute. JUG leader Jason McDonald requested that I talk about Spring's support for JPA (material we cover in the last chapter of EJB 3 in Action - "EJB 3 and Spring"; the talk updates the content to cover Spring 2.5). The code for the very hands-on presentation should be posted on the JUG's website soon.

Jason let me know that the JUG needs more people involved in a leadership role since he is really being strained to manage the JUG on top of his already hectic schedule. If you live near the Charleston area, please consider getting in touch with Jason. The Charleston JUG is actually very well funded and organized thanks to Jason's efforts and can fully sponsor speakers from across the country. It also has a great host in BenefitFocus (a major tech vendor for one of my Philadelphia based clients). Given the small number of JUGs in the South, it would be a shame to not see this one reach its full potential. I certainly enjoyed speaking there and would go back there again.

I also encourage you to become a member of the JUG and help it grow if you are a local Java developer. JUGs are a great vehicle for developing grassroots Java communities, not to mention for keeping up-to-date in a fast-paced industry and for developing life-long friendships with fellow developers.

JPA/Database Tuning Talk at the Harrisburg JUG

2009-03-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

On February 19th, I did one of my most favorite talks at the Harrisburg JUG. Titled "Keeping a Relational Perspective for Optimizing JPA", the talk is about some of the database centric performance tuning techniques I've utilized for JPA (and the persistence tier in general) over the years. I am very glad I finally found a JUG interested in this relatively advanced talk!

As usual, the Harrisburg crowd was great and I'm proud to say I once worked in the central PA area. Indeed, it seems to be one of the few areas in PA that seems to be enjoying vibrant economic growth, despite national trends recently.

Java EE 6 Preview at the NYC JUG

2009-03-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

On January 26th, I went back to the NYC JUG to give a preview of Java EE 6. Despite the unmistakable market crash in the NYC area, turnout was very good and folks seemed relatively upbeat.

I went out for Dinner with JUG leader Dario and some of the other JUG members after the talk. The NYC JUG is always a pleasure because of the quality and dynamism of the crowd. I look forward to going back there soon after I get some of the things that have been on my plate done (like updating the EJB 3 in Action code samples for JBoss 5 and GlassFish v2 as well as writing IDE setup instructions for Eclipse/NetBeans that a lot of readers have been asking us for).

Java EE 6 Preview at the NoVA JUG

2009-03-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

I did my Java EE 6 preview talk at the NoVA JUG on January 8th. It was really great to see that the JUG has grown significantly since I spoke there last. The feedback from this crucial metropolitan area was great and the talk was very interactive.

My good friend Dan Allen, the author of Seam in Action showed up for the meeting and did a great job explaining some of the JSR 299 (aka WebBeans, aka Java Contexts and Dependency Injection) functionality. I was a little sad to hear that he has abandoned the independent consulting path in favor of joining the JBoss team. He is now very active with JSR 299 and appears to be getting ready to write JCDI in Action via Manning. I wish him the best of the luck on the book. I think he did a great job on Seam in Action.

EJB 3.1 Talk at the NYC JUG

2008-11-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

I gave a preview of EJB 3.1 at the NYC JUG on the 6th of November. I have to say this was one of the best speaking experiences I've had in a while. True to the intent of the talk, the crowd was very interactive and asked a number of excellent questions. The feedback on the EJB 3.1 changes was very positive and there were a number of EJB 3 in Action readers there. It was clear this was a crowd of people with a much deeper level of professionalism than the run-of-the-mill "just a paycheck" types. It was great to see and I look forward to my next talk for the JUG on Java EE 6!

EJB 3 Primer at the Charleston JUG

2008-11-10T16:37:00.000-08:00

On October 28th, I traveled all the way south to beautiful Charleston, SC to give a slightly belated EJB 3 primer! JUG leader Jason McDonald is trying hard to grow the fledgling Charleston JUG. The turnout was less than what we were expecting, but it was a pleasure to speak to the small group nonetheless.

Since this was my first time in the "deep south" I didn't quite know what to expect. As it turns out, the folks in Charleston are true to the image of southern hospitality. And Charleston really is "the last bastion of southern charm and elegance". I definitely look forward to speaking in Charleston again and wish the JUG the best of luck.

Java EE 6 and EJB 3/Spring 2.5 Integration Talks in Connecticut

2008-11-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

On October 21st, the CT JUG lead by Ryan Cuprak helds its first ever Java Conference. The conference was a very good success and I think met an important need for the large number of Java developers in the greater Connecticut area.

I gave my Java EE 6 preview talk, as well as my brand new talk about integrating EJB 3 and Spring 2.5. Both talks were very well received and the EJB 3/Spring 2.5 integration talk generated a lot of lively discussion. Since the talk, a number of people asked for the source code for the very hand-on talk. It is downloadable from the CT JUG website here.

There were a number of other excellent talks given at the conference. Doug Clark from Oracle spoke on Coherence support for their open source JPA implementations (TopLink, EclipseLink) and Rossen Stoyanchev from SpringSource talked about Spring 2.5 as well as 3.0. JUG leader Ryan Cuprak himself gave a Seam talk to a full-house crowd.

Your Ideas for the Second Edition of EJB 3 in Action

2008-10-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

We are deeply grateful to our readership for making EJB 3 in Action the kind of success that has exceeded all of our expectations. This is especially true considering widespread EJB 2 bashing, the maturity of EJB as a pioneer middleware technology and the authors' relative humble roots.

We are now in the very early stages of planning the second edition and could really use your help. The second edition is slated to cover the emerging EJB 3.1, WebBeans 1.0 and JPA 2.0 specifications. We plan on adding content on testing as well as covering the EJB integration features in Spring 2.5. Beyond this content, what else would you like to see in a second edition EJB 3 book? More best practices? Performance tuning? Product/vendor selection help? Others?

Should we continue to treat EJB 3/Java EE 5 beginners as first-class citizens? Is a real-world example driven format compelling to you? Is there a need for us to become more of a reference book? Should we cover ground that's less traveled or continue to focus on crystallizing key concepts and covering features most likely to be used in realistic EJB 3 projects?

Please do feel welcome in sending me comments at reza_rahman@lycos.com. My co-authors -- Debu Panda (debupanda at gmail dot com) and Rob Di Marco (robdimarco at gmail dot com) would love to hear your ideas as well.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Philadelphia JUG

2008-10-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

On September 30th, I gave my Java EE 6 preview talk at the Philly JUG. Run by Dave Fecak of JSync, the Philly JUG is one of the most successful ones in the world. The attendance was very good and so was the level of discussion, specially considering the size of the JUG. There was a lot of excitement around Java EE 6 and I got a lot of positive feedback on the talk itself. I am hoping a number of folks will send their comments directly to the EG by emailing jsr-316-comments@jcp.org. I spoke at the Philly JUG about a year ago on Spring and EJB 3. It was a pleasure giving that talk as well.

It's also always great to work with Dave. He has done an amazing job keeping the community engaged and growing the JUG.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Harrisburg JUG

2008-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

On September 18, I gave a preview of Java EE 6 at the Harrisburg JUG. The level of participation in this JUG is always great to see, especially since this is my old turf. I spoke about there about a year ago on EJB 3 and Spring. I am speaking there again in January about optimizing relational databases for JPA. It was truly encouraging to receive a lot of good feedback on the Java EE 6 APIs.

Java EE 6 Preview at the Princeton JUG

2008-10-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

On September 8, I gave my Java EE 6 preview presentation at the nearby Princeton JUG. The attendance was great and so was the participation levels. Folks were very excited about all the APIs in Java EE 6 and provided a lot of positive feedback. Java champion, JDJ editor and JUG leader Yakov Fain blogged about the presentation here.

I have always enjoyed speaking with Yakov. He is a true Java veteran who always has well balanced insight into what is going on in the Java world. I look forward to speaking at the Princeton JUG again soon.

The Developer Conference, Sao Paulo Brazil

2008-10-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

On July 25-26, I spoke at The Developer Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I presented on both Java EE 6 and EJB 3.1. Both talks were very well received and there was a very good level of participation. Burr Sutter from JBoss and Ed Burns from Sun also spoke at the conference. It is one of the largest Java centric conferences in Brazil, run by a great company named GlobalCode.

This was my first time to Brazil. It is truly a very warm, hospitable and lively country. It is clearly also a global IT powerhouse with a strong Java community. I received a lot of positive feedback on EJB 3, Java EE 5 as well as Seam. Not surprisingly, there was also a great deal of excitement around EJB 3.1, WebBeans and Java EE 6. I hope I will continue to hear from the Java EE community in Brazil.

We recently published the Portuguese version of EJB 3 in Action and from all accounts, the translation seems to be doing very well. I signed quite a few copies and talked to readers in person in the conference bookstore.

EJB 3 in Action JBoss 4.2 Example Code Posted

2008-06-02T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just finished porting the example code of EJB 3 in Action to JBoss 4.2. The code is posted on the Manning site for EJB 3 in Action. Here is a link to the code.

This means that readers can now get up and running with either GlassFish, Oracle AS or JBoss. In addition, Debu is almost done with the WebLogic 10 port. As soon as JBoss 5 is finally released (about time already!), I'll update the code to work on the official Java EE 5 compliant release.

In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear from you guys as to what application server you would like to see supported. How about OpenEJB with Tomcat? WebSphere 7? WebSphere Community Edition? Shoot me an email and let me know.

JPA/Hibernate 3 Lab at the Connecticut JUG

2007-10-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

On September 18th, I conducted a JPA/Hibernate 3 lab at the Connecticut JUG. I allowed people to use either NetBeans 5.5 or Eclipse Dali. This was the first ever lab they had ever done at the JUG and everything worked out quite nicely for a hands-on lab.

Personally, I would do a few things differently the next time I do this lab. Firstly, I think I have to allow just one IDE (probably Eclipse). Two IDEs are just too difficult to support in a single session. Secondly, I think I need to have all required software available for distribution on the spot. No matter how many times you say it, people never seem to come prepared. Lastly, I think this lab needs to be about two-and-a-half hours to cover JPA to a reasonable degree. By the time I am done setup and running, the allotted time is over!

As usual, it was a pleasure to talk with JUG leader Ryan. He is one of the most down-to-earth people in the Java field that I know. In a field full of ego-maniacs, this is definitely refreshing.

Embedded JBoss Container Talk at Philly JBUG

2007-10-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

On September 18, Rob Di Marco spoke on the JBoss Embedded Container at the Philadelphia JBoss User Group. The Embeddable container allows you to use the full power of EJB 3 and JPA outside a container. Rob walked through examples of using EJB 3 in a standalone application, in a unit test as well as in Tomcat.

Embeddable containers are timely and useful innovations that allow the adoption of EJB 3 as a truly lightweight development framework. It is also an important mechanism for using EJB 3 inside existing Spring+Tomcat applications.

Besides JBoss the JOnAS and Geronimo communities have also created embeddable EJB 3 containers that can work with Tomcat. From all indications, these innovations are seeing quite a bit of success. With the advent of Java EE 6, I expect these type of innovations to receive "official" blessing.

I am trying to muster some time to write a few articles on embeddable containers as well as deploy the EJB 3 in Action example code to a few of them. After I am done, I'll make the deployment scripts available through the book's page on Manning.com.

EJB 3/Spring/Hibernate Comparison at Philly JUG

2007-10-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

On September 26 I presented my EJB 3, Spring, Hibernate comparison talk at the Philly JUG. The Philly JUG is among the most successful JUGs in the world. It is consistently ranked in the top 25 in the U.S. and the top 50 in the world. I received great feedback on the talk and a lot of folks were very interested in what I had to say. In fact, this is the first time in it's lifetime the Philly JUG reached its capacity attendance of a hundred-and-fifty people!

I finished off the talk with a preview of EJB 3.1 and Java EE 6. I sold a few copies of EJB 3 in Action and received feedback on the book from people who already have copies. I look forward to speaking at the Philly JUG in the future.

EJB 3/Spring/Hibernate Comparison at NoVAJUG

2007-08-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

On the 15th of this month, I presented my popular EJB 3/Spring/Hibernate comparison talk at the Northern Virginia Java User Group (NoVAJUG). This bunch was by far the most lively I have ever seen. I always thought of the DC area to be filled with sedate government employee types. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

There were a number of people in the crowd who have used both EJB 2.x and Spring+Hibernate in a production environment and have explored EJB 3 (the room was filled to capacity). To be truthful, it felt a little bit like preaching to the choir, and I picked up a number of pretty good ideas from the crowd.

Folks pointed out the EJB 3 deployment, performance tuning, clustering and administration support for Java EE application servers like WebLogic 10. Someone suggested a performance benchmark for both the stacks. I thought that was an excellent idea. I'll talk it over with Debu and see what he thinks...I know Oracle produced a benchmark comparing EJB 3 and EJB 2.x. I wonder if they could produce one for Spring+Hibernate and the Oracle AS EJB 3 container + TopLink JPA provider? It would be a very intriguing experiment indeed...

Real World Java Seminar at NYC Roosevelt Hotel

2007-08-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

I spoke at the Real World Java Seminar at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC on the 13th of this month. I gave my popular EJB 3/Spring/Hibernate comparison talk to a full-house audience. I think SYS-CON (the publishers of the widely read Java Developers Journal) had the right idea hosting this seminar. The one-day seminar was well-attended, even in the slow month of August. Given the number of Java developers on the East Coast there really is a lot of room for a large JavaOne style event. I know the travel expenses are a big deterrent for many people to go to JavaOne.

To some degree, the regional No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) symposiums kind of bridge that gap, but something like Real World Java can be a great success. I hope SYS-CON repeats the event in the coming years. I would certainly be delighted to speak there again.

Besides giving the talk, I got to speak with a number of Java folks like Jeremy Geelan (VP of SYS-CON), Reema Patel (Sun Evangelist), Mark Pollack (one of the Interface21 guys involved in Spring.NET) and Mark Richards (senior architect at IBM). I got positive feedback from a bunch of EJB 3 in Action readers too!

JPA+Hibernate 3 Tutorial at NYC JUG

2007-08-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

On the 2nd of this month I gave a very hands on tutorial to JPA using Hibernate 3 at the NYC JUG. It went surprisingly smooth and actually turned out to be very interactive for a lab format talk. I can't wait to see how things turn out when I repeat the talk in Connecticut next month.

I have to say this was one of the most charming groups I've talked at. The room in the New Yorker hotel was cramped as is everything in NYC, packed full of very young, very bright people from all over the World. It really felt like an intense environment where only "hardboiled" coders roam...

I was delighted to find out the JUG leader Dario is conducting a well-attended training course on EJB 3. I look forward to talking there again and maybe collaborating with Dario on a joint project sometime in the near future.

Java EE 6 Coming Soon!

2007-07-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

I am very excited to hear that the JCP process for Java EE 6 is starting! Here is a link to the JSR! It is slated as JSR 316. Instead of being on the side-lines, I joined the JSR committee this time on. I joined as an "independent expert" and will contribute my views on how to improve on the spec (the EJB3/JPA spec in particular).

Most encouragingly, Rod Johnson is apparently looking forward to joining the committee too. This is definitely a welcome development that has many good implications for the Java EE standard!

Feel free to email me your ideas on how to improve the next Java EE version! I'll try my best to represent the ideas in the JCP...

EJB 3 Introduction at Harrisburg JUG

2007-06-03T19:47:00.001-07:00

On the 17th of last month I gave an introductory talk on EJB 3 at the Harrisburg JUG. It was really nice to be back on my old turf, it is a reminder that life is not as hectic in the Northeast's hinterlands. The turnout for the talk was great. The audience was one was extremely active and savvy. By and large, I think the demographic was significantly younger too.

The talk was a lot of fun and gave me a chance to present some of the introductory material in the book. The talk was not as hands-on as I would have liked. This probably wouldn't have been practical given the time allocation and the amount of material to cover. However, I'm hoping to give a JPA/Hibernate 3 talk at the NYC JUG soon. I'm aiming to make that extremely hands-on. I'm even toying with the idea of a code-along. I may also repeat that talk at the Connecticut JUG if all goes well.