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Our slides from TheServerSide Java Symposium are now available online for a limited time! You can view the presentations below, or click on the title link to view/download them on slideshare. |
1. GWT Roundup: An Overview of Google’s Web Toolkit and Hybrid Integration, presented by Scott Selikoff.
2. Throw Away All The Rules. Now What Process Do You Follow?, presented by Jeanne Boyarsky.
Currently sitting listening to Cameron McKenzie, the MC this event, who is presenting the final keynote for TheServerSide Java Symposium. Jeanne and I both missed out blogging during the previous session as she was giving her talk on process management and I was taking part in a client-side web panel discussion.
1. Pervasive Java
Cameron says, “The Learner Will Eclipse the Teacher”, and he’s referring to the fact that Java is being used in new and unique manners. New frameworks and languages are being built on top of Java and gaining support from active communities every day.
Cameron also quotes James Gosling, who gave the opening key note for the symposium and said, “You can create whatever you want”.
2. Job Security
Cameron talks about the most desired Java-based skill sets on monster, such as WebSphere, EJB, Spring, etc.
3. A Year of Revolutions
Cameron reminds us that in the past year, the technology of today helped to spawn the types of revolutions that haven’t been seen since the printing press. In this manner, the revolutions may not have succeeded with the technology.
Cameron compares today’s developers to the first printing press, or in more nerd-like terms, Star Trek’s Zefram Cochrane, who brought a new age of human civilization based on fundamental changes in technology.
4. We’re driving the revolution
Developers have become very democratic and community oriented and have helped grow technology in very unique and often unexpected ways.
Even though we might not be the developers who wrote the social media applications Egypt and Libya used, we have contributed in our own ways that have driven the ‘moment’, such as posting, bug fixing, flaming posts, helping, as well as drinking and socializing. He joking points out, the Greek meaning of the word Symposium is a social event of drinking and celebration.
Cameron points out that there are certain things we should and should not judge. For example, if Facebook changes its privacy settings, we should be judging it to know if we’re all effected by the actions of that company.
5. Life as a Java Developer
Cameron tells a story about Hennig Brand who discovered phosphorus while searching for gold, by boiling urine and experimenting on the residue. The result was one of the first elements in history to be isolated, that doesn’t occur free in nature. Cameron then says that for a Java Developer, “Every day is like boiling massive vats of urine”, which received much laughter from the audience.
6. We are the Revolution
Cameron tells the story about how companies trade, use, and track user information, often without their knowledge. Companies then make decisions about this data that effect customers but never openly admit how they arrive at these decisions.
Cameron was working in Canada and discovered personal data was being transmitted and despite promises of protection, none of the data was secure. He wrote letters and spoke up and was able to get the company to slow down and reconsider its plan.
Conclusion
Cameron concluded the talk by thanking the sponsors, vendors, speakers, and participants for taking part in the symposium and helping to build a better, stronger develop community.
Live blogging from TheServerSide Symposium on the final day, attending “Ajax Applications with JSF 2 and New RichFaces 4” presented by Max Katz. Max is presenting a talk on Ajax, which has been added to JSF2, as well as integratin with RichFaces 4. Max will be part of a client-side panel in the next set of talks with myself, Cameron McKenzie, and Bear Bibeault in the main ballroom.
Attendance has been significantly reduced today as many people, CodeRanch staff included, have started flying back home.
1. JSF2 New Features
Max lists some of the new features in JSF2:
2. Ajax Support
Ajax support in JSF2 has been added via f:ajax tag. Max presents some code examples that include event handling for the Ajax tags.
3. Where are the rich JSF2 components?
Max focusses on JSF2 as a framework for developing extensive widgets and rich UI, but does not provide them. In other words, to use JSF2 in practice, you will need to also include a rich framework, built on top of JSF2, as part of your application. The rest of his talk is focussed on RichFaces 4, a rich JSF2 framework with customizable/skinnable widgets.
4. RichFaces 4
RichFaces 4 has basic support for JSF2, so it is the first cross-over transition. The CR1 is available and the main release is slated for the end of March or early April, so as soon as 1-2 weeks. The RichFaces 4 tag is available via a4j:ajax.
5. What’s new in RichFaces 4?
New version relies entirely on jQuery in JavaScript. Redesign for semantic HTML principles. Also includes server-side and client-side performance optimizations. Finally, a lot of code clean-up and review was completed by the RichFaces team.
From a deployment perspective, it supports publishing to Google App Engine as well as Amazon EC2 Cloud.
Conclusion
Max spent the rest of his talk presenting individual facets of the RichFaces 4 API. It was a little dry if you don’t have a strong foundation in RichFaces, but still educational. The client side valdation, based on bean validation, looked particularly useful.