My Most Popular 2011 Blog Posts

In this post, I briefly summarize my "eight" most popular "2011" posts (six actually posted in 2011 and two posted in late 2010). The two common themes of these posts seem to be broad applicability and future focus. I expected a few of these posts to do well and was surprised that some of these did as well as they did (and surprised that some others did not make the list).

8. All I Want for Java 8 Is... (27 April 2011)

The popularity of the post All I Want for Java 8 Is... is probably best explained by its focus on what may come in a future version of Java. Having DZone (a "Big Link"), reddit, and JavaWorld references also certainly helps.

[7.] Ten Tips for Using Java Stack Traces (22 October 2010)

I personally like the post Ten Tips for Using Java Stack Traces because I believe it is one of those posts that can be useful to people who are relatively new to Java and provides fairly comprehensive coverage and tips for these new Java developers in a very specific but common area. When I wrote that more developers should write blog posts, I had blogs like this one in mind.

6. Java State of the Union: One Year Under Oracle (12 February 2011)

This may be the most surprising post (to me) to have fared so well in 2011.

The post Java State of the Union: One Year Under Oracle turned out to be especially interesting to me now from a historical perspective. At the time of that writing, the future of Java was near a low point (perhaps back a little higher than its lowest point thanks to the already announced participation of IBM and Apple in OpenJDK). It's difficult to believe how much things have changed in the same year! At the time of the writing of my sixth most popular post of 2011, the focus was on issues with the Java Community Process (JCP) and talk of forking Java. Oracle, to their credit, seems to have had a handle on what was happening at this time and, by JavaOne 2011, had made some significant changes that changed the overall Java community outlook for the better. 2011 was a great year for Java, but we didn't necessarily have any reason to believe that would be the case in mid-February of this year.

5. JavaOne 2011: The Definitive Set of HotSpot Performance Command-line Options (3 October 2011)

When I registered for the JavaOne 2011 presentation The Definitive Set of HotSpot Performance Command-line Options, I had no idea how popular that session or my coverage of that session would be. I liked the presentation so much that I purchased the book for which he is the lead author: Java Performance (I hope to write a review of it in coming months). I thought everyone only attended presentations on trendy topics at JavaOne, but I learned that many developers share my same interest in getting better at working with Java in core areas such as performance.

4. JDK 7: New Interfaces, Classes, Enums, and Methods (31 March 2011)

The popularity of JDK 7: New Interfaces, Classes, Enums, and Methods is not surprising given the popularity of Java 7 topics in 2011.

3. HTML5 Date Picker (17 January 2011)

The HTML5 Date Picker post enjoyed advantages of being on a trendy topic (HTML5) and being posted early in the year.

[2.] Seven Indispensable NetBeans Java Hints (9 October 2010)

Although written in late 2009, this post on seven indispensable NetBeans Java Hints remained very popular throughout 2011.

1. JDK 7: The New Objects Class (26 March 2011)

My most popular post by far (more than twice as many hits as the #2 post) has been JDK 7: The New Objects Class. I believe that the popularity of this post is best explained by the fact that the Java 7 java.util.Objects class is generally appealing to Java developers, but is a new "feature" of Java 7 that has perhaps not been as covered as much elsewhere as other features of Java 7.

Conclusion

Common themes associated with my most popular posts of 2011 included trendy topics such as Java 7/8 and HTML5, but also included more core coverage of NetBeans, Java performance, and Java stack traces.

Inspired by Actual Events: My Blog's New Name

I began writing this blog in October 2007 and it has been called "Dustin's Software Development Cogitations and Speculations" from the beginning. The name has definitely reflected a primary purpose for this blog: to cogitate and speculate on various software development topics. However, I've been thinking about changing this blog's name for a while and have finally decided to do it.

Many of the most popular software development blogs have short names that are easily remembered and uniquely identify the blog. Examples include Coding Horror, Pure Danger Tech, Lambda the Ultimate, Signal vs Noise, The Daily WTF, and even The BileBlog. Although there are some blogs with names of the author and/or "software" (such as Joel on Software, The Berkun Blog, Raible Designs, and Martin Fowler's Bliki), I didn't feel like "Dustin on Software" was as catchy or carried as much cachet.

I have always enjoyed watching movies as evidenced by my previous posts Classic Movie Quotes Applied to Software Development and More Movie Quotes Applied to Software Development. This might explain why I have decided to rename the blog from "Dustin's Software Cogitations and Speculations" to "Inspired by Actual Events" (with the former title becoming a "subtitle" of sorts that is included in the blog's description).

In the movies, a claim to be "inspired by actual events" can mean anything from significantly fact-based to barely traceable to any actual occurrence. For example, Horror News Net states that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was mainly based on Tobe Hooper's observation of chainsaws being sold at a local Montgomery Ward store and had elements of the story extracted from accounts of real-life killer Ed Gein. Despite this history, one of this movie's taglines was "What happened is true. Now the motion picture that's just as real."

Some of my favorite movies are inspired by actual events, though I hope they are closer to the original events than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These movies include Apollo 13, The Dish, October Sky, The Right Stuff, Hoosiers, Miracle, Rudy, Cool Runnings, The Blind Side, Amadeus, Secretariat, Unstoppable, and Stand and Deliver.

The movies that are "based on a true story" or "inspired by actual events" often take certain liberties in applying dramatic license to make the story more interesting. In my blog, I try not to make things up, but I do try to add commentary and speculation regarding software development topics. Many of my blogs are based on my observations of actual events.

Some movies are not themselves based on any particular actual event, but are based on observations of many events. For example, A Christmas Story and The Bridge on the River Kwai are both excellent movies that are themselves based on fiction, but whose fiction has roots in actual events or experiences. Some of my posts are like this: they don't trace to any one event but instead represent a collage of many and diverse experiences.

Big news items often lead to movies, even if just to made-for-television movies. For example, the recent story of the trapped and rescued Chilean miners is expected to be made into a movie. The television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit starts with the statement that episodes are "ripped from the headlines." My blog sometimes follows this pattern when I provide my own opinions and speculations and interpretation of current news events in the world of software development. An example of this was my recent post and follow-up comments on Google Chrome's announcement to not support H.264 in its <video> tag.

In short, I feel that titling my blog "Inspired by Actual Events" with the old title ("Dustin's Software Development Cogitations and Speculations") in the description is appropriate. It reflects the way I approach writing this blog and reflects my love of the movies. The most significant drawback is that "software development" is no longer included in the title, but having that referenced in the description will hopefully be sufficient.

For a short period of time, I intend to leave the main title as "Inspired by Actual Events: Dustin's Software Cogitations and Speculations," but I do plan to rename its main title to simply "Inspired by Actual Events" in the near future.

RMOUG Training Days 2011 Schedule-At-A-Glance Available

RMOUG has made the first edition of their Training Days 2011 Schedule-At-A-Glance available online. There are numerous interesting abstracts highlighted in this schedule. My two presentations are both scheduled for the first day and this is unlikely to change because of their respective durations. There is only one 30-minute slot and one 90-minute slot and I have one presentation in each of these slots. The typical RMOUG Training Days presentation slot is 60 minutes. Before highlighting some of the abstracts that look particularly interesting to me, I'll briefly summarize my own presentation abstracts.



Groovier Java Scripting
Session 2 (Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 10:30 am to noon, Room 406)

Groovy is a dynamic language that runs in the Java Virtual Machine and has full access to the Java SDK as well as third-party Java libraries and frameworks. Groovy supports most Java syntax as-is, but provides an even more concise syntax that makes it more suitable for scripting. Groovy can be run directly without explicit compilation and enjoys many other script-friendly benefits.

This presentation expands on topics discussed at RMOUG Training Days 2010 in the presentation "Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development." The presentation briefly summarizes select basic features and syntax of Groovy, advantages of using Groovy as a scripting language, and demonstrates how to use Groovy to improve building, developing, and testing Java-based applications. The presentation will emphasize how easy it is to write and parse XML with Groovy and how easy it is to manipulate database content with Groovy.

Although the basics of Groovy will be covered initially in the presentation for those who have not used Groovy previously, most of the syntax and other features covered in this presentation will be presented in conjunction with the use of Groovy in building, maintaining, and testing applications for the Java platform.

A First Look at HTML5: 30-Minute Quick Tip

Session 4 (Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 2:45 pm to 3:15 pm)

HTML5 is the the forthcoming standard in hypertext markup for the modern web. Although work on HTML5 has been ongoing for several years, interest and support for HTML5 has increased rapidly in recent months. An example of this is the JavaOne 2010 announcement that JavaFX 2.0 will provide HTML5 support. This short presentation will describe some of the most exciting features of HTML5. The presentation also covers the reasons that HTML5 is important and describes some of its limitations and obstacles to adoption. Finally, HTML5 features already supported in three popular modern web browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome) will be demonstrated.

There are numerous other abstracts that appeal to my interests. I probably won't attend the Tuesday University Sessions, but Brad Brown's Building Enterprise Apps for the Android Platform looks interesting. In his abstract, Brown states something that I've felt and been telling people as well:

I liken Android to the 'IBM PC' of the mobile world. Apple came out with a great OS for the Mac, but it only ran on the Mac. The 'IBM PC' (DOS, which later became Microsoft Windows) was generic and ran on a variety of hardware. Android runs on hundreds of devices today.

Brown's abstract states that this University Session will "discuss how you can write an application for the Android that accesses your corporate data securely. From concept to publishing in the Android market - for sale or for free - private or public."

One disadvantage of my presenting A First Look at HTML5 in the 30-minute Quick Tip presentation slot is that I won't be able to attend Rob Osterburg's presentation Scala: A Concise Introduction through Code, Concepts and Demonstrations. I'm not normally in the habit of recommending attendees attend a presentation at the same time as mine, but I would have liked to attend this session because Rob is a friend and because the topic (Scala) is of significant interest to me. In fact, attendees at my Groovy presentation will likely hear me enthusiastically recommend his session on another JVM-based programming language.

Gwen Shapira (blog) has an abstract discussing another topic of high interest to me: NoSQL (see my coverage of a JavaOne 2010 presentation on NoSQL). Her presentation is called NoSQL Deep Dive and her abstract summarizes NoSQL: "NoSQL is a general name for a new type of database - One that throws away the relational model in favor of better scalability."

Another abstract title that stood out to me as I scanned the Schedule-At-A-Glance is Introduction to Mobile Application Development. This abstract states that the presentation will "cover introduction, approach, and leading practices for building applications in a mobile platform" and will provide an iPhone example.

The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group is deeply rooted in Oracle database technology and this year's slate of presentations, like most years before, provides numerous in-depth database-heavy topics. Similarly, it is not surprising that many Oracle tools received focused coverage in RMOUG Training Days 2011 presentations. The schedule is subject to change (one presentation still needs a title!), but it is interesting to start planning what I will attend.

RMOUG Training Days 2011 will be held February 15-17, 2011 (15 February is University Sessions) at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The Colorado Convention Center has a Flash-based interactive floor map available for seeing where the rooms for each session are located.

New Links to My Oracle Technology Network Articles

I noticed that the URLs to Oracle Technology Network (OTN) articles have changed recently. In this brief post, I list the new URLs for the articles that I have written or co-written that are published on OTN.

Build a Java Application With Eclipse, Spring, and Oracle WebLogic Server (February 2010)
New URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx-oepe-spring-095718.html
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/marx-oepe-spring.html

Basic Java Persistence API Simple Best Practices (May 2008)
New URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx-jpa-087268.html
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/marx-jpa.html

Visualize Your Oracle Database Data with JFreeChart (October 2007)
New URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx-jchart-085298.html
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/marx-jchart.html

Better JPA, Better JAXB, and Better Annotations Processing with Java SE 6 (September 2007)
New URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx-jse6-090753.html
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/marx-jse6.html

Accessorize Oracle Database with Ruby (February 2007)
New URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx-ruby-092465.html
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/marx-ruby.html

Add Some Spring to Your Oracle JDBC Database Access (November 2005)
New URL: Unknown (see this Internet Archive Wayback Machine Copy)
Former URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/marx_spring.html

RMOUG Training Days 2010 Agenda

An early version of the agenda for RMOUG Training Days 2010 is now available. The agenda currently shows six University Sessions, ten 90 minute sessions, ten 30 minute sessions, and then many of the typical 60 minute sessions. As usual, many of the presentations are focused on Oracle database development and administration. However, there are several presentations likely to appeal to those who have little or no interest in the database.

The following are some of the sessions that I think look interesting based on their titles and abstracts. There are more attractive sessions than I will list here.

There is only one session (Session 4, Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 2:45 pm - 3:15 pm) with 30 minute presentations, but there are many potentially interesting presentations during that session. These include Using SQL to Generate SQL (likely to be particularly useful for those new to SQL), Java 6 and Java 5 New Features (likely to be particularly useful for those new to J2SE 5 or Java SE 6), and 10 Things I Did Not Learn from SQL Class (very specific how-tos listed in this abstract).

Bill Jackson's 60-minute presentation 10 Easy Ways to Build a Better Graphic User Interface is scheduled for Session 7 (Thursday, 18 February 2010, 9 am - 10 am). My first presentation, RESTful Java is scheduled for Session 8 (Thursday, 18 February 2009, 10:15 am - 11:15 am) and Oracle Fusion Design Fundamentals is offered in that same session. My second presentation, Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development, is scheduled for Session 11 (Thursday, 18 February 2009, 2:45 pm - 3:45 pm).

There are multiple presentations on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) including SOA Today during Session 9 (Thursday, 17 February 2009, 11:45 am - 12:45 pm). Other SOA presentations include Problems and Solutions Facing SOA Implementations and Using Agile Approaches and Techniques for Rapid SOA Implementations (both Session 11) and Agile SOA: Is It Possible? (Session 7).

Although Oracle is pursuing acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Java and Sun products play a relatively minor role at Training Days 2010. There are three presentations with "Java" in the title, which are my two presentations ("RESTful Java" and "Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development") and the above-cited John King presentation "Java 6 and Java 5 New Features." There are additional presentations that are Java-related such as presentations on Application Development Framework (ADF) and Fusion.

Several of the speakers scheduled for RMOUG Training Days 2010 are very well-known in the Oracle community. These include Robert Freeman, Steven Feuerstein, and Duncan Mills. There are also several speakers who frequently present at RMOUG Training Days as well as some speakers that are new to Training Days.

I always start to get more excited about attending a conference once its agenda has been posted. I am looking forward to presenting at and attending RMOUG Training Days 2010.

RMOUG Training Days 2010 Abstracts: Groovy, REST, and Better UIs

As I noted in my previous post, my two abstracts have been accepted by the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) for presentation at Training Days 2010. I have also learned that Bill Jackson's abstract for "Ten Easy Ways To Build a Better GUI" has been accepted as well. I will include the abstracts for my two presentations and for Bill's presentation later in this post.

I am eager to present these two presentations because they are inspired by the presentations that I had planned to present at Colorado Software Summit 2009. Incidentally, that conference would have started tonight with the annual Sunday evening reception famous for its good food and interesting conversation. It was a great way to casually and comfortably kick off an absolutely terrific conference. I was sad to hear about the end of this conference and don't like thinking about what I am missing this week. It certainly would have been nice to be getting my brain crammed full of software development concepts and ideas this week in beautiful Keystone, Colorado. As I stated, however, the opportunity to present presentations at RMOUG Training Days 2010 similar to what I had planned for CSS 2009 is a positive one.

My two abstracts that were accepted for RMOUG Training Days 2010 are "Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development" and "RESTful Java." The abstracts for these two presentations are (may differ slightly from what will appear in the conference materials):


Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development

As a dynamic language that runs on the JVM and can be used anywhere the Java programming language is used, Groovy is a great choice for building, testing, and maintaining Java SE and EE applications. This presentation briefly summarizes some basics of Groovy and advantages of using Groovy before moving onto demonstrating how to use Groovy to improve the ability to build and test standard and enterprise Java applications. Although the basics of Groovy will be covered initially in the presentation for those who have not used Groovy previously, most of the syntax and other features of Groovy covered in this presentation will be presented in conjunction with use of Groovy in the building and testing of applications for the Java platform.


RESTful Java

The Java platform provides many types of support for building REST-based web services and REST-compliant clients. This presentation will briefly summarize the main principles of the Representational State Transfer style of web services before covering several of the most popular Java-based approaches for working with REST. The presentation will focus on JSR 311 (“JAX-RS: The Java API for RESTful Web Services”), Jersey (the JSR 311 reference implementation), Restlet, and Enunciate while also covering other useful tools related to REST-oriented development with Java.


Bill Jackson's abstract is called "Ten Easy Ways to Build a Better GUI." His abstract is shown next and, as its name implies, focuses on Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).


10 Easy Ways to Build a Better GUI

In the world of graphic user interfaces, form nearly always follows function. From Dilbert jokes about GUIs designed by engineers to MySpace’s reputation for ugly pages it’s clear that designing attractive, useful, and well thought-out GUIs is much easier said than done.

However, positive examples in the commercial world such as Apple’s well-earned reputation for stylish products show just how much impact a well designed user interface can have. This presentation will cover 10 basic steps for building more intuitive, attractive, and useful user interfaces. The discussion will include issues such as usability, data presentation, form layout, color selection, icon acquisition, and a host of other issues that will help attendees to understand the basic steps to making programs that users actually like. The benefits of these skills go beyond the aesthetic issues to help raise user productivity and product longevity. The presentation will not require any specific programming knowledge and will apply to desktop applications and web pages alike



My presentations planned for RMOUG Training Days 2010 will be changed to some degree because of the different venue and different audience characteristics. The Groovy presentation is conceptually almost exactly what I planned for Colorado Software Summit except that I was going to speak on JRuby there. The RESTful Java presentation will be 60 minutes at RMOUG Training Days 2010 rather than the 90 minutes it would have been at Colorado Software Summit 2009. Because of the shorter duration, it will necessarily be less detailed at Training Days, but I think that may fit the different audience better anyway. I will focus on basics of REST and then cover at a high level (with some API details) how to apply Java tools and frameworks to build REST-based applications.

Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2010 will take place February 16-18, 2010, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado.

RMOUG Training Days 2010 Presentations

I received word today that my two abstracts were accepted for Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days 2010, which will be held February 16-18, 2010, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The abstracts that I submitted for RMOUG Training Days 2010 were heavily influenced by the abstracts that had been accepted by Colorado Software Summit 2009 prior to the cancellation of that conference.

The two abstracts that have been accepted are Applied Groovy: Scripting for Java Development and RESTful Java. For the Groovy presentation, I plan to focus on using Groovy to improve the efficiency of development and deployment tasks. Although I'll briefly talk about using Groovy (and Grails) to develop applications, the emphasis will be on how Groovy helps with development and deployment of traditional Java applications. Because of this, it is also likely to be of more interest to those developing applications in other languages who still would like to take advantage of a nice scripting language and JVM features.

In the "RESTful Java" presentation, my current plan is to briefly introduce REST (quick summary of my RMOUG Training Days 2008 presentation REST from Web Services Frustrations) and then introduce some tools and frameworks that are Java-based to make developing RESTful web services easier.

By the time the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2010 conference is held in February 2010, it is highly possible that we'll know the fate of the Oracle bid to acquire Sun Microsystems. That is likely to be a topic that gets some mention during the conference.

I am looking forward to seeing other presentations that will be at this conference in coming days through presenters' blogs and tweets. I'm especially looking forward to the release of the conference agenda to get a more complete picture of the types of presentations that I can attend at Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2010.

Colorado Software Summit 2009 Preliminary Agenda Posted

The Preliminary Agenda for Colorado Software Summit 2009 has been posted. I am excited to announce that I will be speaking for my second time at this fabulous software development conference. My topics are "Applied JRuby" and "RESTful Java."

I'm also excited to preview the abstracts of some of the other presentations that I definitely plan to attend during this conference. These include Scala - The Java Path to Functional Programming, Advanced Relational Persistence, JSR 223 - The Java Scripting Engine, A Cornucopia of JVM Languages on the Google App Engine, con(Currency) in the Java World, at least one of the Cloud Computing presentations, and, of course, the always insightful keynote presentations. It also sounds like more presentations will be added to the agenda in the near future.

It is going to be a lot of work preparing these two presentations and then giving each of the 90-minute presentations three times each during the week, but I am really looking forward to another outstanding week at the Colorado Software Summit in gorgeous Keystone, Colorado.

RMOUG Training Days 2009 Schedule/Registration Posted

RMOUG has posted the RMOUG Training Days 2009 schedule (subject to change) along with online registration.

My two presentations are both scheduled for the second full day (Thursday, February 12, 2009) of the conference when I begin and end that day with a presentation. My sessions are scheduled as follows:


REST from Web Services Frustrations
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 8:30 am - 9:30 am

Bringing Web to the Desktop with Adobe AIR
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 4 pm - 5 pm


As I look at the currently planned RMOUG Training Days 2009 schedule, several presentations stand out as particularly interesting to me. These include (in no particular order and with speakers' names in parentheses):

* Oracle JDeveloper 11g—New and Noteworthy (Lynn Munsinger)
* Ajax and DoJo for Dynamic Web Pages (Julie Johnson)
* Building Google Gadgets for Your Company (Peter Laird) [I believe that I attended this 30-minute presentation at Collaborate08]
* Implementing an AJAX Enabled UI with Little Effort (Kurt Kellner) [ADF]
* Web Services 101 (Chris Ostrowski)
* Introduction to Cloud Computing (Peter Laird)
* Drilling into JSF/ADF (Michael Fons)
* Unix Tips and Tricks for the Advanced Developers and DBAs (Sumit Sengupta)
* Changing the World with Oracle Web Services and the Service Oriented Architecture (Bradley Brown)

There seem to be more topics tied to products and technologies other than the database than I recall in any previous editions of this conference. There are many more interesting database and non-database topics included in the schedule.

I didn't see anything on Flex or OpenLaszlo, but I will be introducing Flex at least briefly in my AIR presentation, which I believe will focus more on AIR from a Flex approach than from a DHTML/JavaScript background.

RMOUG Training Days 2009 Abstracts Accepted

I was pleased to hear earlier this week that my abstracts for two presentations at Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2009 were accepted. I will be presenting "REST from Web Services Frustrations" and "Bringing Web to the Desktop with Adobe AIR" at this annual RMOUG event. The 2009 edition of this conference will be held, as usual, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The conference will be on February 11-12, 2009.

I am looking forward to presenting on REST and on Adobe AIR at this conference. For those working with Oracle-related products, this is also a good conference to hear from some of the best-known experts on Oracle products. I am looking forward to seeing what is on the conference agenda in the next couple of weeks.

Colorado Software Summit 2008 CD-ROM

I received my copy of the post-conference CD-ROM for the Colorado Software Summit 2008 yesterday morning (Friday, November 7). This 670MB resource contains the latest versions of speakers' slides that include changes made during the conference in response to participants' feedback. For example, I added several slides to my presentations based on feedback and even included some slides specifically calling out the questions asked with answers. Later in this blog entry, I'll reference some of my previous blog entries that are tightly coupled with my slides and/or code examples on the CD-ROM.

There are several advantages to having each speaker present on each of his or her two topics three times each during the week. Besides the obvious advantages of reduced conflicts between an attendee's most desired sessions and the ability to hear from others which presentations are "must-see," a third advantage is that speakers can and often do include feedback from previous presentations of the same slides into the next presentation. The slides on the post-conference CD are often improved from the original slides provided on the pre-conference USB drive.

Besides the slides, several presenters provided the code examples they demonstrated. I am particularly looking forward to looking at and running the code examples that accompanied Matthew Wakeling's presentation "Performance Engineering from Scratch."

I was surprised at the number of photographs included on the CD-ROM. I submitted a relatively small number of photographs of the conference center and of the Keystone area, but one or more of the other contributors of photographs really went all out. There are over 350 photographs on the CD that include photographs of the sessions, of the attendees, and many of the beautiful scenery in the area.

I tried to include README.txt (or similarly named) files in each directory in the examples I included on the CD-ROM. There is a "jmx" directory under which all of my examples for "Java Management Extensions Circa 2008" presentation reside. All directories other than this "jmx" directory are related to examples for my other presentation (Applying Flash to Java: Flex and OpenLaszlo). These examples have a little more complicated directory structure because they involve Flex files, OpenLaszlo files, and other files related to the generation of a WAR file.

For most of the examples, the libraries or frameworks used need to be downloaded separately. For example, Flex and OpenLaszlo can be downloaded here and here respectively and SWFObject can be downloaded here. For the JMX examples, JMX 2 can be downloaded as described here, the ws-jmx-connector can be downloaded here (Early Access 4 just released), the Spring Framework can be downloaded here, OpenDMK can be downloaded here, Apache Commons Modeler can be downloaded here, and EasyMBean can be downloaded here.

Many of the examples on the CD-ROM have similar counterparts available on my blog. Some of these are highlighted next:


Examples: Applying Flash to Java: Flex and OpenLaszlo

* Flash to Flash Communication (Flex)
* OpenLaszlo ColorPicker
* OpenLaszlo Form Validator
* OpenLaszlo GradientView
* Laszlo RSS Reader
* Laszlo ToolTips

I showed other examples in the presentation, but did not blog on them because of their extreme simplicity and because the code included in the Flex 3 Language Reference and the Flex 3 Component Explorer provide similar examples.


Examples: Java Management Extensions Circa 2008

* Model MBeans Examples:
      + Direct/"Raw" Model MBeans
      + Spring Framework Model MBeans
      + EasyMBean Model MBeans
      + Apache Commons Modeler Model MBeans
* MXBean
* JMX 2 Annotations
* JMX 2 Querying
* JMX Connectors and Adapters
* JMX Web Services Connector
      + Basics of JMX Web Services Connector
      + With WinRM
      + Custom JMX Server with WinRM


I am looking forward to browsing the slides and examples on the Colorado Software Summit 2008 post-conference CD-ROM and continuing my learning of new things from the conference. By the way, Wayne has been posting previous Colorado Software Summit presentations on the conference website in the past. I recommend watching that page in case he continues that practice and posts 2008 presentations. All presentations from Colorado Software Summit 2007 are now available online.

UPDATE (18 November 2008): Chris Richardson has posted the slides from his presentations at Colorado Software Summit 2008 on his blog.

Looking Forward to the Colorado Software Summit

Several colleagues I work with have asked me about the Colorado Software Summit after hearing my enthusiasm regarding attending it (and presenting at it) next week. I realized that because they are not aware of these advantages of this conference, others probably are not aware either. This blog entry is my attempt at explaining some of the things that I believe makes Colorado Software Summit unique and exciting.

The Colorado Software Summit offers several advantages that your boss or client will love while also offering several advantages your more selfish side will love as well (and some of the advantages fit in both categories). In no particular order, here are the advantages that I am looking forward to experiencing again next week.

* Cutting-edge technologies covered such as iPhone development coverage in this year's conference that is conveniently occurring right after Apple removed the Non-Disclosure Agreement from released software.

* Wide variety and interesting mixture of topics is another advantage of this conference. While I like the many cutting-edge presentations, I have found that there is a good mix of topics that I can apply immediately and that I will be able to apply in months or years. In the past, I have received my first absolute exposure or first significant exposure to several technologies that made a difference in my work almost immediately. These included SVG, XSL:FO/FOP, Maven, J2SE 5, XQuery, Java Generics, and many more.

* Highly skilled and experienced attendees that are often more familiar with the topic being covered than the speaker. I am a speaker this year and am well aware of this fact.

* Practitioner Speakers work with the topics they cover regularly and are enthusiastic about their topics.

* Wide spectrum of industry leaders represented as evidenced by these glowing blog entries on the Colorado Software Symposium from Simon Phipps (Sun Microsystems), Kelvin Lawrence (IBM), and Dave Landers (formerly BEA, now Oracle). It is nice to have representatives of some of these major players in our industry so active in this conference. Apache Software Foundation is also typically heavily represented at this conference and SpringSource has an employee presenting there this year as well.

* Sessions are offered three times each and this is a tremendous benefit that I cannot overstate. At most conferences that I have attended, as excellent as they are, I always find myself disappointed when three of my top five presentations that I wish to see most are in the same slot and the other two are in the same second slot. As a first-time presenter at this conference, presenting two 90-minute presentations three times each over five days sounds a little daunting, but I know the value of this format after having attended the conference multiple times in the past.

* Excellent food may be one of my more selfish motivations, but the food at this conference is truly memorable and motivating.

* Location, Location, Location - This is another nearly entirely selfish motivation, but this location (Keystone, Colorado) is beautiful, serene (in between summer and winter crowds), and the perfect environment to focus on software technologies in a gorgeous setting. You can walk up the stairs to walk out on the roof of the Keystone Conference Center and I have found this to be very refreshing when my brain is too crammed full to think another software-related thought.

* Total Immersion is the best way I can summarize why I really, really like this conference. While it is exhausting to learn so much in so short a period of time, I am ready to go dive in again.

Colorado Software Summit 2008 Detailed Daily Schedule Posted

The Detailed Daily Summary for the Colorado Software Summit 2008 has been posted. When I have attended this conference in the past, I have always enjoyed mapping out which sessions I plan to attend. Because each session (except keynote sessions) is offered three times each, there are all types of scheduling permutations to consider. I have even more interest than usual in the posting of the detailed schedule for this year's conference (17th edition) because I am presenting on two topics.

My presentations are called Applying Flash to Java: Flex and OpenLaszlo and Java Management Extensions Circa 2008. The Schedule Sorted By Speaker Name indicates that I will be presenting each of the five weekdays of the conference with two presentations on Wednesday and one presentation each on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

I am looking forward to attending sessions that should benefit me immediately and in the near future (such as presentations on REST (and RESTful approaches), on Comet, and on Spring 3.0. I also enjoy the mix of presentations I regularly attend at this conference that may not benefit me immediately or even for some time, but are like "brain candy." For this year's conference, subjects falling into these categories for me are the multiple presentations on iPhone development and a presentation on Android development.

The Colorado Software Summit 2008 begins in just over two weeks on the evening of Sunday, October 19, and runs through lunch on Friday, October 24.

Basic JPA Best Practices Article Published

My article Basic Java Persistence API Best Practices was published on Oracle Technology Network (OTN) today. In this blog entry, I intend to provide a little background and extra information that I could not squeeze into the article itself.

As with most "best practices," the items discussed in this article are generally the "best" approach in my experience. That being said, almost nothing is always the better regardless of the circumstances and some practices closer to always being the best than are others. The focus of this article was on "basic" or relatively easy-to-implement practices that typically provide later benefits. In other words, I tried to cover JPA techniques and approaches that provide significant value for little extra effort or cost.

The focus on "basic" also meant that the article is largely targeted at developers just learning or starting to use JPA. More advanced JPA best practices are covered in JPA - Best Practices and Tips (2007 JavaOne Conference presentation referenced in my article), Java Persistence API - Portability Do's and Don'ts (another 2007 JavaOne Conference presentation referenced in my article), Java Persistence API: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and the "under construction" EclipseLink FAQ on JPA Best Practices.

My original draft of this article was over twice as long as the final version. One of the technical editors pointed out (rightly) that the original version was too long. The final version is much easier to read quickly and meets my usual expectation that tighter and more concise articles are preferable to longer-winded articles. The only drawback to removing so much content is that I was forced to remove coverage of some things I thought were useful for developers just learning JPA, but which were not as significant as what did make the cut. I hope in future blog entries to cover some of these details that did not make the final article. In addition, I also plan to use this blog to provide additional background on why certain practices are "best" in my opinion and to provide source code examples to illustrate some of these best practices.

I mentioned/quoted/paraphrased Mike Keith a couple times in this article. His Colorado Software Summit 2007 presentations on JPA are both related to "JPA best practices" and are now available online. They are called JPA Portability: What You Should Know When Writing Portable JPA Applications and EJB 3.0 Puzzlers (focus is on JPA specifically rather than the more general EJB 3).

Two recent and highly detailed blog entries that look at subjects I touched upon in this article are Why Sometimes a Reference to an Entity Manager Inside JPA Entities is Needed and The Tense Relationship Between JPA, Enums, and Generics.

Finally, with JPA 2.0 getting more attention, there is much to look forward to in future Java Persistence API development.

Presenting at Colorado Software Summit 2008

I am excited about presenting and attending Colorado Software Summit 2008 during October (19-24). The preliminary agenda for the 17th annual edition of this conference is available here and abstracts of my presentations are also available.

As is typical for most speakers at Colorado Software Summit, I will be presenting two presentations three times each. My two presentations are "Applying Flash to Java: Flex and OpenLaszlo" and "Java Management Extensions (JMX) Circa 2008." I am excited to talk about Flex, OpenLaszlo, and JMX, all of which are technologies that I enjoy and consider highly useful.

While presenting two presentations three times each obviously requires significant effort of the speakers, it is one of my favorite aspects of attending this software conference. All too often, I find that two, three, or even four presentations on my "top ten must-see presentations" at conferences are offered during the same time block or in overlapping blocks. By having each presentation offered three times each at Colorado Software Summit, I have been able to see my most anticipated presentations. The other nice benefit of this is that I've had other attendees tell me about sessions they particularly enjoyed and I could change plans to catch the second or third offering of that presentation.

JFreeChart 1.0.9 Released

Dave Gilbert recently announced the release of JFreeChart 1.0.9. The release notes for this release are conveniently available in the General JFreeChart Forum.

I am pleased to report that the sample code associated with the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) article Visualize Your Oracle Database Data with JFreeChart works properly using this new release.

Software Conferences in Colorado in 2008

There are going to be many software development (and closely related) conferences in Denver and in Colorado in 2008. This blog entry is an attempt to document some of these on the first day of 2008. They are listed below in their chronological order.

Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days 2008
February 13-14, 2008
Colorado Convention Center
* I will be presenting two presentations at this conference.

Network World Conference and Expo 2008
March 4, 2008
Colorado Convention Center

Java Posse Roundup 2008
(OpenSpace Conference with theme of "Don't Repeat Yourself" [DRY])
March 4-7, 2008
Crested Butte, Colorado

Collaborate08
April 13-17, 2008
Colorado Convention Center
* I will be presenting a presentation authored with Bill Jackson and Michael Martin.

Rocky Mountain Software Symposium
May 2-4, 2008
Renaissance Suites Flatiron Hotel

Colorado Software Summit 2008
October 19-24, 2008
Keystone Conference Center

OpenLaszlo/Flex/Flash at Collaborate08

I was pleased to receive an e-mail message last night with the acceptance of the abstract that Bill Jackson, Michael Martin, and I submitted for Collaborate08 in Denver, Colorado, April 13-17, 2008, at the Colorado Convention Center.

Our presentation is titled "Add Some Flash to Your Oracle DB Applications: Flex and OpenLaszlo" and will be included in the IOUG (Independent Oracle Users Group) forum at Collaborate08. This will be Session 402 and the currently scheduled date and time for this presentation is Monday, April 14, 2008, from 9:15 am to 10:15 am.

Collaborate08 is the third annual presentation of this conference with the first two conferences being in Nashville and Las Vegas. Links to information on the three editions of Collaborate are included next:

Collaborate08 - Denver, Colorado - April 13-17, 2008
(Colorado Convention Center)
http://www.ioug.org/collaborate08/
http://www.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2008/collaborate08/

Collaborate07 - Las Vegas, Nevada - April 15-19, 2007
(Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center)
http://www.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2007/collaborate07/

Collaborate06 - Nashville, Tennessee - April 23-27, 2006
(Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center)
http://www.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2006/collaborate06/

There is much going on in the Denver area related to Oracle in Spring 2008. In addition to Collaborate08 being held in Denver in April 2008, the Rocky Mountain Oracle User's Group (RMOUG) is holding their Training Days 2008 in February in the same Denver Convention Center. I will be presenting two different presentations (on XQuery and on Apache POI) at RMOUG Training Days 2008 and will be providing some support to Bill Jackson in his presentation at that conference.

JFreeChart 1.0.8 Released

Dave Gilbert recently announced the release of JFreeChart 1.0.8. In my tests, all of the sample code from Visualize Your Oracle Database Data with JFreeChart worked correctly against this new release. This is not very surprising because the 1.0.8 changes sound like mostly fixes to bugs introduced with JFreeChart 1.0.7 changes.

UPDATE: A 1.0.8a (7 December 2007) version of JFreeChart is now available online at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15494. It appears that this version may have been released to fix the security vulnerability associated with HTML image maps originally discovered and identified by Rapid7.

Oracle-Related Conferences News

RMOUG Training Days 2008

The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days 2008 Schedule-At-A-Glance is now available here. The two presentations that I will be giving at RMOUG Training Days 2008 are Excel with Apache POI and Oracle Database (Wednesday, February 13, 2008, Session 3, 1:30 pm - 2pm) and Introduction to XQuery: A Multipurpose XML Tool (Thursday, February 14, 2008, Session 7, 8:30 am - 9:30 am).

Oracle OpenWorld 2007

Oracle Corporation has also provided many of the presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2007 online under Content Catalog. The required username and password are displayed on this page along with fields for searching for desired presentations. The presentations include coverage of Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java EE, and SOA in addition to the expected Oracle-specific product and services coverage. Other resources available at the main Oracle OpenWorld 2007 page include PDF versions of the daily newspaper provided at the conference and keynote addresses.