What happened during the “Enterprise Java Tech Day” event in Athens

For one more time the Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG) has provided the Greek developer’s community with an excellent event, where we had the opportunity to hear and learn from leading java experts. It was held in the “Park Hotel” and the facilities proved adequate even though the turnout was significant. The event was kindly sponsored by i-docs (IDEAL), which also held a lottery for an iPod at the end.

For those that couldn’t make it I will try to give an outline of the presentations using my notes. Since one of the things that stood out in this event was the authority of the speakers, the format will try to focus both to the subject and the presenter himself. I would like to notice that it is not feasible to write about everything that a speaker said, not to mention about the discussions that emerge during Q&A or the dialogs that take place during the breaks. That is why attendance to these kinds of events is irreplaceable! Posts like mine can only scratch the surface and give you a vague overview of the subjects presented.

The JHUG Intro

Paris Apostolopoulos opened the event and spoke on behalf of the JHUG.

Summury was:

• 4th and best JHUG event [yes Paris it was great!]
• Thanked the speakers and the sponsor
• Javapolis 2006 bags will be given to attendees that give good questions [thanks BeJUG]
• Introduced the new JHUG logo… wearing it on his t-shirt [tshirt.clone();]
• JHUG site will port from PHP CMS to Java based solution (Confluence by Atlasian)
• 5’ minutes about Javapolis 2006 memories:
  • BeJUG supports JHUG with some free passes
  • 2.800 developers, many speakers, 5 days non-stop [!]
  • The cost is not high
  • Location and venue were very nice
  • “Meet your java idols”
  • See you at the next Javapolis 2007 10-14 Dec

this.is.the.end(); [by Paris]

Dr Heinz Max Kabutz (Java Specialists)

Who is he..?

Dr. Heinz Kabutz is a Java Champion living in Greece. He consults, holds courses, programs, and – writes a weekly newsletter in which he shares some rather unconventional insights about Java. Things that push the envelope; make Java do things you thought it could not; dirty tricks and such. In other words, stuff you do not usually find in Java periodicals or newsletters.

You can find his newsletter at: http://www.javaspecialists.co.za/

His presentation: “Productive Coder”

It is always valuable to hear from Heinz. Every time I learn something new:

• “Programming with ‘enjoyment’ in java”
• “I know… in Greece no one gets paid to program”
• Gave some nice HCI tips and views
• Touch typing [haven’t seen anyone type code or bilingual that way]
• Avoid the mouse [vi lovers rejoice]
• Use IDE shortcuts [actually that was my latest post Heinz]
• Gave a great demo with IntelliJ. Even Rod Hardwood (IntelliJ evangelist) learned something new J
• If fingers are getting faster than brain -> think in higher level, eg. Patterns. “Patterns are like good red wine: as you get to know them you appreciate them more”.
• Have good overall development processes
• Use Doclets
• Use proper comments. Excellent example of bad practise with java.awt.color.ColorSpace code
• At this point my friend Panagiotis won a Javapolis bag for his question 🙂
• Make everything as private as possible
• Use immutable fields (generational garbage collectors treat short lived objects nicely)
• Use proper exception handling
• Careful with stuff like reflection and contemporary static analysis tools

Dr. Alexis Giotis and Mr. Pafsanias Ftakas (i-docs)

Their Presentation: “Java open source technologies applied on a mission critical business application (What we use, what we don’t and why?)”

The speakers gave a very interesting presentation in Greek regarding the various products, technologies and technical decisions they had to take to implement the i-docs product. Although at the beginning I feared that this presentation might end up a marketing hoax, as it went along, it kept my interest high and actually it gave me a motive to check out a couple of things they have used. I would like to see more of this kind of presentations from the Greek developer’s community.

Tom Baeyens (JBoss – RedHat]

Who is he..?

Tom Baeyens is the founder and lead of JBoss jBPM.

You can find his blog at: http://blogs.jboss.com/blog/tbaeyens/

His presentation: “jPDL: Simplified Workflow for Java”

-“Aaaaare youuu ready for some W O R K F L O W ?”
-…”yep”…
-I travelled all the way from Belgium to talk about workflow, and all I get is a “yep”??????

• Workflow ~= state machines
• What is a process language? (practically expresses execution flow) [continuations?]
• Why use a process language?
• When to use one?
• Intro to JBoss jBPM (process virtual machine + langs)
  • Multiple process langs (jPDL, BPEL, PageFlow, XPDL)
• Example: The door (open, close, lock etc.)
  • Java implementation
  • jPDL implementation: lots of state management = more nicely expressed with processes)
• Task management in jDPL
• Natural binding to Java
• jPDL use cases:
  • Orchestration of asynchronous architectures
  • Orchestration of workflows
  • Sending email (is a wait state after all)
  • …..
• Example of jPDL Persistence
• jPDL features:
  • simple
  • powerful
  • embeddable
• Not tight to JBoss AS

Patrick Linskey (BEA)

Who is he..?

Patrick Linskey is also a Java Champion that has been working with Java Data Objects for over 3 years and has been involved in object/relational mapping for 5+ years. As the founder and past CTO of SolarMetric, Patrick drove the technical direction of the company. Patrick has been the primary evangelist for JDO, having publicly spoken to rave reviews in numerous cities worldwide over the past three years. He is an active member of both the JDO 2.0 and EJB 3.0 expert groups. He has also worked for TechTrader, MIT’s Media Lab, Bank One, and MIL 3 in various technical roles. Under Patrick’s leadership, SolarMetric has developed the market leading JDO implementation with over 300 customers throughout the world spanning all industries. Now at BEA.

You can find his blog at: http://www.jroller.com/page/pcl

His presentation: “Introducing JPA (Java Persistence API)”

• Intro to the EJB3 specs
• JPA driving forces:
  • Ease of use
  • Pluggability (eg. persistence providers)
  • Testability
• Change in Entities in EJB3
• JPA Metadata:
  • Most have “intelligent” defaults
  • Still value to having XML configuration (along side annotations)
• ORM Metadata:
  • Annotations- style (tends to clutter code)
  • XML style
• JPA Example: A Session Bean
• APIs for J2SE
• JPQL syntaxt examples (bulk updates/deletes cool!)

You can find more information on “Using the Java Persistence API” presentation (video) by Patrick Linskey and Mike Keith.

Rod Hardwood (Jetbrains – -Intelli JIDEA)

Who is he..?

Rod Hardwood is a lead developer and evangelist for the IntelliJ IDE “the most intelligent java IDE” as advertised by JetBrains.

His presentation: “Tools for Agile Teams”

• Outlook of trends in Java development (methodologies, dynamic langs, etc.)
• Agility
• “Flow” & tool UI
  • Avoid context switching!
• IntelliJ IDEA is:
  • Code-centric
  • Keyboard friendly
  • Predictive
  • Support “intelligent” refactoring
  • Nice Navigation
• InteliJ IDEA demo:
  • Quite impressive (smart completion and static analysis together!)
• TeamCity intro
• TeamCity demo [looked interesting].

UPDATE: Photos from the event (thanks papo)

UPDATE #2: Event got mentioned in java-champions.dev.java.net: “Dr. Heinz Kabutz ‘busy’ preparing for his talk at Hellenic JUG sponsored ‘Enterprise Java Tech Day’ in Athens Greece – Mar 10th, 2007 “

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