Archive for October, 2008

October 2008 Meeting Minutes

Friday, October 31st, 2008

A great thanks to all of you who attended the October 2008 meeting on Java concurrency.  We had a good turnout and speaker Dave Zaffrey provided an excellent overview of the Java concurrency toolbox.  Dave addressed strategies to create thread-safe code, concurrency building blocks such as Lock and Semaphores and the new concurrency-supported collections. Below you will find a link to the materials covered.

-= Presentation Materials =-
Presentation File (PDF)

-= Books/Articles Mentioned =-
Java Concurrency in Practice by Brian Goetz
Understanding locks
Getting to know synchronizers

-= Tools/Platforms Mentioned =-
Java Decompiler (Jad) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/jadclipse/
Erlang Language - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_programming_language
Scala Language - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_programming_language
Clojure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure

-= Special Thanks =-
Dave Zaffrey - Speaker
GCA Technologies, Inc
Axiomatic IT, Inc
Simlius, LLC

Stay tuned for next month’s meeting announcement.

October 2008 Meeting - Practical Java Concurrency

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Hello Java Fans!
For this month’s meeting, we will explore the numerous tools available for building concurrency into your application.  Like most of us building multi-threaded applications in a safe manner is more of an art than a science.  Join speaker David Zaffery for this presentation as he takes an exploratory look at the many tools available for concurrency.

As usual, if you plan to attend the meeting, bring a colleague (or two).  There will be food, door prizes and giveaways.  An RSVP email will be sent later from tampa.jug at gmail.com to confirm your attendance.

NOTE: meeting will be on Wed. October 29th (NOT our usual Tuesday).

-= Meeting =-
Practical Java Concurrency

The aim will be to illustrate the java.util.concurrency classes that allow multi-threaded Java applications cooperate more effectively, avoiding excessive waiting for resources, as well as some of the concurrency pitfalls like deadlocks, race-conditions, etc.

- Threads
- Synchronized vs Locks
- Semaphores
- Concurrent data structures, i.e. ConcurrentHashmap
- Runnable vs Callables, and Futures
- Executor framework

- (time permitting some discussion of NIO selectors)

-= About the Speaker =-
David Zaffery is an Systems/Software Architect.  He started his career working for the Space Shuttle Program where he was first introduced to distributed systems.  Development of server-side applications has been his primary interest over the years since then.  Following this he went on to create serveral C/Unix multithreaded applications as well as GUI and device driver work.  He began working with Java in 1995, and felt that it was the future.  This eventually led him to become a Sun certified Java instructor in 2000 until 2003.  His current work focuses on enterprise application performance and design.

-= Meeting Info =-
Speaker: David Zaffery
Date: 10/29/2008
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

-= Location =-
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=4919+Memorial+Hwy,+Tampa,+FL+33634

September 2008 Meeting Minutes & Materials

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Thank you all who attended the September 2008 meeting and made a great success.  We had an excellent turn out and the Skyway Software team including the presenter did a great presentation on Skyway Builder.

The tool is a model-driven offering from Skyway, available as open source edition, that lets developer build Spring and Hibernate based applications using a visual tool.  The presenter provided several examples on use-case scenarios for Builder and explored how the tool create the Spring and other enterprise artifacts that can be directly deployed on an app server.

The presenter would like for you to take a short survey at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6WuGlVf6YFgOrsOduw9bEQ_3d_3d

-= Meeting Materials =-

Presentation (pdf) - http://groups.google.com/group/tampajug/web/Skyway_Spring_Generation_Framework.pdf
Skyway Developer Blog: http://www.skywayperspectives.org/blog/
Skyway JUG short survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6WuGlVf6YFgOrsOduw9bEQ_3d_3d
Skyway developer site: http://www.skywayperspectives.org/
Download Skyway Builder CE: http://www.skywayperspectives.org/portal/web/guest/downloads/overview

-= Special Thanks =-
Dave Meurer, Speaker (Skyway Software)
Skyway Software (http://skywaysoftware.com/) - Food/Drink, Presentation, Giveaways
GCA Technology Services (http://www.gca.net/) - Venue
Axiomatic IT, Inc (http://axiomaticit.com/) - Site Hosting

Stay tuned for announcements about next month’s meeting!