Wednesday, November 29, 2006

November 2006 Meeting Minutes

I would like to thank all who attended the Tampa Java User Group November meeting. The meeting was well attended with 17 people who wanted to hear about secure computing.

Speaker John Collins did a great job providing valuable information regarding general security and secure computing practices. The discussion revolved around the types of vulnerabilities and tools that are available to identify or exploit these vulnerabilities. Did you know that a badly written file-serving servlet can divulge the content of your web.xml? We also look at different type of attacks and the phases of attack and tools used in each phase.

Presentation Materials:
Click here to download presentation slides.

Special Thanks
John Collins - Presenter
Hudson (www.us.hudson.com/it) - Pizza/Drink
GCA.Net Technology Center (http://www.gca.net) - Meeting Venue / Refreshments
RJ Salicco - Site hosting

The group has a great momentum and want to thank everyone for their continued support. See you next year!

Vladimir Vivien

Saturday, November 18, 2006

November 2006 Meeting - Computing Security Overview

Let's admit it: the majority of application development projects address security last or when something has gone wrong. Current software development practices and methodologies pay little attention to security or does not mention it at all in the development cycle. However, secure computing is becoming critical with the almost ubiquitous rise of connected devices from laptops, cellphones to game consoles.

At the next Tampa Java User Group meeting, speaker John Collins will provide a comprehensive overview of computing security. Topics will include:

  • An overview of industry and security trends

  • A definition of terms to be used

  • Demonstrations of specific software exploits and countermeasures

  • Reflection on organizational paradigms that fuel unsecured software development

  • Recommended changes to the software development process that can lead to more secure code releases and less corporate liability

Meeting Detail
Speaker:
John Collins
Date:
11/28/06
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

If you plan to attend, please send RSVP to vvivien @ yahoo dot com.

Friday, November 3, 2006

October 2006 Meeting Minutes

I would like to thank all who attended the Tampa Java User Group October meeting. It was the best attended meeting yet with about 21 people in attendance. The presentation was about the use of JMX, Spring and Spring AOP to create highly manageable enterprise applications.

The discussion involved an introduction to the Java Management eXtension (JMX), the Spring Framework, and AOP. We the Spring’s MBeanExporter component which has the ability to transform any POJO into a JMX exposed managed bean. The presentation also discussed how AOP can be easily integrated with Spring to collect application states and exposed them as JMX managed bean attributes.

Presentations Materials

Materials for this presentation can be downloaded from this location.

Special Thanks
Vladimir Vivien - Presenter
Hudson (www.us.hudson.com/it) - Food/Drink
GCA.Net Technology Center (http://www.gca.net) - Meeting Venue / Refreshments

See you in November!

Vladimir Vivien

Friday, October 20, 2006

October 2006 Meeting - Creating Manageable Applications with JMX and Spring

Starting with Java 5, it has gotten it easier to incorporate manageability and monitoring into any application running on a standard VM. Developers now have access to a wealth of runtime VM profile information exposed through JMX including memory consumption, garbage collection, and thread activities. JMX also allows developers to incorporate custom runtime control and management information for their own application using managed beans (MBeans).

In the next Tampa Java User Group meeting, speaker Vladimir Vivien will explore how to create highly manageable applications using the Java Management Extension (JMX). The presentation will discuss three areas where you can leverage JMX including monitoring, control, and runtime configuration of your applications. We will explore the how the Spring Framework has simplified development of JMX-based applications by allowing you to expose your POJO's as managed beans. The discussion will also include best practices and available tools to help you create manageable applications.

For those self-starters, here are some resources:
Sun's JMX Home
Intro to JMX Blog
Management Support in Java 5
Spring's JMX Documentation
Java Enterprise Manageability - JSR 77
MC4J - Enterprise Management Tool

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 11/01/06 (Date Changed!)
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
If you plan to attend, please send RSVP to vvivien @ yahoo dot com.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

September 2006 Meeting Minutes

We had another great turn out for the Tampa Java User Group's June meeting with 16 people in attendance to hear about the continuous integration concept. Presenter Joshua Davis offered a great overview of tools and methodologies for a successful automated build system.

Attendees got information about the great diversity of open source tools available for creating a continuous build and integration system. Davis presented a complete build environment based on Cruise Control, IVY, Corbetura, ANT and SVN. All of these open source tools are freely available and provide a viable solution to continuous integration.

Questions regarding this material may be directed to Joshua Davis - [email protected] .

Presentation Materials
Build Plan Presentation
Build Plan Overview
Build Plan Cookbook

Special Thanks
Joshua Davis - Presenter
Oxford and Associates (www.Oxfordcorp.com) - Food/Drink
GCA.Net Technology Center (http://www.gca.net) - Meeting Venue / Refreshments

Vladimir Vivien

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Cruise Control: Automated Continuous Integration and Build Process

The next Tampa JUG's meeting will explore the topic of Automated Continuous Integration and Build process. This referes to a practice where code is rebuilt and tested frequenty throughout the software lifecycle. Problems are detected early and frequent since the process makes available a buildable code base at all time. Aside from generating builds, today's automated tools can generate documentation, web pages, code statistics and code analysis.

In the September meeting, Application Architect Joshua Davis will present Cruise Control, an open source tool for continuous integration. You will learn how to integration Ant, Cobertura, Junit, and IVY with Cruise Control to create a continuous integration and build system that simplifies and automate the build and testing cycle.

Presentation Materials
Build Plan Presentation
Build Plan Overview
Build Plan Cookbook

Speaker Bio:

Blackburn College, Computer Science 1989
Certified Java 2 programmer (Java 1.4)
Joshua is presently the Application Architect for LifeSmart Technologies within Gentiva, corp. He has been an architect for Starwood Vacation Ownership web sites as well as Disney.com (My DisneyVacation). In the past Joshua has played many roles in corporations from Oracle DBA to QA Engineer. Joshua has also spent time teaching at Valencia Community College in Orlando, FL.


Meeting Detail

Speaker:
Joshua David
Date: 09/26/06
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

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

August 2006 Meeting - Building Web Application with XXFramework

For the August meeting, we will take a look at a new MVC tool for web development called XXFramework. The framework promotes a use case oriented development approach. In this approach, use cases are defined for each task the user will perform. In general, each use case will be implemented by a single logical servlet, as defined in the J2EE Specification. The logical servlet may be implemented by one or more implementation classes each implemented a distinct portion of that use case and providing a portion of the resultant display.

The developer simply needs to write implementation of for these classes. Configuration files determine which implementation classes are called based on user click events. The most common implementation approach has each class return an XML result, yielding a set of XML documents for each use case.. XSL transformation is then applied to the XML results, each transform providing a portion of the desired display. A single JSP page is then used to display the final product.

The framework then builds upon this foundational approach to provide automation of typical application tasks, such as add, update, delete, select of records from a database. By specifying a simple mapping from the HTML page on one end, through the middle layers, and to the database on the other end, a large subset of application functionality can be achieved without the need to write any Java code. Instead, a combination of XML configuration files, XSL transformation templates, as well as open source tools, namely Hibernate and Castor, are used.

The goal of the framework is to incorporate more and more common programming tasks, in an open, configurable, and generic manner. Furthermore, since much of the framework if based on XML and XSL, automatic generation of complete applications is achievable.

This talk will provide and introduction to the XX Framework. A sample application will be demonstrated to illustrate key framework concepts and methodology. Background material, such as the XSLT transformation language will also be addressed.

Speaker Bio
David Moskowitz is the president of Infoblazer LLC and is a developer and application architect with over 15 years experience in the computer industry. David has built applications in technologies ranging from Turbo Pascal and DOS through Java and XML. His recent interest and focus has been the design of multi-tier Internet applications using XML Web Services as a foundation. He has implemented this approach in numerous applications, ranging from large corporate clients to E-Commerce startups.

For the past 6 years, David had been developing and refining his unique approach to application development involvement, involving the use of UML, XML, and Java. In 2006, David formalized this approach into the XX Framework which was released as an open source project.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: David Moskowitz
Date: 08/29/06
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

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

July 2006 Meeting Minutes

July's meeting had an excellent turnout with 17 people in attendance for the meeting. First, the presentation provided an overview of scripting in Java in general. Then we explored the different Groovy language features and API for lists, maps, and control constructs. Many people showed interest in the Groovy's closure construct.

The last part of the meeting was focused on GRAILS (formerly Groovy on Rails). This is a "Coding by Convention" framework based on Groovy. We had a live demo of Grails and within 10 minutes, I was able to create a functioning CRUD app consisting with 2 screens with no coding. This is an interesting tool that will surely give Java developers access to easy web development.

Materials for this presentation will be made available soon.

We look forward to see you at our August meeting next month. Bring a friend.

Special Thanks:
CGA.Net - Meeting Facilities
RJ Salicco - Organization

Vladimir Vivien

Monday, July 10, 2006

July/06 Meeting - Groovy Baby! The Easy Way to Java Development

In the next release of Java (Mustang Edition), scripting engines will be first-class components. You will be able to load and execute script files within your own code. This is an important development because the heavyweight Java component guys are recognizing the importance of agile scripting. It's also due to the growing competition that Java is facing from pure scripting camps such as PHP, Python, and now Ruby.

In the July Tampa Java User Group meeting, we will get Groovy! We will explore the Groovy scripting engine that is built on Java and is 100% Java-compatible. From it's website, Groovy is described as

"... an agile scripting language ... inspired by languages like Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk ..."

We will take an introductory look at the more interesting syntactical Groovy features such as lists, maps, closures, and some usefull Groovy classes. We will also look at some of the tools/features gaining Groovy praises including:
  • GroovyMarkup: Easy Xml development
  • Groovy RPC:
  • Groovlets/Templates: PHP-style web development.
  • Groovy SQL: No fuss DB development
  • Embedding Groovy: Executing scripts within your own Java code
  • Grails: Groovy on Rails (yes a port of Ruby on Rails)
... and other important features and components.

Join us on the last Tuesday of the month and bring a friend. We will have plenty of code samples and you will gain a great understanding of Groovy and see how you can use it in your next project.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 07/25/06
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

July 2006 Meeting -

XFire Presentation Materials

The June 2006 presentation materials are now available. You can download the source code and the presentation file from the link below. The source code is provided as an Eclipse project. However, you should be able to import it into other IDE's including NetBeans and others. To resolve all jar dependencies, review the build.xml file. It has a list of all jars needed to run the project.

Download Files:
PDF Presentation
Source Code

If you have questions, let us know.

Vladimir

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

EBJ3 Presentation Materials

The May 2006 presentation materials are now available. Presenter Dave Zaffery has donated both the presentation file and the source code he presented. The presentation is a PDF and the source code is provided as an Eclipse project. If you don't use Eclipse, just create a new EJB3 project in your favorite IDE and copy the source directory (src) to your new project. The code was tested using JBoss 4 but should work with any other EJB3 implementation.

Dowload Files:
Presentation PDF
EBJ3 Source Code

If you have any questions, let us know.

Vladimir Vivien

June 2006 Meeting Minutes

We had another great turn out for the Tampa Java User Group's June meeting with 14 people in attendance to hear about XFire. The presentation offered an introductory look into web service development with XFire.

RJ Salicco, our presenter, provided valuable information about the new technology with demonstrated code samples running inside JBoss. While XFire is new, it's being adopted rapidly by organizations and other open source project for its simplicity and performance.

Material for the presentation will be made available soon.

We look forward to see everyone at the next meeting in July. Bring a Java friend next time.

Special Thanks:
RJ Salicco - Presentater
Jim Quasius - Meeting Facilities

vladimir vivien

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

2006 June Meeting - XFire: The Tool for Easy Web Service Development

Creating web service in Java can be a lengthy/complex process that (depending on framework used) may require the creation of several artifacts just to get a simple service running.

XFire (http://xfire.codehaus.org/) is the next generation of open source web service framework that makes it simpler and easier to create Java web services. XFire is becoming a favorite because of its low memory footprint and its speed (uses StAx). The framework also uses a plug-in architecture that let you plug your favorite API such as XmlBeans, JAXB, Castor, etc. It integrates well with lightweight containsers such as Spring Framework and ESB/JBI containers such as ServiceMix (http://servicemix.org/).

In the June 2006 Tampa JUG meeting, we will explore XFire and how to use it to develop Java web services. Speaker RJ Salicco will provide insight into how to create effectively use XFire to develop services using platforms such as Spring, JBoss, and XmlBeans. Join us (and bring a friend) to take a look a this new tool. There will be plenty of code sample to get you started in your next project.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 06/27/06
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

RSVP: send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

May 2006 Meeting Minutes

The Tampa Java User Group's May meeting had a great turn out with 16
people in attendance to hear about EBJ3. The presentation offered an
introductory look into the simplicity of the new EBJ3 technology.

The presenter, Dave Zafferey, a veteran of EBJ development, provided
valuable information about the new technology. He provided
comparative information between previous version of EBJ and the new
one. The presentation included plenty of code samples and an actual
demo using Jboss' implementation of EJB3.

Material for the presentation will be made available soon.

We look forward to see everyone at the next meeting. Bring a Java
friend next time.

Special Thanks:
Dave Zafferey - Presentater
RJ Salicco - Pizza man
Jim Quasius - Meeting Facilities

vladimir vivien

Friday, May 19, 2006

May 2006 Meeting - EBJ3: A Look at What's New

Java Enterprise 5 is all the talk at this year’s JavaOne (http://www.sun.com/javaone). One of the most exiting update to enterprise edition 5 of Java is the new version of Enterprise Java Bean – EJB3. Anyone who has done EBJ development before version 3 can attest to steep learning curve and the numerous artifacts that are involved in creating just one enterprise bean.

The great promise of EJB3 is ease of use. Taking a page from frameworks such as Hibernate and Spring, EBJ3 uses POJO (plain old Java object) and a straight forward persistent mechanism. Using Java 5 annotation facility, developer can simply mark the object using different tags to indicate the type and functionalities of the enterprise bean class (see EJB3 example)

In the next Tampa Java User Meeting, speaker Dave Zafferey will explore the new EBJ3 features that will impact your enterprise development. He will also look at tools available for EJB3 development including vendor application servers and IDE options.

About the Speaker
Dave has worked for over 20 years as a software developer/architect with a focus on the server side programming domain. He is currently working as a contractor for the Veterans Administration modernization project. In his past, he has worked for NASA on the Space Shuttle, an Emmy winning digital video company, and taught Java and J2EE courses for Sun around the country. His current interests are in developing highly scalable, maintainable distributed systems.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 05/30/06
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

RSVP: send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

April 2006 Meeting - Ajax, Open Laszlo, XUL – Creating Rich Client Applications for SOA

As enterprises build their service-oriented architecture (SOA), the natural progression is to provide a rich set of tools to interface with these services. In the next Tampa Java User Group presentation, we will explore three technologies: AJAX, OpenLaszlo, and XUL and how to structure your development approaches so that you can leverage both REST-style and SOAP-style services.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is a really a term used to describe a collection of technologies that are at your disposal to programmatically create dynamic web-based applications. In an AJAX-based application, the developer uses XHTML/ CSS to control GUI rendering and formatting. You use JavaScript/XML to control data flow to/from the server. One of the most popular examples of AJAX usage is (as you may have guessed) Google Maps!

Open Laszlo is an open source framework from Laszlo Systems that uses a tag-based language and JavaScript to create Flash-based applications. Laszlo provides a rich toolset for formatting, layout, and animation of GUI components. Laszlo has strong native support for XML dataset and allows easy data binding. A commercial alternative is Adobe Flex.

The Mozilla Foundation offers a mature and extensive open source platform, named XUL (pronounced ZUL), for rich internet/client application development. You have probably used one of the most successful applications developed on this platform – the Firefox browser! XUL offers a tag-based language and JavaScript to create rich web-based applications.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 04/25/06
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

RSVP: send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com

Thursday, March 2, 2006

February 2006 Meeting Minutes

The February Tampa JUG meeting was an indication of the continuing
success of the Java Group. We had 17 people in attendance from all
over the Bay area and the presenter, Larry Meadors, did a great job in
presenting and generating interest in Apache iBatis.

The speaker, Larry Meadors, heads Elm Software and is the author of
iBatis in Action due this May/June. Larry presented iBatis as a top
level Apache project that makes it easier to implement data
persistence. iBatis takes a simpler approach to object relational
mapping by letting the developer specify the SQL text. The sql-map
also allows the developer to create parameterized sql statement that
let values be passed in at runtime.

Larry provided few slides, but there were plenty of code samples that
presented the simplicity and power of iBatis. If you want to get
started with iBatis, check ou these links:

-http://ibatis.apache.org/

- Rick Reuman's iBatis Sites
http://www.learntechnology.net/struts-spring-ibatis.do
http://www.learntechnology.net/struts-ibatis.do

I would like to thank:
Larry Meadors for the great presentation
Jim Quasius of CGA Technologies
RJ Salicco for his help

Vladimir Vivien

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

February 2006 Meeting - Apache iBatis: Persistence Made Easy

Apache iBatis is described as a Data Mapper framework, which makes it easy to create database persistence for both Java and .Net. Other tools in this space, commonly known as object relational mapping tools (ORM), take a more complex approach by mapping your data objects and automatically. This automation usually comes at a cost.

iBatis provides a simpler approach to persistence. The developer maps the data objects using in an XML file and provides the SQL or the stored procedures to handle the data persistence. This simpler approach has been the catalyst behind the fast adoption of iBatis as a data mapping tool.

In the February 2006 Tampa JUG presentation, “iBatis in Action” book author, Larry Meadors, will show us the beauty and simplicity of iBatis and why you should consider for your next project. iBatis is already a top-level Apache project and is gaining momentum as viable alternative to tools such as Hibernate. Checkout iBatis http://ibatis.apache.org/.

About the Presenter:
Larry Meadors has been a Web and Java developer since the late 90s. He has been involved with open source software from the beginning, and has been a committer on the iBATIS project since 2003. He is currently working on "iBATIS in Action" for Manning Publications, and is now the owner of a small IT consulting company.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Larry Meadors
Date: 02/28/06
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

RSVP: send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

January 2006 Meeting - Practical SOA using JINI and Javaspaces

For many, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) denotes web services. However, the practice of decomposing business functionalities into re-usable and callable components goes far beyond web-based services.

In January's presentation, speaker Dave Zaffery discusses how to create an SOA using JINI technology (http://www.jini.org/). The presentation is designed to gain some understanding of what JINI is and how developers can use it to compliment their current architecture.

The SOA buzzword becomes a reality through JINI technologies ability to create and deploy services that can adapt to its environment dynamically.

The services will use JavaSpaces to demostrate how they can communicate in a loosely coupled manner, and discuss the 'spaces other features.

About the Speaker
Dave has worked for over 20 years as a software developer/architect with a focus on the server side programming domain. He is currently working as a contractor for the Veterans Administration modernization project. In his past, he has worked for NASA on the Space Shuttle, an Emmy winning digital video company, and taught Java and J2EE courses for Sun around the country. His current interests are in developing highly scalable, maintainable distributed systems.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Dave Zaffery
Date: 01/31/06
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

RSVP: send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com