Tampa Jvm User Group

The November meeting was extremely successful. Speaker Stephan Schwab of Camito Technologies delivered an excellent overview of agile (Scrum) development. Stephan explored the different steps involved in agile methodologies and how to adapt your current practices and move into agile development. He also addressed the impediments that people usually bring forth as the reason for not adopting agile.

In the last part of the presentation, Stephan presented Saliva, a tool that supports agile development. Camito Technologies, based in Panama (the country, not the the Florida city) developed the tool as a a way to support their own internal agile methodologies.

We had a great turn out and thanks for everyone for supporting the group.

Presentation Materials
Presentation Slides (PDF)

Further Info - Some Agile Presentations
http://www.infoq. com/presentation s/The-Roots- of-Scrum
http://www.infoq. com/presentation s/principles- agile-oo- design
http://www.infoq. com/presentation s/agile-leadersh ip-tim-lister
http://www.infoq. com/presentation s/role-of- testing-in- agile-scott- ambler
http://www.infoq. com/presentation s/tabaka- homers-odyssey

Special Thanks
Stephan Schwab - Presenter
Axiomatic IT, Inc - Food
GCA.Net - Venue

Stay-tuned for the December event...

On Monday, November 19th, speaker Stephan Schwab of Camito Technologies will help us explore and understand the advantages of Agile Software Development. While the majority of us have heard of agile development, not all of us know what it is or how it is put to use. At the next meeting, you will learn how Agile Software Development can help you and your organization create software more efficiently.

Note: Meeting is on Monday, November 19th NOT the last Tuesday of the month. This meeting will be at our location on Memorial Highway.

Agile Development Best Practices
Starting with a high-level comparison between Waterfall and Agile this presentation educates about how to work "agile" by showing a series of best practices and tries to address some of the criticism against "Agile". In the second part an agile project management tool called Savila, which is currently under development by a small team in Panama, is introduced.

Speaker Bio
Stephan Schwab, a native from Germany, worked on many Software projects in Germany and the US before settling down in Panama, leading his own Software company there. He is specialized in agile software development methodologies such as Scrum, and his company develops an agile project management tool called Savila. Currently he is also writing a book on Acegi Security for Spring.

Meeting Details:
Speaker: Stephan Schwab, Camito Technologies
Date: 11/19/2007
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

NOTE: If you plan to attend, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.
Arrive early, the building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

Sponsors:
GCA Technologies

The joint Tampa Java User Group and USF's IEEE-CS Google October meeting was a complete success. We had our most attended meeting so far. At some point I counted 43 attendees including USF students and Java professionals. Although the weather wasn't the best, our attendees enjoyed food, giveaways, and a great presentation from Google.

Here are some highlights
- Networking started at 6.30 pm as people started to arrive
- Google passed around swags (pens, notebooks, etc).
- Plenty of food from Panera
- Presentation lasted an hour
- Give aways including an a 30 Gig iPod
- Finally at the end, Google entertained questions about working at Google, Inc. (they are looking for talented individuals and they do no evil!)

Special Thanks
- USF IEEE-CS
- RJ Salicco
- Google Inc
- Rita Tech

Next
- November meeting coming up.
- December we will have our second annual Holiday Social... details to come.

If you are not familiar with USF's campus, use this as a guide. You will need parking permit to park at any USF parking. So, bring cash!!! You can do the metered parking (I think they are 2Hr long and limited to certain lots), or buy a daily permit for $4.00 at parking Parking Info Center (see map ). Keep in mind that there are classes going on at that time, so traffic and parking on campus will be a little busy.

The easiest way to get on Campus is:
- Head north on Learoy Collins Blvd, USF's main entrance (from Fowler Avenue )
- Buy daily parking permit at Campus Parking Info Center (on you right, see map ).
- Park at one of these lots {GZ2, 8A, 47, 47T, 8C}.
- Continue on L Collins Blvd for lot GZ2.
- Use Alumni and Magnolia Drive to access lots 8A and 47(T).
- Walnut Drive and lot 8B are closed due to constructions.
- The event is in the Chemistry building, room 103.
- See highlighted version of the campus map (chemistry bldg in blue).

For questions, send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com.

Google Is Coming to Tampa Bay!

During October 2007 Tampa JUG meeting, we will have Alan Wendt from Google, Inc to talk about the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). In GWT, you write Java code which gets compiled into AJAX/JavaScript code. GWT shields developers from the quirks browser-based development and concentrate on their Java skills to easily build Web 2.0 applications.

Learn about GWT - http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

How the Google Web Toolkit Works
An exploration of the Java source code for the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) which is a set of tools and applications to enable you to create AJAX/Web 2.0 applications using Java and Java development tools such as Eclipse.

Speaker Bio:
Alan Wendt received his BSEng in Computer Science from the University of Florida in 1975, and his MS and PhD from the University of Arizona in 1998. His interests include compiler code generation, database systems, and automatic generation of application codes. He joined Google in April of 2006.

Meeting Details:
Speaker: Alan Wendt, Google, Inc.
Date: 10/24/2007
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

NOTE: the meeting will be on Wednesday, October 24, not the last Tuesday of the month as we usually do. The meeting will be at the University of Sourth Florida, Tampa. If you plan to attend, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.

Location:
University of South Florida, Tampa
Chemistry Building (CHE 103, Campus Map)
4202 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33620
Google Map

For our September meeting, we will have James Williams, will do an exploratory presentation to show the ease with which one can create compelling, responsive, and engaging Swing-based desktop application using the scripting language Groovy and its SwingXBuilder technology.

As always, if you plan to attend, bring a colleague and send email to vvivien at yahoo dot com to RSVP. There will be food, plenty of giveaways, and network with other Bay area technologists. So, come and check out our next presentation on desktop development in Java and see how you can use scripting language to create great looking desktop app.

Don't forget, next month, for our October meeting, we'll have Google in Tampa!

Curious about Groovy and SwingX, here are some links:
Jame's Blog - http://www.jameswilliams.be/blog/
Beginner's Tutorial to Groovy - http://groovy.codehaus.org/Beginners+Tutorial
Groovy and Swing Article - http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2004/10/gdgroovy_basic_swingbuilder.html
Learn about SwingX form SwingLabs - http://swinglabs.org/ (check out the demo's)
Groovy and SwingXBuilder - http://groovy.codehaus.org/SwingXBuilder

Building that Killer Desktop App with Groovy and SwingX
Just as the SwingBuilder brought a more hierarchical and readable format to Swing, the SwingXBuilde does the same for the SwingLabs Swing extensions. Because of the builder concept, Groovy has become a good solution for rapid prototyping of user interfaces. Sponsored by Google in the 2007 Summer of Code, SwingXBuilder is officially in the wild and being used by
the Groovy community in several tech demos and in a tleast one production application.

In the September Tampa JUG meeting, we will examine the SwingXBuilder and how to use it along with other Java technologies to create that "killer app," code it faster, and with far less lines of code.*

* Results atypical, your results may vary.


Meeting Details:
Speaker: James Williams, Fintech Inc.
Date: 09/25/2007
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

NOTE: If you plan to attend, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.
Arrive early, the building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

Sponsors:
GCA Technologies

No August 2007 Meeting

James Ward, from Adobe canceled his visit to the Tampa JUG at the last minute. Since it's only 5 days out, I do not have a contingency plan, so I am forced to cancel the meeting for Tuesday, August 28. I apologize for this situation, however, we will continue to work hard to bring you quality technology speakers to the Bay area.

Vladimir Vivien

Greetings Tampa Bay area Java enthusiasts!

The Tampa Java User Group is hosting another exciting presentation for the month August. For our next meeting, we will have James Ward, from Adobe Systems, do an exploratory presentation showing how easy it is to create rich, compelling, responsive, and engaging web applications using Adobe Flex and Java (see details below).

Sexy Web Apps with Java, Mozilla Tamarin, and Flex

In this session James Ward will do live demonstrations and write code to show how easy it is to build sexy web apps with Java, Mozilla Tamarin, and Flex. The session will cover

• The Flex programming model
• Java Remoting
• Pub/Sub messaging & Java Messaging (JMS) Integration
• Data Synchronization
• Hibernate integration
• Charting
• Cinematic experiences
• Media integration

Curious about Flex, check out these links
- James Ward's Blog - http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/
- Learn and see Flex in Action - http://flex.org/
- Flex Product Information (from Adobe)
- Adobe Labs Flex 3 Info - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/

There will be door prizes and giveaways.

Meeting Details:
Speaker: James Ward, Adobe System
Date: 08/28/2007
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

NOTE: If you plan to attend, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.
Arrive early, the building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

Sponsors:
GCA Technologies

Adobe System

Make sure to bring a colleague. We want to show to Adobe that Tampa has a dynamic and vibrant Java developer community. See you there!

Vladimir Vivien

The July 2007 was the nicest turn out ever since the group started in 2005. There were 30 people in attendance at the Tampa JUG meeting present to hear about NetBeans.

Gregg Sporar, our speaker from Sun Microsystems did an excellent job in presenting the different facets of Netbeans. The majority of the presentation was live demo of the tools in NetBeans including:

• Java Development
• Web Services
• Diverse enterprise wizards
• Desktop Swing development
• etc

We talked about the next version of NetBeans (version 6) which promised to be a significant release for the NetBeans project. Gregg took questions from the audience regarding best practices and future directions of NetBeans.

The meeting closed with prize giveaways. Aubrey Griffin walked away with the grand prize which is a free pass to 2007 Orlando NFJS Software Symposium . Congratulations!

Presentation Materials
Gregg's Blog Page
Presentation Slides

Special Thanks
GCA.Net (venue) - Amy for taking care of the group and staying late
Sun Microsystems - Support for the JUG community with a great speaker!
Gregg Sporar - Flying from Texas to do this presentation
Steve Turner (T2 Software Inc) - For excellent food (Panera)

Next Meeting
Our August meeting will be about Groovy and Java Swing!
Hope to see you guys again.

Vladimir Vivien

The NetBeans IDE has been gaining a strong following over the years. The current release of version 5.5.x , has been established as an indispensable tool that developers should keep close in their toolbox. For the July 2007 Tampa Java User Group meeting, Gregg Sporar of Sun Microsystems will take an exploratory look at this award winning IDE (see detail below).

What Is NetBeans?
NetBeans is three things:

• An award-winning Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
• A platform for building rich-client applications
  
• An open-source community.

This presentation provides an update on some interesting changes in all three of those areas over the last couple of years.

The focus will be on demonstrations of the NetBeans IDE in order to show some of its features for doing Java SE, EE, and ME software development. Time permitting, the IDE's support for other languages such as C/C++ and for building Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications will be included. A demonstration of the IDE's tools for building applications on top of the NetBeans Platform will also be shown.

Speaker Bio:
Gregg Sporar has been a software developer for over twenty years, working on projects ranging from control software for a burglar alarm to 3D graphical user interfaces. He has been using Java since 1998 and his interests include user interfaces, development tools, and performance profiling. He works for Sun Microsystems as a Technical Evangelist on the NetBeans project.

His blog is at http://weblogs.java.net/blog/gsporar

Meeting Details:
Speaker: Gregg Sporar, Sun Microsystem
Date: 07/18/2007
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

NOTE: the meeting will be on Wednesday, July 18th, not the last Tuesday of the month as we usually do. If you plan to attend, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.

Arrive early, the building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

Sponsors:

GCA Technologies

Sun Micro Systems

T2 Software Services, Inc.

Make sure to bring a colleague.
We want to show to Sun that Tampa has a dynamic and vibrant Java developer community.

See you there!

Vladimir Vivien

Speaker RJ Salicco provided an introductory coverage of Ant and its basic structure. He introduced the basic structure of an Ant build system and how to effectively structure your Ant script files for modularization and reusability. We also looked at the more popular ant tasks that can be beneficial for enterprise development. Finally, the presentation included code on how to create your own Ant task if needed (see link below for custom Ant task that generates an RSS file that you can incorporate in your build).

Presentation Materials
Ant Presentation (pdf)
Simple Project with Ant build
RssEcho - Custom Ant Task (see readme file for usage)

Special Thanks
GCA.Net (venue) - Amy for taking care of the group and staying late
Sun Microsystems - Support for the JUG
RJ Salicco - Presenter
EMS/Intelligent Choas - Pizza

Don't forget, in July, we will have a special meeting by Sun Microsystem on NetBeans.

Apache Ant is a tool that should be in the toolbox of every Java developer. Ant can help standardize your Java build environment, work with a variety of powerful, 3rd party tools, and be extended with custom Ant tasks to perform specific functions to meet your development needs.

For our June presentation, speaker RJ Salicco will explore

• The basics of Ant and how to create and structure your build.xml:
• Core Ant tasks for compiling and packaging
• How to deploy and execute Java applications
• Customizing/extending Ant with custom Ant tasks
• Lastly, using Ant for build automation including
  
• code coverage,
  
• testing,
  
• dependency management
  

More information about Apache Ant can be found at http://ant.apache.org.

Meeting Details:
Speaker: RJ Salicco
Date: 06/26/2007
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, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.

Arrive early, building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.
There will be door prize give aways!

Sponsors:

GCA Technologies

Intelligent Choas

Sun Micro Systems

I want to thank all who attended the May 2007 meeting. We had another great turn out. Sixteen people showed up to hear about Spring in the enterprise and how to develop web applications using the Spring MVC framework.

Speaker Doug Johnson provided a comprehensive coverage of Spring and its usage. He started with an introductory coverage of the technology including the definition of Spring technologies, the API, the terms, and the architectural setup used to create a Spring MVC applications. Doug provided plenty of code samples showing how to use the different interceptors, controllers and views and to how to create spring-driven using POJO's wired within the spring context.

Presentation Materials:
Click here to download presentation slides and sample code.

Special Thanks
Doug Johnson - for delivering a great presentation
GCA.Net (venue) - Amy for taking care of the group and staying late
Sun Microsystems - Support for the JUG
Rita Technologies - Great Westshore Pizza


Stay tuned for June's meeting.

In the next Tampa Java User Group meeting, speaker Doug Johnson will review the fundamentals of the Spring's implementation of a Model, View,and Controller for web application development. The presentation will focus on the following topics:

• Overview and demonstrations of new Spring 2.0 features
• Spring form tag library
• Testing approaches for web-centric "Spring beans"
• pros and cons of object mocking tools such as EasyMock
• Techniques for segmenting concerns fortesting

About the Presenter
Doug Johnson has a growing wealth of experiences in the business software industry and general technology solutions. With a background of Business Project Management (BPM) software development, management, and hands-on customer consulting, he has lead teams at some of the largest financial, government, andretail Institutions in the world including Citibank, DISA (the Defense Information systems Organization), The Home Depot, and American Express to name a few. These projects—as is often is the case with BPM solutions across diverse industries—have spanned a diverse spectrum: statistical simulation and analysis for corporate restructure planning; enterprise SOA strategy and implementation in the form of process and application integration messaging solutions; and real-time highly intelligent applications for corporate mobility leveraging location-based services, embedded autonomous data solutions, and Web 2.0 mashups.

Recent endeavors have brought Mr. Johnson worldwide collaboration with colleagues at Appear Networks, leading provider of mobile context-aware mobility servicesbased in Stockholm , Sweden . Recent work has included real-time video analytics and security solutions, mobile fire-safety projects for the transportation sector, and architecture training for key telecommunications partners. Preceding these experiences, Doug managed territory sales at IBM's Managed Network Services. Doug's education includes an M.B.A in Marketing and Technology from the University of South Florida as well as a B.A. in Music Performance, having studied at the prestigious Tanglewood and Encore Music Festivals.

Meeting Details:
Speaker: Doug Johnson
Date: 05/31/2007 (Thursday)
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, send RSVP to vvivien at yahoo dot com.
NOTE: please note the day change, meeting will be on Thursday rather than Tuesday due to Memorial Day.
Arrive early, building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.
There will be door prize give aways including a chance to win a personal license of IntelliJ IDEA.

Sponsors:

GCA Technologies

Sun Micro Systems

Starting with the Java 5 programming language, it has gotten easier to incorporate monitoring and manageability into any application running on a standard VM. Developers now have access to a wealth of runtime VM profile information exposed through Java Management Extensions (JMX), including memory consumption, garbage collection, and thread activities (with even more capabilities in the Java 6 programming language).

In the next Tampa Java User Group meeting, speaker Vladimir Vivien will show how to develop and integrate runtime manageability, configuration, and control into your application by using JMX, AOP, and Spring. Additionally, he will show how to develop applications that can react to state changes and other events using a dynamic language to extend the manageability of the system with minimal impact on business domain logic. We will explore best practices for creating scalable and maintainable management services by using sound OO approaches.

Meeting Details: Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 04/24/07
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Arrive early, building's main door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.
There will be door prize give aways including a chance to win a personal license of IntelliJ IDEA.

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

Sponsors:
GCA Technologies

Sun Micro Systems

The materials for the March 2007 presentation, Using Java Messaging with JBoss and Spring, are now available. In this presentation, speaker Ginige DeSilva, provided great insight into the notion of Java Messaging and how to use it using open source tools such as JBoss application server and the Spring Framework.

Presentation Materials
For your convenience, the samples are provided as full Eclipse projects which include the necessary compile libraries. If use different IDE, you should be able to easily import and setup your project with the provided source files.
- Presentation File (pdf /319 KB)
- JMS Client Project - (zip / 8.5 MB)
- JMS Project (zip / 11.4 MB)
- JBoss Queue Config Files (zip / 2 KB)

If you have any question about the presentation, email the speaker (email address found on the first slide of presentation).

In today's enterprises, a message-based infrastructure is a key component for creating a successful service oriented architecture (SOA). For years, the Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) has offered a rich set of technologies that facilitate the creation of enterprise class messaging bus. Java Messaging System (JMS) implementations are available in both commercial and open source flavors with features such as guaranteed delivery, message persistence, rule-base routing, automatic message transformation, etc.

At the next Tampa Java User Group meeting, speaker Ginige L . DeSilva will provide a comprehensive overview of Java Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) and their usage in the enterprise. Topics will include:

• An overview of Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) concepts and definition of terms to be used
• An overview of Java Message Service (JMS) API and Providers
• Demonstrations of setting up message queues, message sender/receivers with JBoss Messaging JMS provider
• Demonstrations of simplifying the use of JMS APIs with Spring's JMS abstraction framework

About the Presenter:
Ginige is presently a software developer for LifeSmart Technologies within Gentiva, corp. He has been involved with implementation of Enterprise-wide Application Integration solutions using Message Oriented Middleware at Compaq Computer Corporation and Hewlett-Packard Company spanning an eight year period.

Meeting Details: Speaker: Ginige L. DeSilva
Date: 03/27/07
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Arrive early, building door locks automatically at 7:00 pm.
There will be door prize give aways including a chance to win a personal license of IntelliJ IDEA. See you there!

Sponsors:
GCA Technologies

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

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.

A year ago, book author and presenter Larry Meadors did a superb presentation on iBatis. He will be back to the Tampa JUG to 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 co-author of "iBATIS in Action" for Manning Publications, and is now the owner of a small IT consulting company.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Larry Meadors
Date: 02/27/07
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

The Tampa JUG January meeting was the best attended to date. We had 25 in attendence to hear about the new features in the Java 6 release. The presentation focus on the more notable features of this new release, mainly:
- Performance improvements
- Desktop enhancements
- New database features
- Web Service improvements
- Runtime management and monitoring
- The new Script Engine API

Presentation Materials:
Exploring Java 6 Presentation (PDF)
Presentation Demo (zip)

Special Thanks:
- GCA.Net (http://gca.net) - Venue
- Michael Levin (Orlando/Gainesville JUG) - Door prize

Vladimir Vivien
Tampa Java User Group

Happy New Year Tampa JUG'ers!
After a successful year in 2006, the Tampa JUG is back for a great 2007! This year we are looking forward to bring you even more interesting and relevant topics to help you keep abreast with Java technologies.

To start the year, our first meeting will be about the new Java 6! If you haven't heard, Sun released its latest version of the Java platform (codenamed Mustang) in the wild last month. This release had little language change, however its most remarkable feature is the increase in performance. People have reported increase as much as 50%!

Notably, version 6 also offers a set of rich features including monitoring and management including runtime diagnostic, improved XML and web service development, hosted scripting (default JavaScript), improved desktop look & feel and performance, improvement to the core API, and the list goes on and on.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 01/30/07
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