Spring Dallas User Group

We will not be meeting this month; July 2008

I ran across a link to the DZone Refcardz in a JavaLobby newsletter last week. The idea of reference cards (think laminated cards of formulas for chemisty, physics, etc. that you see in stores) for some of our more commonly used Java tools sounded like a good idea so I went and took a look. I signed up without giving away too much personal info and requested all of the cards (4 total right now). I then got e-mails (one per card) that gave me a download link for the pdf.

With that said, the Spring Configuration refcard by Craig Walls is very good. Craig mostly covered the XML configuration and namespaces but also includes a section on the annotations related to these. The really important part is that these are all now in a single place, not broken up in the book or the user docs. There are 8-pages and the overall card is professionally done with good coloring and highlighting of the information. In the future, I’ll be using this as a reference aid in the Introduction to Spring course that I teach at CCCCD Continuing Education department.

My only problem (a very minor and personal one) is that they didn’t put page numbers on them anywhere. Usage of a refcard is best when it is right at hand and I’m old-school enough that I like some things on paper and while the layout of the information is pretty much self-contained by page; page numbers are easy enough to add.

UPDATE: The commenter’s are correct in that there are pages numbers. The just didn’t print for me due to printer settings.

So go take a look for yourselves.

TITLE:
Spring Web MVC 2.5 and Beyond

ABSTRACT:
Spring MVC is a popular web framework, and the core platform for powering Spring-based web applications. Also building on the Spring MVC platform are a number of interesting extensions.

• Spring MVC 2.5 introduces significant new features that simplify the core MVC programming model, including support for annotated @Controllers.

• Spring Web Flow 2 adds significant new features for implementing conversational flows within a Spring MVC-based app.

• Spring Faces, a new module, provides groundbreaking support for JavaServerFaces in a familiar Spring MVC environment.

• And last but not last least, Spring Javascript, a new module, integrates leading UI toolkits such as Dojo and Ext into a Spring environment.

Come to this meeting to see the killer new features in Spring MVC 2.5, Spring Web Flow 2, Spring Faces, and Spring Javascript in action, all working together in an integrated reference application. This meeting will also provide a brief overview of what is in store for Spring MVC 3.0.
BIO:
Keith Donald is a principal and founding partner at SpringSource, the company behind Spring. He is best known in the Spring community for creating Spring Web Flow. At SpringSource, Keith is the lead of the Web Application Development Products Team. His team, based in Melbourne, Florida, sustains the development of Spring MVC and Web Flow and their associated integrations, and is also responsible for future innovations in the domain of web application development frameworks.

Full Bio

WHEN:
May 21st

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

TITLE:
Using JavaConfig

ABSTRACT:
For most Spring developers, the de facto configuration technology for Spring is XML. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We will explore how to use Spring’s JavaConfig to configure application using pure Java. At the end of the presentation, we will have a Spring application configured with zero XML, but instead in completely typesafe Java.

BIO:
Ryan Breidenbach has been developing software for over eight years with a current focus on enterprise Java applications and agile development. He is the co-author of Spring in Action. When he is not home spending time with his wife and two daughters, he can occasionally be found honing his skills at the poker tables.

WHEN:
April 16th

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

TITLE:
A (re)introduction to Spring MVC

ABSTRACT:
Spring 2.5 introduced many new features, especially with regard to annotation-driven configuration. The number of annotations available in Spring has doubled and no area of Spring development has benefited from annotation-driven development more than Spring’s own MVC framework. At the same time, Spring has adopted many convention-over-configuration capabilities, especially in Spring MVC, that can dramatically reduce the amount of configuration required to build Spring-enabled web applications.

BIO:
Craig Walls has been professionally developing software for over 13 years (and longer than that for the pure geekiness of it). He is the author of Spring in Action (now in its second edition) and XDoclet in Action, both published by Manning.

When he’s not slinging code, Craig spends as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, 6 birds, 3 dogs, and an ever-fluctuating number of tropical fish.

WHEN:
March 19th

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

GigaSpaces canceled on us yesterday afternoon. Erik and I discussed canceling the meeting but decided that we would not and instead we’ll look at the recently announced Spring Certification Program from SpringSource. We’ll look at the published requirements and discuss the possibility or some brush up training for certification.

Hope everyone can still make the meeting, it will just be a little more unstructured than normal.

TITLE:
“No more hops! - towards a linearly scalable application infrastructure.”

ABSTRACT:
This talk focuses on the architecture and the patterns implemented behind the scenes that enable the GigaSpaces XAP (ZAP) platform to scale linearly and still provide a rich and fault-tolerant programming model.

Learn how to leverage the simplicity and consistency of Spring and achieve the scalability of Google. Understand the programming paradigm known as SBA and Discover what the power of Transparent Partitioning and Colocation can do for applications ranging from Logistics to Order Processing to Algorithmic Trading.

BIO:
Owen Taylor
Senior Director - Worldwide Technical Communications
GigaSpaces Technologies, Inc.

As Sr. Director, Worldwide Technical Communications with GigaSpaces Technologies Inc, Owen translates the new architectural concepts and technical capabilities of space-based solutions into accessible formats so that technologists can adapt them rapidly into their environments and gain their maximum benefit. Owens’ areas of expertise include J2EE design patterns and performance tuning of J2EE applications. Prior to GigaSpaces, Owen worked as Principal J2EE Product Specialist with Identify Software. Before that Owen acted as Senior Enterprise Architect with The Middleware Company where he specialized in B2B, EJB and J2EE training and consulting with a special emphasis on webMethods B2B server and, BEA WebLogic Servers. Owen has over the years delivered architecture consulting, mentoring and training to dozens of companies and advised them on how to best architect new applications ranging from e-commerce to stock-trading. Many of his engagements involved developing application prototypes on-site. Prior to The Middleware-Company, Owen was Senior Consultant and Partner in The New Customware Company, where his duties mirrored almost exactly those he executed with the Middleware Company. Prior to CustomWare, Owen was Senior Consultant and Instructor in the Professional Services organization at Inprise (Borland) (an EJB/J2EE & CORBA vendor), where he provided consulting and mentoring to customers in not only building large applications with EJB/J2EE and CORBA, but also specifically on the instrumentation, monitoring and management of applications developed using these technologies.

WHEN:
February 20th

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

EDITED to indicate this topic was not presented.

TITLE:
Foowi

ABSTRACT:
Foowi is built with Spring, Spring MVC, iBatis, and MySQL and has been recently been released under an Apache license. In this talk we will go over the foowi framework architecture. We will show how to do rapid spring development using Tomcat and Eclipse. And we will go over the foowi in an informal problem/solution setting. If you ever wanted to build your own social networking site, want to help develop the search wikia project, or want a better understanding of how to apply spring to real-world websites, this talk is for you.

BIO:
Dennis Kubes is one of the main developers of the Wikia search engine that launched into alpha on January 7th. He is a committer on the Apache Nutch open source search engine project and is the developer of the foowi framework that runs the search wikia social network.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE SLIDES

WHEN:
January 16th

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

TITLE:
The Spring Experience Brought Home

ABSTRACT:
Last week Erik Weibust and Tyler Osborne (winner of a Spring Experience pass) went to the 2007 Spring Experience in sunny Florida. They’ll tell us some about what they experienced.

BIO:
Erik Weibust works as a consultant for Credera and Tyler Osborne works at Countrywide.

WHEN:
December 19th (3rd Wednesday)

• Social - 6:30 PM
• Meeting - 7:00 PM

WHO TO TELL:
Tell your friends in the office who are interested in Spring.

WHERE TO GO:
Our meetings are now at the offices of Improving Enterprises. Directions and information can be found on our meeting location page. The building doors lock at 7:00 and we will not have anyone to shuttle people around. Please be there before 7:00.

–Erik Weibust
–Andy Hoffman

We have had to cancel the November meeting since our planned speaker is unable to present. This will let everyone off for Thanksgiving so enjoy the holidays.