Biggest ever developer conference in the history of India, held in Hyderabad International convention center (HITEX) the Sun Tech Days 2007. This was launched in satellite cities like Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. Across India, over 10,000 developers attended this event and more than 5000 from our city.
I was very much excited to attend the event and finally I got my first Sun Tech Day pass in my pocket.
Feb.21.2007 (Day 1)!!
0800 hrs
I felt happy after seeing the crowd and the great convention center. We got registered by paying 1125/- and there after we were in the coffee queue but unable to get at least one.
0930 hrs
We entered the main conference room which was marvelous. The hall was packed with plenty of young developers and students.
The event was started with a message from Jonathan Scwartz and an introduction from Bhaskar Pramanik, MD Sun Microsystems, India. This talk followed by Guest Speaker for the event, Ramalinga Raju, Chairman, Nasscom. He spoke about change management which went up to 45 mins. He presented on what the developers were missing on and what they should concentrate on. The final keynote of the day was Rich Green, Executive Vice President of Sun Inc. He gave a good foundation on why should we go for sun products and made Sun Tech days more lively!!
There were some cool Technical demos from Srikanth Ramakrishna, Simon Ritter, Carol McDonald, Rags and others on various Sun Technologies (Ajax, JSF, Solaris, Mp3 player and Sun Spots) after Keynote address. We also got to see how good the Open Solaris perform compared to others. This followed the actual talk track.
There were 4 tracks going on simultaneously, out of them 3 were related to Java Development and one to Solaris Development.
Sessions I have attended:
1200 hrs: Java EE 5 and GlassFish
The aim of the Java EE 5 was to make ease of development i.e. using POJOs, Annotations(@) and resource injection.The principle is: Don’t call us, we will call you! (Hollywood). The developer life becomes easy if we use Java EE 5. There are lot of features like JAX-WS-2.0, JAXB 2.0, EJB 3.0, JSF 1.2, JSP 2.1 and many more.
Facts: To read a simple XML file JAXB 1.0 takes 308 lines. If we compare it JAXB 2.0 takes 62 lines.Glass Fish is JAVA EE 5 reference implementation. It’s more than an App. Server provides – Tools, Plug in for eclipse, Documentation, SOA-BPEL Engine, Java DB (based on Derby, Focus on popular framework applications. They were encouraging developers to use Glassfish, report bugs to the community.
1300 hrs: Sun Java DB
Good news for all is Java DB comes with JSDK 6.0. It is Sun’s support distribution of Apache Derby. It was written in Pure Java. It is easy to use and zero maintenance. It is secured and complete relational engine.
We can run it in 2 ways: Embedded and Client/Server mode.It weighs less than 1MB – very portable, you can carry it in your stick. It is based on the following standards: SQL, Java, JDBC and supports J2ME. There are various tools available like ij and dblook.It has no architectural constraints and it is being tested up to 300 GB and 100 active connections.
Lunch time!! Had sumptuous lunch (Had 2 ice-creams)
We visited the stalls around there and had a great time with sun employees. I got a J2ME cap and sun-Solaris bag!
1500 hrs: Java Server Faces with Visual web pack-NetBeans
“JSF is a server side, user interface component framework for building java technology based web applications.”
It is the first user interface developed by Sun Java.JSF (MVC) is a standard and it has very strong AJAX support. I found NetBeans is the most suitable easy way to develop web applications esp. with JSF. Here the container gives a tree based components and its up to call which GUI to use. For example if we take JSP Renderer we can display in HTML. So it’s usable with and with out JSP. The architecture is clear that you would love to use with the AJAX frameworks.
Some Striking features in JSF 1.2Alignment with JSP technology – support for JSTL.Ease of use improvements in support for custom messages.Improves state saving behavior.You can get support from sun developer forums and Sun!!
1600 hrs: Using JRuby with Java
“A dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.”
It’s a pure OO “scripting” language, Open source, interpreted, written in C. It supports single Inheritance, large collection of built in libraries and first class regular expression support. It’s fun and easy to use.
JRuby is 100% Java implementation of Ruby. It leverages best of JVM and Java platform. Java is not the only tool we could be using – we can code in JRuby, JavaScript, PHP and so on. Everything here is an object (Even 1).
Rails is a full stack framework for developing web applications which is based on MVC! Rails need what JRuby and the JVM can provide.
Coffee Break!! Grab a cup of coffee in Sun’s disposable one.
1700 hrs: EJB 3.0 and Java Persistence APIs
In simple words Persistence means saving your application’s data in Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability.
Today we have JDBC, JDO, Entity Beans, Hibernate, Toplink, iBatis and other ORMs.
The problems are different persistence technology have different emphasis, can be confusing if you are a novice, tedious to use and understand concepts, JavaSE can not use models created in Entity beans and no easy way to work with open source persistence engines.The goal of Java persistence is to Simplifying/Unifying persistence.
Its POJO based, supports rich domain modeling (Polymorphism and Inheritance), expanded query language and usable in JavaSE and JavaEE environments.
Mapping in EJB3.0 is so simple –we have to make use of Annotations like @Entity, @ Table, @Id, @ Remote, @ Stateful, @Remote …It supports all the entity relationships, frees from boiler plate coding and lot more!
Every one got Sun Laptop bag with Netbeans-Fullstack CD!
The Day 1 ended with Famous Bollywood Singer KK performance for the audience. He sang all his popular numbers and entertained the crowd.
Feb.22.2007 (Day 2)!!
0930 hrs
The attendance was exceptional! The hall was full on Day 2...surprised!!First keynote was by Jim Huges CTO of Solaris talked about OS futures. Jim spoke about the Horizontal Scaling, Vertical scaling challenges in the near future and what operating systems should do to address this. Vijay Anand, VP Oracle was the guest speaker. He spoke about the SOA, EJB3.0.Next Java Jacket Give-Away – A girl got this one for her singing talent!
1130 hrs: Java Scripting-one VM, many languages
The session was all about java scripting, which was included in Java SE 6.I skipped a session after lunch and was roaming around stalls.
1530 hrs: Fun with Sun SPOTs
-- Sun Small Programmable Object technology.
Inspiring Java developers to create a whole new breed of devices and technologies - and accelerating the growth of the "Internet of Things"
In 2003 researchers at Sun Labs began working on Wireless Sensor Networks. Over the course they wanted more powerful sensor devices that were easier to program. Existing products have lack of useful tools and inflexible hardware designs. Based on the experience with Java and with the KVM (both of which were invented in Sun Labs) and its use in cell phones, Sun thought that applying Java to development of the platform which would help us get past some of these limits.
In November of 2004, Sun Labs started project Sun SPOT to build own sensor hardware and to adapt a small, flexible Java Virtual Machine (Project Squawk) to the sensor platform.(-From sunspotworld)We got to see few demos which were amazing.
1630 hrs: Developing web 2.0 Application Using AJAX and Related Frameworks
What is AJAX - It's an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.
AJAX uses JavaScript combined with xml to grab information from a server without refreshing the page; the main requirement is the web browser has the support for XMLHttpRequest object.
The term AJAX was coined by Jesse James Garrett in February 2005.Asynchronous communication replaces "synchronous request/response model."A user can continue to use the application while the client program requests information from the server in the background i.e. separation of displaying from data fetching.
Why AJAX? -- "Partial screen update" replaces the "click, wait, and refresh" user interaction modelOnly user interface elements that contain new information are updated (fast response), the rest of the user interface remains displayed without interruption (no loss of operational context)
• Intuitive and natural user interactionNo clicking requiredMouse movement is a sufficient event trigger
• Data-driven (as opposed to page-driven)UI is handled in the client while the server provides data
Frameworks Covered:
Icefaces -- Ajax version of JSF.
JMaki
Google web tool kit and many more.
Feb.23.2007 (Day 3)!!
NetBeans Day
The session started with installation of NetBeans and then moved on to the basics to creating web services.
One noticeable feature was that we can chat/see the other person’s editor through NetBeans. It was awesome and the demos were superb.
Overall it was a great experience for me and looking forward for another one :)
