Bert Ertman

JavaOne 2011 report in German Magazine Java Aktuell

bertertman — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:06:57 +0000

Not very long after JavaOne 2011, I believe in about a week after the conference, Paul Bakker (@pbakker), Lucas Jellema (@lucasjellema), and myself wrote a pretty elaborate coverage of the conference. It is sort of a tradition to write a conference report for the Dutch Java Magazine. While I was finishing the final editing on the 10-page article I tweeted about it and not very long after that I was approached by Markus Eisele (@myfear) whether we could do some JavaOne coverage for the German Java Aktuell as well. Java Aktuell is a magazine by the iJUG, a collaboration vehicle of Java User Groups in Germany and other German speaking countries like Switzerland. While the Dutch version of the article was published right after JavaOne (and will probably be available soon at javamagazine.nl) a couple of days ago the German version was published in Java Aktuell’s first edition of 2012. Apparently the Germans think it is 2012 already Anyway, it is a pretty nice read and funny as well to see practically the same information appear in a different language. Almost impressed

Kudos go to the translators, who managed to turn the raw Dutch text into a great looking 7 pages article for Java Aktuell. Check it out for yourself.

Devoxx 2011: Building Next-Generation Enterprise Application in Java

bertertman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:21:04 +0000

Today, I co-presented a University talk at Devoxx together with Paul Bakker. The slides of the presentation can be found on Slideshare. Most of the 3 hour talk was live coding. All of the code that was produced during the talk has been posted on GitHub so, you can clone it and check it out for yourself.

Of course the session was captured on video as well and will become available on Parleys.com right after the conference.

Happy coding!

JavaOne 2011: Migrating Spring Applications to Java EE 6

bertertman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:57:30 +0000

Last week I had the honor to present at JavaOne 2011 together with Paul Bakker on the subject of migrating Spring applications to Java EE 6. The slides for this presentation can be found on slideshare and are embedded below for your convenience.

We will also do this talk at Devoxx 2011. Talk is still to be scheduled atm.

Book review: EJB 3.1 Cookbook – Richard M. Reese [Packt Publishing]

bertertman — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:45:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was approached to write a review on EJB 3.1 Cookbook by Richard M. Reese published by Packt Publishing. So here we go…

EJB 3.1 Cookbook is a very decent book using the recipe formula to quickly learn the new features of EJB 3.1. Also developers entirely new to the improved way of developing EJBs as introduced by EJB 3.0/3.1 are pleasantly served as well.

In chapter 1 the books starts off a little bit odd. It tries to give you a quick start into using EJB 3.1 but for an unexerienced EJB developer it will probably raise a lot more questions than solve anything. In fact I believe that it had been even a beter book if chapter 1 was just simply omitted. In no way let is spoil the reading experience as in my view the actual book starts in the next chapter.

Because of the recipe formula the central theme of the chapters is about what you want to achieve and how you do it. While learning new tricks you are being explained the underlying nuts and bolts of the technology. If you want to dig deeper into the how and why of things the book serves as a good companion towards the EJB specifications itself. The order in which EJB features are introduced is sometimes a bit peculiar. Because the order in which you read the chapters are of less importance this is no biggie. Just pick the chapter that you like and instantly start learning the new stuff.

Code samples used throughout the book are kept simple and clean, focusing on the specific EJB features instead of distracting details of too elaborate or searched after examples.

EJBs in my opinion are the crown jewels of the current Java EE specification. Especially when they are combined with the powerful technology introduced in the CDI and new and improved JSF 2 implementations. While a lot of developers have started to ignore EJB after 2004 or so it is about time that you start learning or get reacquainted with this great piece of technology offering a truly lightweight and standardized component model for enterprise Java development.

All-in-all this book is a good and pleasant read that will get you up to speed with EJB technology in no-time. The book is available on Amazon or you can get it through the Packt website.

Impressions from Oracle OpenWorld: “Is Oracle good for Java?”

bertertman — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:48:00 +0000

Here’s a little write-up of my Oracle OpenWorld impressions so far. I’ll try to make it a complete, logical story, but first I would like to second some excellent observations made by fellow Java Champion Cay Horstmann (yeah, the hero that wrote ‘Core Java’), who blogs about his first day of OpenWorld at java.net.

The big question for me is: “Is Java safe in the hands of Oracle”? Unfortunately, I cannot answer that question based upon my impressions so far, but I can say that the message (or lack of) that Oracle is sending out so far is giving me some shivers down the spine. Here’s why:

Oracle is positioning Sun as the hardware company that they are: especially interested in it’s Sparc servers, storage, and of course the new Exadata flash hardware database machine. The latter being undoubtedly very awesome. In other areas of the new portfolio Sun’s software is being positioned, especially MySQL and Solaris. However, when it comes to Java, the official statement being made by Sun’s Scott McNeally and Oracle’s Larry Ellison is: “Java speaks for itself”. But does it? In fact, I seriously doubt that it does so within Oracle. So far the people from Oracle that I met express a friendly, almost fatherly interest in Java, but they compare it to integrating the Hyperion Query Language into the Oracle stack. They see Java as just another ‘product’ from Sun and not as the Java platform and ecosystem that it is. So, if Java is speaking for itself within Oracle, than it’s no doubt sending them the wrong message! I really hope that James Gosling, considering the position that he seems to head for within the new organization, will be able to make this clear to them before it is too late.

The other thing is that Oracle regards it’s technology communities (user groups) as rather top-down. I could be very wrong here but under my impression the Oracle user groups are doing an ok job in spreading the Oracle technology, but Oracle technology equals ‘products’ (equals ‘licenses’, but that’s another story). I don’t really see where the real Java community thing fits in. “Sun gave Java to the world” (to speak in the words of James Gosling’s cartoon video) and after that they gave the world the right to innovate on top of the Java technology platform. This is exactly what got Java as big as it is now. Sun knows, and even states so that they could have never pulled of that trick on their own. Meanwhile Sun has been stewarding Java to keep it going in the right direction, and they have been some sort of ‘referee’ where specification innovation was concerned. The latter being somewhat troublesome lately (i.e. Java 7) but let’s not put the focus too much on that, as it must be stated that stewarding Java is in no way an easy job given the maddening political climate of having so many competing companies, and opinionated individuals onboard the JCP. This is not only true for JCP members but applies to the wide and diverse user group community and the Java Champions as well. To my knowledge Sun has never taken away the freedom of speech of those people. Speaking of opinionated people…

In three days of the main conference keynotes I haven’t seen a single line of (Java) code. Which apparently proves that Oracle OpenWorld has nothing to do with being a developer’s conference. In the light of the discussions taking place of whether or not there will be a next ‘real’ JavaOne or it being merged into the next OpenWorld, I sincerely hope there will be a ‘real’ JavaOne. Not in the least because it will be the fifteenth edition and this calls for a huge party. Especially since Oracle has more than enough money They could even close down the entire block between Moscone North and South, so a little birthday party will definitely not hurt them in the wallet. But seriously, JavaOne is a developer’s conference and Oracle OpenWorld attracts mostly ‘suits and ties’.

To sum things up so far, Oracle’s message is about integrating everything into a single (bright red colored) solution. They deserve credit for the way their current stack seems to deliver to that promise. However, Java’s promise has always been about opening everything up for innovation and boldly go where no-one has gone before (lame quote alert, but it holds the truth). I don’t see where the latter fits in within Oracle. Oracle is not about bringing new technology to the world, they’ve always bought it and integrated it into their existing solution. In fact Oracle is very good at this. You could even consider it their core business, regarding the massive amount of acquisitions they’ve done in the past ten years or so and the vast amount of money they have been able to made from it. The big question remains if Oracle will be able to steward Java like Sun did. More importantly, will they be able to keep the JCP from falling apart. Especially since this type of activity is not making you lots of money. Larry Ellison’s promises for stockholders were very clear. The Oracle / Sun combination is going to make lots of money. So let’s hope that somewhere along the line enough money can be preserved to be invested in Java’s future. Although certainly money will not be the real problem, but it’s more like how ‘others’ can fit into the ‘business model’ that Oracle sees for Java.

In the meantime it is very important that Java will be perceived as the platform and ecosystem that it is. So, if you’re part of a Java community, speak up! Because Java needs it and at the moment it definitely doesn’t do so for itself.