Top 10 Destinations for Enterprise Developers at the 2005 JavaOne Conference

Emerging web services technologies, advances in Service-Oriented Architecture facilities, cool stuff in the area of Enterprise JavaBeans technology and the object persistence model, exciting new features in Web and Application Servers. All of this and a lot more should make this year's JavaOne Conference a truly valuable experience for enterprise Java developers. Here are ten of the "must see" destinations for enterprise developers at the 2005 JavaOne Conference:

Note: The schedule of sessions and speakers is subject to change, so check the catalog of 2005 JavaOne Conference sessions periodically.

1. Pragmatic SOA: A Case Study (TS-1640)
   
   Is Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) more hype than reality? Get the "real" answer by attending this session, which presents a real-world implementation of SOA. Dan Malks, coauthor with John Crupi and Deepak Alur of the extremely popular Core J2EE Patterns book, has turned his attention and energy to the topic of SOA. Malks is a Principal Engineer in the Global Enterprise Web Services group at Sun, and together with SOA Group Marketing Manager, Ashutosh Kulkarni, and TN Subramaniam, RouteOne LLC's IT Director, will highlight some of the design patterns, standards, and technologies involved in building an effective, SOA-based, end-to-end business solution.
   
   
2. Five Ways to Use BPEL With Java Technology (TS-3532)
   
   Many business processes, such as the handling of a purchase order, involve multiple steps performed in a specific sequence, potentially requiring the invocation and interaction of multiple services. For this to work properly, the service invocations and interactions need to be coordinated (or "orchestrated"). BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language) is an XML-based language that is used to coordinate web services across a single business process. Come to this session and see a number of interesting use cases that illustrate the power and elegance of BPEL. The speakers are Edwin Khodabakchian, Vice President of software development at Oracle Corporation, and Roel Stalman, Oracle's senior director of product management for development tools.
   
   ... For more on BPEL (as well as Business Process Modeling Notation, BPMN) to orchestrate services, visit the session A Hitchhiker's Guide to SOA: Orchestrating Loosely-Coupled J2EE Services With BPMN and BPEL (TS-7121), presented by chief architect for Java Enterprise Tools at Sun Microsystems, Charles Beckham, and Java Enterprise Tools architects Michael Frisino and Todd Fast.
   
   
3. Java Business Integration (JSR-208): Enabling Standards-Based Integration (TS-5238)
   
   An important objective of many businesses is to integrate corporate resources in a flexible and efficient way. An expert group led by Sun and with representation by key vendors has been working on a specification for business integration, JSR 208: Java Business Integration (JBI). This specification promises to set the standard for integrating corporate resources in an SOA. JBI defines a framework for plug-in components that comprise an integrated solution. The plug-in components can be as varied as EJB containers, BPEL process engines, or adapters that expose applications or workflows as web services. Visit this panel discussion led by Scott Clinton, CxO for Data Center & Data Managment Solutions at Sun, and Mark Hapner, the initial spec lead for JSR 208, and hear what J2EE Application Server and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) vendors, customers, and System Integrators have to say about JBI.
   
   ... For a more in-depth session on ESB and JBI, attend Enterprise Service Bus and Java Business Integration: Infrastructure for Enterprise SOA (TS-1428), presented by David Chappell of Sonic Software.
   
   
4. What's New with the New EJB 3.0 Persistence API? (TS-7949)
   
   If you haven't noticed, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technology is getting much easier to use in EJB 3.0. One important element of this simplification is a new, plain old Java object ("POJO") persistence model. In this session, Sun Senior Staff Engineer and EJB Specification Lead, Linda DeMichiel, and architects from Java Data Objects, Hibernate, and Toplink, who have been among the key contributors to the new EJB 3.0 persistence API, give an overview of the model and discuss the API. Linda's talks on EJB technologies at previous JavaOne Conferences have drawn overflow audiences, so arrive early.
   
   ... If you're interested in what else is new EJB 3.0, come to the Linda's technical session Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0: What's New? (TS-7969). Also visit the EJB 3.0 BOF (BOF-9971), where members of the EJB 3.0 Software Expert Group will talk about their current work on the EJB 3.0 release and answer questions.
   
   
5. Hibernate 3.0 (TS-3628)
   
   Hibernate is a hot topic of conversation in the world of Object/Relational (O/R) technology. In addition, Gavin King of the JBoss Group, the founder of the Hibernate Project, is a hot speaker. Put these two together and you get a compelling talk about an interesting topic. Hibernate is a popular open source, O/R persistence and query service for Java technology. It's provides a relatively simple way to create persistent objects that map to relational database schemas. It also provides an object-oriented extension to SQL, Hibernate Query Language (HQL), to query data in a relational database. Some of the key features in Hibernate, such as support for inheritance and polymorphism, are making their way into the New EJB 3.0 Persistence API. In fact, King is in the Expert Group for the EJB 3.0 specification. The latest release of Hibernate, Hibernate 3.0, adds some exciting new features. Come to this session and learn about these new features and about some of the more advanced capabilities that Hibernate 3.0 has to offer.
   
   
6. Sun Java System Application Server and Java EE 5.0 SDK (TS-7123)
   
   Peer into the future of the Sun Java System Application Server and J2EE with Sreeram Duvur of the Sun Java Application Server team, and Jerome Dochez and Abhijit Kumar of J2EE SDK team. Learn about some of the new ease of development features in J2EE 5.0 that will be implemented in the next release of the Sun Java System Application Server. Also find out about upcoming support in areas such as web services and SOA, management and monitoring, and security and identity management.
   
   ... Two other sessions of note about application servers are The New WebLogic Server 9.0 (TS-1073), presented by BEA Systems' Michael Bamford, and Architectural Overview of the Apache Geronimo Project (TS-7011), presented by Jeremy Boynes, CTO of Gluecode Software and co-founder of the Apache Geronimo project.
   
   
7. The JBoss Kernel: Plug and Play J2EE (TS-3901)
   
   Bill Burke, the well-known lead architect of JBoss, will take you on a tour of the JBoss architecture, and show you how it implements and supports the J2EE platform. You'll learn how any component type can be recycled and hot-deployed at runtime. You'll also learn how any type of network protocol can be plugged in to drive any subsystem in the J2EE platform. Bill will also focus on the abstract container and interceptor framework, which allows you to extend the existing behavior of any J2EE component. The EJB 3.0 container was built on this technology.
   
   
8. Spring and JavaServer Faces Technology: Synergy or Superfluous? (TS-5068)
   
   Spring is an open source framework for developing J2EE applications. It's main aim is to make J2EE easier to use and to promote good programming practice. JavaServer Faces technology is a server-side user interface component framework for Java technology-based web applications. Some see the managed bean and navigation capabilities offered by both as covering much the same territory. So does it makes sense to use Spring in applications based on JavaServer Faces technology? The answer is yes. In this session Rod Johnson, the CEO of Interface21, and the father of the Spring, and Duncan Mills, Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle, discuss how to get the best out of both frameworks.
   
   ... For a general introduction to Spring, Johnson joins Spring co-founder Jurgen Hoeller in a technical session titled The Spring Framework: Introduction to Lightweight J2EE Architecture (TS-7695). For something cool about JavaServer Faces technology, visit the BOF JavaServer Faces Over The Phone: Building VoiceXML with Custom JSF Components and Render Kits (BOF-9258). VoiceRite architect, Christopher Myers, will show you how to extend the JavaServer Faces component architecture to deliver content to an atypical client, in this case, a VoiceXML browser.
   
   
9. Writing Secure Web Applications (TS-5111)
   
   What topic engenders more interest, more head scratching, and more worry from IT managers, architects, and programmers than security? Learn from Neil Smithline, WebLogic Server Security Architect for BEA Systems, about some of the common development pitfalls that lead to web site security exposures, and what you can do to ensure that your web applications are secure.
   
   
10. Twelve Reasons to Use NetBeans (TS-2670)
    
    O.K., this session is not exclusively for enterprise developers, but consider this: the latest version of NetBeans, NetBeans 4.1, delivers significant new capabilities for developing J2EE applications, EJB components, and web services. Find out what the NetBeans IDE has to offer to developers from Tim Cramer, engineering director at Sun for NetBeans, and Java Evangelists Charles Ditzel and Inyoung Cho.
    
    ... and don't forget about NetBeans Software Day, which will take place on Sunday afternoon, June 26, the day before the 2005 JavaOne Conference. You'll get a chance to learn from experts about what's happening with the NetBeans IDE and other Sun tools. In addition, James Gosling, the father of Java, will discuss the future of Java developer tools. There will also be keynotes by Sun Fellow Graham Hamilton, Sun Distinguished Engineers Bill Shannon and Bob Brewin, and Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML.