The Power of Java Hits San Francisco

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Now that the Olympics are over, the signs that read "Passion Lives Here" could well be transported from Torino, Italy, to San Francisco's Moscone Center. Thousands of passionate Java technology advocates, developers, and experts from across the globe will descend upon San Francisco, May 16 to 19, for the 2006 JavaOne conference. This annual exchange of all things about Java technology will include hundreds of expert-led technical sessions, real-world tips and examples, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, Hands-on Labs, previews and demonstrations of technical advances, and exciting evening events with industry leaders.

This year's theme, "The Power of Java," celebrates Java technology's 11th year as a platform and programming language that has proven its worth in the marketplace. Not only does it work across platforms, but it also ably scales from the smallest micro-edition portable device to the most mission-critical enterprise behemoth.

Many from the industry will be on hand to celebrate Java technology's enduring power during the four-day affair. Sun's Conference cosponsors include: Platinum-BEA Systems, Inc., IBM, and Oracle; Gold-Justsystems Inc., Nokia, SAP, and Terracotta Inc.; Silver-Adobe Systems, BenQ-Siemens, Quest Software Inc., SavaJe Technologies, and Sprint. In addition, more than 70 companies will be exhibiting on the JavaOne Pavilion floor.

The JavaOne conference offers developers several opportunities to showcase real-world applications that use Java technology. The Duke's Choice Awards (a.k.a. the Dukies), for example, give Java technology developers the chance to confound James Gosling, Scott McNealy, and the Java technology leadership team: They have to choose the winning applications that best exemplify extreme innovation using the Java platform. Last year, the winners came from around the world -- among them, entries from São Paulo, Brazil; Fukuoka, Japan; and Cary, North Carolina.

The now traditional T-shirt Hurling Contest also gives participants a unique opportunity to demonstrate the power of Java technology and the chance to win a highly coveted Java jacket, as well as cash. Each year, contest participants devise inventive, non-lethal ways to fling special T-shirts designed by James Gosling into the audience. Past devices have included a trebuchet, a "master blaster," and slingshots. Yet another tradition to blame on Java technology father James Gosling.

The sheer number of sessions, activities, and choices can feel overwhelming to attendees. This year, you have a handy assistant: the JavaOne Conference Schedule Builder. It will help you navigate and make choices among the sessions, whether your focus is desktop, enterprise, or mobility.

In addition, you can employ the JavaOne Conference Event Connect tool to search for and identify people with whom you can network. Share best practices with other attendees. Searching by technology, industry, or company, you can set up meetings with other developers and with the cosponsors and exhibitors with whom you are most interested. Join discussion groups on Ajax (the asynchronous JavaScript technology and XML technique formerly known as DHTML), SOA, Java EE, and more. (Note: For those of you interested in what's under the hood, the tool uses a service-operated architecture that relies on SOAP-based web services. Internally, the system leverages a range of technologies, including AJAX, Java technology, and .NET.)

While planning your Conference, note that there are several types and levels of expert-led sessions. The Advanced How-tos are deep dives into the inner workings of a technology or implementation. Tutorials lead you step-bystep through unfamiliar APIs, technical standards, or programming practices. Technical Case Studies describe successful implementation of a Java technology-based solution. Industry Panels are lively, moderated discussions among industry leaders and vendors. News From the Leading Edge presentations detail evolving Java technologies, JSRs, and innovations. The Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions are informal presentations, roundtables, or question-and-answer sessions.

Throughout the week in the general sessions, you'll hear from Sun and our Platinum Cosponsors. Sun's Scott McNealy, James Gosling, and Jonathan Schwartz will be on hand to discuss where Java technology is going. During the Platinum general sessions, you'll hear from experts Dave Douglas, vice president and chief architect, WebLogic, BEA Systems, Inc.; Erich Gamma, distinguished engineer, IBM Software Group; John Weigand, distinguished engineer, IBM Software Group and development manager, IBM Rational Software; and Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies Development, on their current Java technology initiatives.

Sun's Graham Hamilton and Bill Shannon lead the Java Platform Roadmaps general session, outlining key directions for the next Java platform releases. The Mobility general session highlights new capabilities in the Java ME and Java Card platforms for the cutting-edge mobile and embedded markets, as described by Alan Brenner of Sun's Client Systems Group.

Using the Conference Schedule Builder, you can plan your Conference around the five main topics: Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE); Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE); Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME); Tools; and Cool Stuff. Each topic comprises technical sessions and Birds-of-a-Feather events geared to that specific area.

Sure to be a winner is the return of "The Continuing Adventures of Java Puzzlers-Tiger Traps," with Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter of Google. Eight new programming puzzles focus on features introduced in the 5.0 ("Tiger") release. The game show format keeps things lively while the puzzles teach you about the subtleties of the Java programming language and its core libraries. The eagerly anticipated concurrency utilities are described by Sun's David Holmes and Brian Goetz of Quiotix Corporation in "Simpler, Faster, Better: Concurrency Utilities in JDK Software Version 5.0" -- including a rich set of high-level concurrency constructs, such as thread pools, semaphores, mutexes, condition variables, locks, barriers, and high-performance concurrent collection classes. "Eight Ways to Be More Productive Developing Swing Applications" shows that the powerful Swing GUI toolkit can be constrained into a simple-to-use tool for GUI application development, per speaker Ben Galbraith. There are more than 45 sessions in this topic, so we've barely touched the surface.

Ben Galbraith shows up again with Dion Almaer of Ajaxian, Inc. to provide an "Introduction to AJAX" as shown in the ultracool Google Maps UI. Linda DeMichiel of Sun covers the new features in "Java Technology-Based Persistence" introduced in the simplified, plain old Java technology object (POJO) persistence architecture. Rod Johnson, the father of Spring, takes you on a "Spring Framework Update" as it uses the new EJB 3.0 specification persistence API described in the earlier session. Then you have another 50 or so sessions from which to choose.

In the Mobility general session, Sun Microsystems' Alan Brenner talks about the latest developments in the Java ME and Java Card platforms, and how the platforms are evolving to meet the demand for compelling new services for these high-volume markets. Srikanth Raju of Nokia Corporation goes over the "Best Practices in UI Design and Programming for S40, S60, and S80 Platforms." Sun's Bill Foote describes the technology highly touted to replace DVDs in "Bluray: Java Technology Goes Hollywood." In "Location API: Practical Application of JSR 179," Zane Lyon and Ryan Wick of Sprint will show how they've deployed handset- and network-based location applications. There are more than two dozen sessions and numerous BOFs in this topic presented by market and technical leaders in the mobile ecosystem.

No matter which platform you use, there are tools to enhance successfully developing for and deploying to the Java platform. Tools such as NetBeans, Eclipse, Sun Java Studio Enterprise, JDeveloper, Apache Derby, IntelliJ IDEA, Sun Java Studio Creator, and JUnit are covered in more than 15 technical sessions. Source code editors, plug-ins, performance analysis, modeling and monitoring systems, and collaboration tools all show up in this space.

These sessions have only one thing in common: the cool factor. For instance, there's "Bi-Fi: Just Like Your Doctor!" in which Shahin Farshchi of Vista Integration Systems and Kiran Patel of Sun describe this state-of-the-art patient-monitoring system. Paul Perrone of Perrone Robotics describes the Java technology-powered "Robotic Dune Buggy Named Tommy" and his experiences at the DARPA Grand Challenge event. Another dozen or more sessions touch on Squawk, Groovy, JRuby, a Sony PlayStation emulator, and other creative inventions.

Approximately 40 wildly popular, wide-ranging labs cover technologies from all five topics, with 15 instructor-led labs. You get hands-on practice on technology that's of interest to you. Here's a small sampling of the labs: "Using Dtrace on Java Applications in Solaris 10," "Explore Java SE 6 Features," "AJAX: Riding the Web Application Horse a Little Farther," "NetBeans IDE 5.0: Plug-In Development," "Developing Interoperable Next-Generation Web Services with GlassFish Project, NetBeans IDE, and Java WSDP," and "Understanding Requirements: Use Case, Domain, and Component Modeling."

On Monday, May 15, Java University offers three stand-alone courses. These intermediate and advanced courses are created and delivered by Sun-certified instructors who are experts in Java technology.

For Java EE application developers, "Implementing Business Logic Using Enterprise JavaBeans Architecture for the Java EE Platform" describes how to build and deploy enterprise applications using session EJB components as facades to the business components, entity CMP beans as persistent data representation, and message-driven beans as Java Message Service consumers. For Java EE platform architects, project managers, and development managers, "How J2EE Patterns Help in Architecting and Designing Robust Java EE Applications" provides an understanding of J2EE technology patterns and how valuable in practice they have proven to be in implementation and solving recurring design problems. For web services developers who use Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC), "Using JAX-RPC to Enable Java EE Platform Applications to Interoperate With Applications That Are Not Java Technology-Based in a Secure Web Services Framework" goes into the functionality provided for creating web services and the two development approaches supported by the JAX-RPC API. Finally, for Java technology web component developers, "Exploring the Struts Framework and How It Supports Web Component Development" describes the roles of the view and controller components within the web tier.

Monday, May 15, is also the third annual NetBeans Software Day, a companion event at San Francisco's Argent Hotel. Java technology father Gosling and other luminaries will discuss the future of Java technology developer tools and the rich client platform. A reception follows the event.

Think you can rest after a full day of technical sessions and the like? JavaOne conference activities continue into the evening hours. Conference alumni can gather "around the hearth" and get some quality time with Java technology experts and executives from Sun Microsystems at the annual Fireside Chat. The Fireside Chat will take place on Monday, May 15, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., followed by a Welcome Reception from 7 to 8 p.m. (If you're new to the Conference this year, you'll be an alumni next year!)

Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions abound from 7:30 to 11:20 p.m. There are a plethora of BOF sessions from which to choose, also aligned along the five topics. Some sessions let you "Meet the Team" that's busy engineering the latest versions of your favorite flavor of Java technology. The Pavilion Reception on Tuesday, May 16, offers participants, technology representatives, and experts a chance to mingle from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The JavaOne conference "After Dark" Bash on Thursday, May 18, starts at 7 p.m. and lasts through 10 p.m. It's your last chance to catch up with old friends, say, "Until next year!" to new friends, and unwind after the excitement of the past three days.

The Moscone Center is centrally located in downtown San Francisco, with nearby Yerba Buena Gardens, a two-block urban oasis offering an ice-skating rink and bowling lanes. But within the convention center itself, there are respites when you just need a brief break from the technical sessions.

The JavaOne Pavilion showcases the products and technologies of the Java community. The Pavilion floor is always an exciting place to walk around and absorb Java technology. The "Experience the Power of Java" section of the Pavilion floor provides a hands-on area to play with Java technology-based products, applications, games, and more. Hacker's Labs are conveniently located throughout the Pavilion for your personal needs. This is the place to go online -- check your email, handle online business, and surf the web.

Come to the 2006 JavaOne conference! Experience one of the single-largest Java community events, with hundreds of expert-led, in-depth technical sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, Hands-on Labs, industry panels, advanced how-tos, technical case studies, and tutorials over the course of four days. After celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2005, it's time to revel in The Power of Java as it enters its second decade.