If you thought the JavaOne conference was going to be a relaxing
overview of Java technologies, you know differently now,
especially if you attended the Java University program on Monday,
May 7. Java University is an annual in-depth educational event held
the day before the main JavaOne conference each year. The courses
challenge developers of all skill levels from beginner to advanced.
Java University has increased in both its course offerings and
attendees. Last year's program had 625 students. This year, almost
1000 students registered before the event. The 60 percent increase in
registration is evidence that the program is gaining popularity and
interest in the developer community. Last year's offerings included
four full-day courses and one bonus course in the evening. This year,
attendees were able to choose from 15 different courses, which ranged
from half-day to full-day courses, as well as bonus courses.
Sun-certified instructors develop and teach the content, so you are
certain to get the latest information to help you improve your
skills. Over 20 instructors were available to instruct, show demos,
and provide detailed answers. To learn more about the instructors,
read the biographical information page.
You'll notice immediately that these people are active in their technical communities, often have advanced
academic degrees, and are notable authors and speakers. They have
experience you can trust to provide the in-depth technical training
you expect.
Java University started with a general session at 8:00 a.m. Dr. Karie
Willyerd, chief learning officer at Sun Microsystems, kicked off the
event. Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president, welcomed guests
too, encouraging everyone to keep busy and catch up on sleep later.
Special guest James Gosling also spoke at the session and provided
his impressions of the event, the attendees, and the Java platform. He
sympathized with developers, who have to keep up on everything to
maintain current skills.
The educational experience expands each year to include the topics
that currently shape the Java platform. This year, Java University
had two course options for its student attendees: Students could
choose one full-day course or two half-day courses.
The full-day courses included the following:
The half-day courses provided morning and afternoon sessions, each
several hours long. In the morning, you could have picked any of
these half-day topics:
In the afternoon, you had the choice of these half-day topics:
For student attendees with the endurance to participate, the program
offered a bonus course at the end of the day. Instructors continued
the already packed day with courses in these subjects:
Joe Boulenouar and Ron Pinkerton taught the full-day course titled
Using Java EE 5 and SOA to Architect and Design Robust Enterprise
Applications. This course was intended for intermediate to advanced
platform architects and technical managers. The course provided best
practices and design patterns that architects should use to design
robust enterprise applications. Students could most likely use this
course in preparation for the Java Enterprise Architecture
certification.
The course gave students plenty of opportunity to explore practical
design patterns, use cases, and Universal Modeling Language (UML)
diagrams that are common to Java EE platform-based applications.
Students who selected this course came away with a good understanding
of the technologies used to create robust enterprise architectures.
Also, they learned the advantages of building service-oriented
architectures (SOAs).
Chet Haase and Romain Guy taught the morning course titled Filthy
Rich Clients. The Sun engineers presented information for their
upcoming book of the same title. Their course taught how to use
graphical effects to make applications more effective, which in turn
makes users more productive.
This course relied heavily on lots of code samples and demos. Of
course, the demos made the course interesting. The graphical effects
and the presenters' infectious enthusiasm made the topic fun and
interesting. In the end, attendees understood how to use animations,
timing, and other graphical effects to create more dynamic desktop
applications. If you missed this Java University course, you can
still find out about this topic by attending one of the Filthy Rich
Client sessions (TS-3165) on Wednesday at 10:55 a.m. or Friday at
2:50 p.m.
Another half-day course that attracted plenty of students was Timothy
Miller's Learning How Java ME Development Works Best for Mobile
Devices. This course was for beginning and intermediate developers.
The course showed how to use the NetBeans IDE Mobility Pack to
create, test, and deploy mobile applications. Some of the detailed
content included information about how to get involved with the
Mobile & Embedded community, the Mobility Pack, graphics and media,
web services, and best practices for development in the Java ME
platform.
Although Java University is over for this year, you can still find
lots of great information about the course topics. Many JavaOne
conference sessions provide information related to the courses,
although you most likely won't get the same level of detail. Consider
some of these sessions if you missed the Java University program
courses:
- Filthy Rich Clients (TS-3165)
- Top 10 Reasons to Use NetBeans IDE 6.0 SOA Pack (TS-9709)
- Open Source SOA Realized (TS-7080)
- Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 Technology (TS-4247)
- Using jMaki in a Visual Development Environment (TS-9516)
- Creating Amazing Web Interfaces With Ajax (TS-6836)
- JRuby on Rails: Agility for the Enterprise (TS-9370)
- Cool Things You Can Do With the Groovy Dynamic Language (TS-1742)
- Java Persistence API: Best Practices and Tips (TS-4902)
As always, please check the online schedule and content catalog for
updated session times. You can find the schedule and catalog at the
JavaOne conference home page.
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