Javapolis University Day Two

So here we are again! The exhibition center is up and running, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, SAP, IBM and Oracle are one of the big kiosks you may find freebies, sign forms or get some books. Here is set of photos!

I started my day with a large dose of Adobe Flex. I have to admit this year Flex and all it's related technologies are heavily marketed by Adobe and they seem to do quite a good job, they even give a free book either on Flex or ActionScript (which is an implementation of the new JavaScript Specification). Well I have been one of those users that has been very critical towards the use of Flash in the web. I am still worried about this wave of .everything flash especially when it was being used by designers to build a fancy site BUT with useless functionality and only eye candy. It seems now we have a transformation? evolution of flash and to be more precise - Flex is a technology for developers - for we developers, that enables you to write a very interactive web application - using the usual flash eye cande + (IMPORTANT) with a decent programmer's API, and set of tools and technologies that enable you to make use of server side technologies - manipulate data etc etc. Bruce Eckel, the writer of Thinking in Java was one of the authors and that was a very good reason to see why such a known Java person is very font of Flex!So from the eye candy point of view ok Flex is impressive ok it is flash! From the technology point of view - Flex+AIR is another virtual machine like the Java one that claims this time run once - run everywhere is a reality! Time will tell- the speakers said it was a reality! Using ActionScript is like writing Javascript, it has a very strange feature, is dynamic typed (as Java script) but it is static typed if you want to, like Java! The tools provided are almost free (the command line compiler), though the Integrated IDE built of top of Eclipse ( Flex-Builder) is not free. The speakers announced that we are heading towards Flex 3 and the whole tools, SDK etc are going to be open sourced! So definitely I will have to wait till that happens! Being a Java Developer I love good and Free IDE's, so at this moment I would not consider paying for a development tool! The integration of the Flex with server side technologies - like Java Server Side technologies - seems to be a reality and that's a reason why Flex loves Java and why Java loves Flex LifeCycle Data Services is built on top of Java technology - actually it's a J2EE application!Anyway very interesting talk I don't know if flex is going to dominate - the fact that is Java friendly is a reason for me to have a look or consider in the near future (especially when it is fully open sourced!) - it seems to be more ready to deliver a RIA solution comparing to JavaFX (at least at the moment). Time will tell!

Some cool links during the talk!

• Ebay Desktop (beta)
• BuzzWord (online word doc)
• Cloud Flow Game

After having having lunch and taking some t-shirts by signing forms in the exhibition center(i love collecting T-Shirts) , I thought to attend the _Guidelines and Hints to EJB3 and JPA by Linda Demichiel and Kenneth Saks. In the recent years I regurly follow all these talks, since EJB3 is one area that I consider very important for the Enterprise Java Developers Community. A talk from a spec lead such as L.DeMichiel is always considered important by me. Most of the stuff that have been mentioned in the session were already known to me though there are always points that you may further research or some new hints for future development sessions. The EJB3.o is currently evolving 3.0 -> 3.1 and JPA is getting more complete. Lots of interesting things and lots of new things are expected to come in 2008! Very quality session, so overall I was very satisfied!

The night was over with the JUG leaders + Speakers night out where I had the chance as you can see to make one of my dream as a developer come true, to meet and talk to the father of Java.