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I went to phpuk09 in London More soon

Java day

James Gosling & Guests - Sun UK Developer Update - Thurs 19th March - 13:00

Expense Report

This developer update was organised to unveil changes to JavaFx and the release of the new Java Application Servers in relation to Java EE 6 (not yet implemented).

The update took place at the Royal Geographical Society, London.

I do have slides of the talks if anyone wants to see them.

James Gosling -Keynote

The first talk was given by James Gosling who first developed Java and is known as the Father of Java. This keynote presentation was subtitled “Where we’re Heading”.

The talk begin with the statistics and ubiquity of Java from mobile phones, Kindle EBook reader and Oyster cards; these things all contained compiled and run java code. Again some mention of the Brazilian NHS’s successful IT project where all data related to a patient is done with Java code. The estimated reduction in drug/prescription fraud has apparently paid for the system itself.

The Java virtual machine (“write once run everywhere” or “test everywhere” is not only about Java and other languages are now utilising the JVM including Grails, Groovy, JRuby, Python and PHP.

The GlassFish Application Server is currently version 2 and version 3 is expected in the summer but previews/preludes are freely available.

Tests show that Glassfish is faster than Apache +Tomcat.

Netbeans IDE

Netbeans IDE supports more and more languages, not just Java.

Netbeans is free.

Supports remote debugging on the server and mobile phones via Bluetooth.

http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/realtime/index.jsp

Java Real-time

An implementation to provide rigorous and deterministic timing requirements for real time applications.

Mesh network radio from www.sentilla.com. A project to provide small cheap computing for communicating physical information via meshed networks. Applications include electronic tagging of containers on ships and Strain gauges on bridges.

Java performance faster than C/C++ (C#?)

Latest Java update is Java 6 Update 12.

Includes updates to applets and webstart. Drag and drop capability of applets to desktop (applets to desktop apps)

“Web is the face of enterprise”

So introduced Java FX which is Java’s competitor to Silverlight and Flex/Flash. Java FX is Rich Internet Application (RIA) development platform which works with existing Java platform.

Simon Rutter – RIAs and JavaFX (http://www.javafx.com/)

This talk concentrated on the JavaFX development platform and its use on lots of environments. Runs in the Java Virtual Machine so will work on phones, PCs etc.

JavaFx developed to reduce the number of Listeners required in Swing (Java) and the gray boring look.

JavaFX code looks a bit like JavaScript and mixes Java2D and Swing.

Use of nodes, sub-nodes and changes (rotations, translations) to nodes affect the sub-node. Easy to add special effects.

JavaFx uses declarative static types.

Binding replaces the need for listeners. Bind something to a value and if the value changes so does the binded object (textbox). Lazy binding also possible,

Use of annotations.

See www.javafx.com

Lots of nice demos of the JavaFX platform including code on the Nintendo Wii.

Steve Elliot

GlassFish and friends.

This is probably the most relevant to work in BIS.

The imminent release of Java EE 6 and how GlassFish fits into this, I have the notes but important parts are:

The Glassfish project looks really promising

Glassfish V3 (summer 2009) implements Java EE 6

All the software is free/open source but all software will have the option for enterprise support. This is becoming a feature across the Java portfolio where there is the free option and the option to get “enterprise” help.

What’s new in Java EE 6.

Not yet ratified but all open to discussion.

Features to include:

Extensibility – start small

Profiling – i.e. choose the part of the web server to suit your development –not one size fits all.

See www.jcp.org and JSR 316.

Simplification of web tier –no editing web.xml (hurray!)

New JAX-RS (Jersey project) –Implementation of Restful web services. Express Pools (plain old java classes) as RESTful web services.

GlassFish V3 will come with management tools (JMX) – Admin console. A set of services which can be consumed by another admin tool.

Glassfish runs PHP!

Glassfish enterprise is the value added support and paid for consulting.

Talk of the GlassFish Portfolio

http://www.sun.com/software/products/glassfish_portfolio/

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server

A full Java EE application server with support for dynamic languages that provides the foundation to develop and deploy next-generation applications and services.

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

A core, standards-based integration platform for developing Web content and applications with integration to back-end Web or legacy data.

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server

A new class of portal functionality for simplifying collaboration and the development of Web content.

Sun GlassFish Web Stack

An integrated stack of popular open-source, Web-tier infrastructure technologies such as Apache HTTP server, MySQL, memcached, PHP, and Ruby optimized for the Solaris, OpenSolaris, and Linux platforms.

Again all servers are free or available with value added enterprise, if desired.

Jason Bailey

March 2009

On Thursday and Friday I attended the Remix08 conference at the Brighton Centre. The agenda is available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08/agenda.aspx

The Keynote presented by Bill Buxton and Scott Guthrie set the conference up as both a designer and developer conference. Bill Buxton noted the difference between a designer and a developer; they are not necessarily the same person and sometimes they are; called hybrids!

Bill Buxton also keen to point out that (paraphrasing) “not everyone is a designer ….. would you tell the financial person how to do their job? …. why should they tell the designer how to do their job? …” Design is a specialist job.

Scott Guthrie spoke about development tools, specifically Expression. This is the designers complement to Visual Studio. Both tools can be used on the same project files. Expression is the “photoshop” tool for User Experience design of windows applications; specifically those developed in the windows presentation foundation (WPF) and the subset Silverlight. These are XAML files and are an XML format specified by Microsoft.

XAML files are the basis for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation and are a common basis to develop both desktop, mobile and web applications. This stuff did look impressive. Silverlight is essentially Micrsoft’s version of Flash or JavaFX. RIA stuff from Microsoft.

The presentation showed use of the .Net framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 all to be released shortly. All available in Beta.

Lots of new tools/plugins out soon. Some in beta/preview now…

• silverlight beta 2.0
• ASP.NET
• IE 8 beta 2
• ASP.NET MVC Beta 2
• Visual Studio and Expression

Scott Guthrie presented some nice demos of Silverlight including

www.itv.com - now using silverlight in the catch-up area. This seems to default to a Flash version unless you install Silverlight.

http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ You will require Silverlight 2 to see this and is a great example of DeepZoom

A nice business application example of Silverlight is Athletiplan

First Talks

Silverlight Parts 1 and 2. A 2 hour slot of setting up and using Silverlight using Silverlight tools for Visual Studio Beta 2 and Expression Blend.

Here the emphasis was on both tools for the developer and the designer which could work together on the same project. Expression Blend is part of the Expression Suite and is a new tool. All details at www.silverlight.net

Use of the XAML to create the front end Silverlight interface, events etc which can then be coded using C# or VB. Lots of Demos and examples; looks a lot like Java Swing and JavaFX. Still very impressive. How long before commerical developers are using this in large applications e.g. Agresso?

• Support for SOAP/ WCF (Metro in Java), RSS, Sockets and Cross Domain Networking (Ajax).
• Support for ADO.NET DATA Servics (aka Astoria).
• Silverlight is Cross platform/browser

Next talk

ADO Data Net Services.

SQL in a REST format (web services). Accessing data reprented in the entity data model format with REST Services. All within ado.net. Query is REST parameters. Output is in JSON (JS objection notation) and/or ATOM (RSS/XML like) format. Works well with RIA and MVC i.e. controllers controller/action model. Still in Beta but looks promising. Requires updated data access provider (does exist for Oracle apparently), see:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/data.

Visual Studio IDE tips was full so I sneaked into XNA developers. This was interesting. XNA also be used to model other data.

Day 2.

ASP NET MVC Framework.

More on the ASP NET MVC framework, preview 5 out.

Description of the MVC model with ASP NET.

Very similar to Zend/J2EE MVC frameworks with use of controllers, views, models etc. Webforms versus MVC. Heavyweight, testable.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta Talk

IE8 Beta is out for testing. Includes new built-in developer tools like firefox/firebug. Now goes for standards compliance with CSS 2.1 rather than compatibility. May need to add meta tag to existing pages to ensure compatiblity (quirks mode) mode is still ok i.e. add

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″>

Or redo all pages!

Next Talk - Silverlight -No man is an Island

Examples of how Silverlight can talk to the HTML, Javascript, the browser and the computer outside of its application. There is an isolated storage area to allow Silverlight to save data to the computer. Like cookies but more data specific i.e. text you were working on when connection went down.

Webservices, Sockets etc. C# doing the work. Mixing Javascript and c#.

Designing with Microsoft Expression

A designers tool. How to use it and how it works with Visual Studio from a designer’s perspective. Convert designs e.g. Buttons to XAML and work straight in Visual Studio. Developer and Designer can work on same project using their own tools. Really nice tool; part of Expression Suite.

Mobile User Experience Talk

Don’t make buttons smaller; make applications different and more specific. Looking at design of mobile applications. Designed with Flash, Nokia run time and Silverlight.

Closing talks

Mostly about Microsoft Live labs and current R+D work. Music Monkey, Sea Monkey, photosynth. An “out of the box” day is regularly done to encourage staff to work in other area projects. R+D where some projects might come to fruition.

Exhibition

Looked at Microsoft Surface. Nice tactile table display for working with applications.

Here’s my report to claim my expenses (sorry for the layout it’s straight from Word) for the php conference in london…

Visit to PHP London Conference

http://www.phpconference.co.uk/

Date of conference 29 February 2008

Location Inmarsat - Exit 3 of Old Street tube station. 99 City Road.

Summary

A one day conference about PHP and associated tools and things of interest run by the php London group. Slides and MP3s to be made available in the near future. Good general info about testing, frameworks and Mail.

Notes about talks I attended:

Ivo Jansch Enterprise PHP

Slides at http://www.slideshare.net/ijansch/enterprise-php-288851

A talk about making PHP programming more acceptable to business users. This covered many common features in development and live environment. Tips given on testing (unit testing).

A comparison between Java/J2EE and PHP.

Tips:

• Use OO in PHP
• Use a wireframe prototyping tool for the client to see what’s going on.
• Use flow diagrams
• Use case diagrams
• UML tools
• Use architectures like SOA (and MVC) to allow for mixing with other things like Java.
• Use SVN
• Use a well known framework (Zend, cake, symfony)
• Don’t make your own framework
• Use Design patterns
• Testing
• Unit tests are a must
• Unit tests help build documentation and for regression testing
• SimpleTest and PHP Unit
• Need to look at XINC!

• Use PHP accelerators for 2/3 times increased speed on existing code???
• E-accelerator
• Zend Platform

• USE PHP Caching

Zend_cache

Zend platform

• Monitor more:
• Monitor infrastructure, business and application
• Use root cause analysis
• Document everything
• Use methodology like Agile (XP, Scrum)

Buy book when available:

Enterprise PHP Development (PHP Architect)

I wanted to attend PHP Binary analysis (Stefan Esser)

I can’t yet find any slides but am looking here:

http://blog.php-security.org/

Instead I attended the alternative talk:

Lessons learned from the front line: Scott MacVicar & Mike Sullivan

This talk was gives by the vbulletin developers. The talk was fairly similar to the previous talk but they did mention a tool I couldn’t remember the name of so that was useful:

They recommended http://selenium.openqa.org/ for scripting tests via web browsers.

Marcus Bointon Mail(); & Life after Mail();

Lots of RFCs and information. Of particular interest was mail bouncing and VERP. Use a mail class and not php mail direct.

Slides at: http://marcus.bointon.com/archives/53-PHPLondon.html

and he thought the first too talks overlapped too!

Rob Allen, Toby Beresford & Ian.P.Christian

My Framework is better than yours?

Really good talk about Symfony, Zend and Code Ignite. Toby Beresford talked about Code-Ignite and was by far the most engaging speaker of the day. Clearly someone who can present well. I was put off symfony but Zend still interesting.

During a coffee break I went to a sales pitch about Zend platform. The Zend Platform is the not free bit from Zend and it like an oracle application server for PHP. The platform comes with a lot of monitoring tools. Accelerators are included. The Zend Framework is free and is quite flexible. We should use the framework more!

Rob Allen: http://akrabat.com/

Toby Beresford: http://www.tobyberesford.com/news.html

Slides at: http://www.slideshare.net/tobyberesford/benefits-of-the-code-igniter-framework

Ian Christian: http://pookey.co.uk/blog/archives/42-phplondon08-My-symfony-talk.html

There was a terrible heckler in this talk. Oh dear! He worked in the gambling and porn industry and accused the speakers of being criminals for calling their frameworks MVC. Very odd person.

Derick Rethans -closing speech

http://www.derickrethans.nl/talks.php

Single quotes VS double quotes! I need to remember this for speed improvement. Use single quotes where no variables (”hello {$name}_ as it’s quicker!

Testing Methods

• Unit Testing

Tests small parts of an application or library (units) for

correctly working code. Tools: PHPUnit, SimpleTest

• System Testing

The testing of a whole integrated system against the

specified requirements. Tools: Selenium

• Non-functional Testing

Testing for performance, load, stress, reliability, availability,

security. Tools: ab, siege, httperf, chorizo

Food great and venue nice. Wireless OK. London Bridge trains home a nightmare as per usual!

Other talks

Zoe Slattery Testing PHP http://www.onekay.com/blog/archives/28

Anthony Pgillips Project zero http://www.projectzero.org/wiki/bin/view/

Flickr photos and blogs can be found with tag phplondon08

I emailed in advance to say I was a bit of a blindy and they sorted me out some reserved seating with no problems.

I really must take the defaults out of Word press and make it look nice!

I don’t know why this bit has been left to me when all the techy stuff was done by Jason! Anyway, entering the 21st century, Happy Christmas! Our two lovely daughters are doing well, Ophelia, now nearly 3 months, does everything a good little baby should, sleeps (a lot), feeds, coos, smiles and is beginning to laugh! Elsie is a very proud big sister who’s favourite saying is “when Ophelia’s older….”. She is a cheeky monkey who keeps us very amused! As for us, well I’m very glad that I’m not pregnant anymore and that I’m not at work, and Jason is very pleased that there are 3 computers in the house and that Ophelia sleeps a lot (and looks more like Elsie every day, which in turn means more like him!) Happy new year! Jean, Jason, Elsie and Ophelia.

Jean will write something here…

This is my first post to this blog, how exciting.