JPA/Hibernate 3 Lab at the Connecticut JUG

On September 18th, I conducted a JPA/Hibernate 3 lab at the Connecticut JUG. I allowed people to use either NetBeans 5.5 or Eclipse Dali. This was the first ever lab they had ever done at the JUG and everything worked out quite nicely for a hands-on lab.

Personally, I would do a few things differently the next time I do this lab. Firstly, I think I have to allow just one IDE (probably Eclipse). Two IDEs are just too difficult to support in a single session. Secondly, I think I need to have all required software available for distribution on the spot. No matter how many times you say it, people never seem to come prepared. Lastly, I think this lab needs to be about two-and-a-half hours to cover JPA to a reasonable degree. By the time I am done setup and running, the allotted time is over!

As usual, it was a pleasure to talk with JUG leader Ryan. He is one of the most down-to-earth people in the Java field that I know. In a field full of ego-maniacs, this is definitely refreshing.

Embedded JBoss Container Talk at Philly JBUG

On September 18, Rob Di Marco spoke on the JBoss Embedded Container at the Philadelphia JBoss User Group. The Embeddable container allows you to use the full power of EJB 3 and JPA outside a container. Rob walked through examples of using EJB 3 in a standalone application, in a unit test as well as in Tomcat.

Embeddable containers are timely and useful innovations that allow the adoption of EJB 3 as a truly lightweight development framework. It is also an important mechanism for using EJB 3 inside existing Spring+Tomcat applications.

Besides JBoss the JOnAS and Geronimo communities have also created embeddable EJB 3 containers that can work with Tomcat. From all indications, these innovations are seeing quite a bit of success. With the advent of Java EE 6, I expect these type of innovations to receive "official" blessing.

I am trying to muster some time to write a few articles on embeddable containers as well as deploy the EJB 3 in Action example code to a few of them. After I am done, I'll make the deployment scripts available through the book's page on Manning.com.

EJB 3/Spring/Hibernate Comparison at Philly JUG

On September 26 I presented my EJB 3, Spring, Hibernate comparison talk at the Philly JUG. The Philly JUG is among the most successful JUGs in the world. It is consistently ranked in the top 25 in the U.S. and the top 50 in the world. I received great feedback on the talk and a lot of folks were very interested in what I had to say. In fact, this is the first time in it's lifetime the Philly JUG reached its capacity attendance of a hundred-and-fifty people!

I finished off the talk with a preview of EJB 3.1 and Java EE 6. I sold a few copies of EJB 3 in Action and received feedback on the book from people who already have copies. I look forward to speaking at the Philly JUG in the future.