2003 Speaker Schedule

January 8

JDO

presented by
Abe White of SolarMetric

Meeting Sponsor: Adea Solutions
Adea Solutions is an established provider of IT Solutions for business and government.

Abstract:
The Java Data Objects (JDO) specification for transparent persistence was recently approved as a standard through the Java Community Process. The JDO specification provides a standard way for persisting objects and is showing a great deal of promise by increasing application portability, reducing development cycle time, and improving code quality. Leveraging JDO, developers can write applications that load, store, and query objects in a data store without ever writing any back-end data store infrastructure code. In addition, we'll discuss how JDO works with EJBs and the J2EE specification.

Robin Roos' Java Data Objects book is available as a free unprintable PDF file on the SolarMetric site to registered users.

Bio:
Abe is a senior software architect at SolarMetric, and is the original author of Kodo JDO. He became interested in JDO while working in Research and Development at TechTrader, where he specialized in Object/Relational mapping, Object/XML mapping, and Java Enterprise technologies. Abe also has extensive experience with Java bytecode manipulation, and is the creator of the open source Serp Bytecode Toolkit. In the past, Abe was a founder of The Basement, a non-profit entity that creates web-based solutions for academia. Abe graduated with High Honors from Dartmouth College with a degree in Computer Science. Abe is a member of the JDO Expert Group, helping define the next version of the JDO specification. Abe is also a Luminary at JDOcentral.com, a consortium focused on supporting the JDO standard. Finally, Abe is the technical editor for a forthcoming book on Java Data Objects.

February 12

Writing Expressive Code

presented by
Greg Vaughn of Landsafe

Meeting Sponsor: Flashline
Flashline delivers software and expertise that enables organizations to better understand their software development assets, and leverage them through increased asset reuse and collaboration.

Abstract:
This talk is designed to show you how to code more expressively and be a better programmer. Expressive code means writing code for an audience of other developers on your project, now and in the future, and not just for a machine to execute. From the information given in this talk, you should be able to write code so that it is easier to maintain and save your company money in the process. This talk will examine coding idioms, and discuss advantages/disadvantages from the perspective of expressiveness.

Bio:
Greg Vaughn has been doing OO development for over 7 years, with 5 of them in Java. He's recently made the shift from consulting to full time corporate employment at LandSafe, eager to be able to implement and monitor long term initiatives to improve code and developer quality. Lately he's been looking at fundamental principles and habits that encourage and assist in writing well designed and easily maintainable code.

March 12

An Introduction to Object-Oriented Oracle For Java Programmers

presented by
Mitch De Felice, CEO DynaZeck Technologies Inc.

Meeting Sponsor: Adea Solutions
Adea Solutions is an established provider of IT Solutions for business and government.

Abstract:
With the latest release of Oracle 9i (Release 2), Oracle introduces direct support for a full and complex object-oriented system providing rich object-oriented features to include: Abstraction, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, Inheritance and Multilevel Collections. This presentation will cover how to define, and query Oracle object types, and how to instantiate Oracle objects into a Java application.

Bio:
Mitch De Felice is founder and President of DynaZeck Technologies based in Dallas Texas. DynaZeck Technologies focuses on designing and implementing e-business solutions that adapts to open solutions that assure simplicity, portability, scalability and interoperable. Mitch has over Seventeen years professional IT experience developing, and supporting commercial systems and with over eleven years experience working with Object-Oriented technologies to include Smalltalk, and Java. Mitch is a certified Java Architect and Java Programmer, and served in the capacity of Java Architect while employed with Sun Microsystems Java Center and as an Object Oriented Database evangelist while working with Gemstone Systems.

April 9

Open Source Initiatives

presented by
Tom McGraw, Delphi Consultants

Abstract:
Everyone has heard of open source initiatives like Jakarta and JBoss. But there are many open source projects that aren't as well known, but supply developers more tools and more alternatives to provide foundations and useful utilities for software development projects. This talk will discuss some of those open source initiatives and provide examples of how to use them.

Bio:
Tom McGraw is a Principal Consultant with Delphi Consultants, a Java and SAP Consulting firm. Tom has 20 years of software development experience including 10 years with OO and 6 years with Java. He is the host of the Java Distributed Patterns group and has presented to JavaMUG and the J2EE SIG in the past.

May 14

Java NIO

presented by
Ron Hitchens, Ronsoft Technologies

Abstract:
Java has traditionally been at a disadvantage compared to compiled languages in the area of advanced and high-performance I/O operations. The NIO package, new in Java 1.4, addresses this problem and lets Java code compete on an equal footing with natively compiled code. This presentation will cover key areas where the NIO APIs can be applied to boost performance, reliability and scalability of Java programs. Applying NIO appropriately can potentially have a major impact on performance. Topics covered will include Buffers and the Channel metaphor, non-blocking modes, multiplexed I/O using the new Selector class and advanced file operations like locking and memory mapping. Regular Expressions and character set transcoding will also be touched upon. This talk will help you speed up the I/O operations in your programs as well as learn how to use Regular Expressions to greatly simplify parsing code.

Bio:
Ron Hitchens is a California-based computer consultant and educator whose career dates back to the disco era. Ron has used just about every computer system and programming language you can imagine: from 6502 assembler to XSLT. Ron concentrates currently on Java and server-side web technologies. Ron is also the author of O'Reilly's "Java NIO".

June 11

The New Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) JSR-52

presented by
Derek Lane, Gunslinger Software

Abstract:
JavaServer Pages (JSPs) have been with us for a while now. The Model 2 Architecture has been implemented in various ways such as Struts, Turbine and Tapestry. Java Server Faces is supposed to be the next generation Java web model. So what's the plan of the Java community for the future of JSPs?

Java Specification Request 52: The JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL).

According to JSR 52, the purpose of JSTL is encapsulate common, core JSP functionality such as iteration, conditionals, XML support, SQL support, etc. and by doing so allow containers to optimize their respective implementations and allow developers to only have to learn a single API.

The presentation will cover the following:
- Introduction to JSTL
- JSTL Syntax
- Overview of JSTL tags
- JSTL Code in Action

Bio:
Derek Lane is President and Chief Consultant of Gunslinger Software & Consulting, Inc., an exciting software development and consulting services company providing services to a range of clients from start-ups to Fortune 1000 corporations, specializing in new and emerging technologies and methodologies.

Derek is the Founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas MicroJava User Group and has been active as a member, presenter and mentor for almost a decade in several Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas technology user groups.

Derek can on occasion be found utilizing his background in engineering, Virtual Reality and 3D graphics to think in 4 or more dimensions - some of which have yet to be independently verified. When not exploring the bleeding edge of technology, he can be found listening to Bluegrass music and watching old Kung Fu movies - a dangerous combination from any point of view.

July 16

Keel Meta Framework

presented by
Michael Nash

Meeting Sponsor: dataFundamentals
datafundamentals helps firms promote their developers up the food chain. More specifically, promoting them up from copy-paste-modify positions.

Abstract:

How can a developer keep up with the best and the latest, without spending all of his time keeping up?

How can I use the best today, without locking myself into APIs that won't work with the best tomorrow?

How can my employer use open source frameworks to avoid the dead end of developing it's own substitute?

How can I get multiple frameworks to work together in a cooperative fashion?

How can I make sure I don't miss out on the latest security and database access APIs while I am focusing on the application side?

Bio:
Michael Nash is the author of "Java Frameworks & Components: Accelerate Your Web Application Development" (Cambridge University Press) and lead developer of the Keel framework. He was also the creator and lead developer of Expresso up to version 4.02. A long term industry veteran, he has spent many of his years servicing large international corporations with financial software. He has lived in the Bahamas for the past several years, and has enjoyed an excellent reputation as a very productive addition to the open source community.

August 13

Donald Smith, Director of Technology, Oracle9iAS

Abstract:
One of the major challenges faced by enterprise Java developers is overcoming the mismatch between objects and databases. Storing objects in Java is more than simple JDBC calls; a solid design incorporates a persistence layer that separates the details of the database from the business logic. The persistence layer should address mapping and run-time issues such as caching, object identity, inheritance, legacy database integration, querying, stored procedure use, storing objects across multiple tables, and transaction management. Additional challenges arise through the use of multi-tier architectures and application servers. Moreover, customers face challenges with disparate data sources and objects need to be mapped and integrated with relational data, mainframe data and ERP systems.

Enterprise JavaBeans developers face additional challenges. Deciding what kind of EJB architecture should be used for data-centric enterprise applications, determining what persistence strategies are best suited to EJB, and understanding the problems specific to EJB are among the key issues that must be addressed. The purpose of this talk is to outline the persistence issues for Java objects and EJBs, and to describe the various strategies employed by persistence layers to solve these problems. We will also discuss these challenges and solutions in the context of various EJB application architectures. It is assumed the audience has some familiarity with Enterprise JavaBeans. Basic relational database and object modeling knowledge are also assumed.

Bio:
Donald Smith is a Technology Director at Oracle Corporation. Donald Smith has been Product Manager for the industry leading TopLink Persistence Architecture product. Donald spent several years as consultant for WebGain (formerly The Object People) focusing on persistence projects including object-relational and OO Database architectures. Aside from product management and consulting he has also instructed at all skill levels on several popular database related products including TopLink, Object Extender, GemStone and JDBC. Donald brings together the experiences of dozens of customers and projects from around the world, and includes small "dot-com" through Fortune 50 companies.

September 10

Java Persistence Frameworks

presented by
Bruce Tate

Meeting Sponsor: Impact Innovations.
Impact Innovations designs, implements, and manages technology to help its clients achieve their strategic objectives.

Abstract:
When your application is too complex for pure JDBC, you need to consider persistence frameworks, but the choices are daunting. Learn what makes a good persistence framework. Learn some of the common pitfalls around data persistence, and what add-ons are important for delivering good performance. You'll first learn about the principles of persistence frameworks. Then, you'll be able to compare and contrast the many Java persistence solutions, including in-depth discussions with Hibernate and JDO code examples.

Bio:
Bruce is a consultant with 15 years of IT experience. He worked for 13 years at IBM, in roles ranging from a database systems programmer to Java proof-of-concept team lead where he served on the certification board for the IT profession. He left IBM to build a solutions development team at a high-powered TL Ventures startup, and left that post to build his own consulting business. He has eight patents ranging from database design to development environment user interfaces, and is the author of three books, including the best selling "Bitter Java" and the just released 'Bitter EJB".

October 8

Model Driven Architecture (MDA)

presented by
Stanley J. Sewall

Meeting Sponsor:
CompuWare Corporation

November 12

New Language Features in Java 1.5

presented by
Glenn Vanderburg

Meeting Sponsor: Recursion Software, Inc.
Recursion Software, Inc. implements proven object-oriented techniques to create a high impact set of development tools for software developers using Java, C++, or C#.

Abstract:
Any week now, beta versions of Java 1.5 will be available, bringing the biggest changes in the Java language since version 1.0. Shortly after that, Java-related tools will start changing, too. These changes promise to make the simple things easier, and the hard things somewhat less hard ... or do they? Come learn about Java generics, static imports, enums, easy iteration, and metadata -- and be ready for the next wave.

Bio:
Glenn Vanderburg has been programming with Java since it was a simple, small language, and has followed all of the twists and turns on the way to its next incarnation. Glenn was one of the original members of JavaMUG. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and was privileged to spend 2003 as a featured speaker on the "No Fluff, Just Stuff" software symposium tour.

December 10

ReportMill

presented by
Jeff Martin,
Founder ReportMill Software, Inc.

Abstract:
This meeting will cover two very interesting Java developer tools, including their design and implementation.

The first is an upcoming Swing GUI builder which makes Swing programming simple - simple to draw, simple to load (just one line of code), and simple to interact with (with a unified interface for accessing values from many different controls). This GUI builder is not a code generator - instead it stores a user interface as an XML description which can be re-hydrated. And this GUI builder cuts through the complexity of Swing layout managers by offering a powerful and simple "Springs and Struts" layout paradigm. Source code for the GUI engine will be provided.

The second tool is ReportMill, a Java developer tool for dynamically generating web pages and reports from Java applications in formats such as PDF and Flash. It is the only reporting tool designed especially for reporting on Java applications and Java datasets (instead of a database). ReportMill is a full featured page layout and animation application written entirely in Java - and using the GUI builder described above (all of ReportMill's GUI is described in XML). We'll cover not only ReportMill's unique use of the powerful Java reflection API, but also ReportMill's unique use of XML for designing templates.

This presentation will be technically oriented, covering how these tools are used in development and also the techniques used in the design of these tools. The presenter has implemented every aspect of these applications, so we can cover audience inspired topics as well.

Bio:
Jeff Martin came to ReportMill from Apple Computer/NeXT Software ('90-'97), where he was a member of the platform graphics group. At Apple and Next, Jeff worked with a number of graphics languages - PDF, PostScript, Display PostScript, Interactive RenderMan, QuickDraw, QuickTime, QuickDraw3D and OpenGL. In this time Jeff wrote an image painting application, a page layout application and a 3D modeling application. Jeff also contributed to Apple's own object oriented graphics library. At Next, Jeff spent time working on their database and web application software and worked as a field engineer for several important enterprise customers (Fannie Mae, Koch Industries, Bozell). This has given Jeff a unique background in enterprise database development, web applications development and graphics.

In late 1997, Jeff founded ReportMill Software, Inc. to solve the problem of generating dynamic documents and reports for web applications. Jeff has been the lead architect and chief engineer on the ReportMill page layout application and developer library. ReportMill incorporates elements of Java Swing GUI design/implementation with both ReportMill's internal graphics architecture and Java2D programming. In addition, Jeff has been responsible for code in the following areas:

Graphics Data Structures

Text Layout and editing

PDF Generation and parsing

TrueType font parsing and manipulation

Flash Generation/Animation programming

Parser generation (Expressions, PDF, XML)

Data manipulation (grouping, sorting, expression evaluation)

Java Servlet integration and programming

Jeff has also taken the leading role in establishing ReportMill as a major player in the Java application reporting market with accomplishments in sales, support, partnerships, management, release control, technical writing, web mastering and more.

JavaMUG 2003 Schedule
January 8 JDO presented by Abe White of SolarMetric Meeting Sponsor: Adea Solutions Adea Solutions is an established provider of IT Solutions for business and government. Abstract: The Java Data Objects (JDO) specification for transparent persistence was recently approved as a standard through the Java Community Process. The JDO specification provides a standard way for persisting objects and is showing a great deal of promise by increasing application portability, reducing development cycle time, and improving code quality. Leveraging JDO, developers can write applications that load, store, and query objects in a data store without ever writing any back-end data store infrastructure code. In addition, we'll discuss how JDO works with EJBs and the J2EE specification. Robin Roos' Java Data Objects book is available as a free unprintable PDF file on the SolarMetric site to registered users. Bio: Abe is a senior software architect at SolarMetric, and is the original author of Kodo JDO. He became interested in JDO while working in Research and Development at TechTrader, where he specialized in Object/Relational mapping, Object/XML mapping, and Java Enterprise technologies. Abe also has extensive experience with Java bytecode manipulation, and is the creator of the open source Serp Bytecode Toolkit. In the past, Abe was a founder of The Basement, a non-profit entity that creates web-based solutions for academia. Abe graduated with High Honors from Dartmouth College with a degree in Computer Science. Abe is a member of the JDO Expert Group, helping define the next version of the JDO specification. Abe is also a Luminary at JDOcentral.com, a consortium focused on supporting the JDO standard. Finally, Abe is the technical editor for a forthcoming book on Java Data Objects. Top

February 12 Writing Expressive Code presented by Greg Vaughn of Landsafe Meeting Sponsor: Flashline Flashline delivers software and expertise that enables organizations to better understand their software development assets, and leverage them through increased asset reuse and collaboration. Abstract: This talk is designed to show you how to code more expressively and be a better programmer. Expressive code means writing code for an audience of other developers on your project, now and in the future, and not just for a machine to execute. From the information given in this talk, you should be able to write code so that it is easier to maintain and save your company money in the process. This talk will examine coding idioms, and discuss advantages/disadvantages from the perspective of expressiveness. Bio: Greg Vaughn has been doing OO development for over 7 years, with 5 of them in Java. He's recently made the shift from consulting to full time corporate employment at LandSafe, eager to be able to implement and monitor long term initiatives to improve code and developer quality. Lately he's been looking at fundamental principles and habits that encourage and assist in writing well designed and easily maintainable code. Top

March 12 An Introduction to Object-Oriented Oracle For Java Programmers presented by Mitch De Felice, CEO DynaZeck Technologies Inc. Meeting Sponsor: Adea Solutions Adea Solutions is an established provider of IT Solutions for business and government. Abstract: With the latest release of Oracle 9i (Release 2), Oracle introduces direct support for a full and complex object-oriented system providing rich object-oriented features to include: Abstraction, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, Inheritance and Multilevel Collections. This presentation will cover how to define, and query Oracle object types, and how to instantiate Oracle objects into a Java application. Bio: Mitch De Felice is founder and President of DynaZeck Technologies based in Dallas Texas. DynaZeck Technologies focuses on designing and implementing e-business solutions that adapts to open solutions that assure simplicity, portability, scalability and interoperable. Mitch has over Seventeen years professional IT experience developing, and supporting commercial systems and with over eleven years experience working with Object-Oriented technologies to include Smalltalk, and Java. Mitch is a certified Java Architect and Java Programmer, and served in the capacity of Java Architect while employed with Sun Microsystems Java Center and as an Object Oriented Database evangelist while working with Gemstone Systems. Top

April 9 Open Source Initiatives presented by Tom McGraw, Delphi Consultants Abstract: Everyone has heard of open source initiatives like Jakarta and JBoss. But there are many open source projects that aren't as well known, but supply developers more tools and more alternatives to provide foundations and useful utilities for software development projects. This talk will discuss some of those open source initiatives and provide examples of how to use them. Bio: Tom McGraw is a Principal Consultant with Delphi Consultants, a Java and SAP Consulting firm. Tom has 20 years of software development experience including 10 years with OO and 6 years with Java. He is the host of the Java Distributed Patterns group and has presented to JavaMUG and the J2EE SIG in the past. Top

May 14 Java NIO presented by Ron Hitchens, Ronsoft Technologies Abstract: Java has traditionally been at a disadvantage compared to compiled languages in the area of advanced and high-performance I/O operations. The NIO package, new in Java 1.4, addresses this problem and lets Java code compete on an equal footing with natively compiled code. This presentation will cover key areas where the NIO APIs can be applied to boost performance, reliability and scalability of Java programs. Applying NIO appropriately can potentially have a major impact on performance. Topics covered will include Buffers and the Channel metaphor, non-blocking modes, multiplexed I/O using the new Selector class and advanced file operations like locking and memory mapping. Regular Expressions and character set transcoding will also be touched upon. This talk will help you speed up the I/O operations in your programs as well as learn how to use Regular Expressions to greatly simplify parsing code. Bio: Ron Hitchens is a California-based computer consultant and educator whose career dates back to the disco era. Ron has used just about every computer system and programming language you can imagine: from 6502 assembler to XSLT. Ron concentrates currently on Java and server-side web technologies. Ron is also the author of O'Reilly's "Java NIO". Top

June 11 The New Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) JSR-52 presented by Derek Lane, Gunslinger Software Abstract: JavaServer Pages (JSPs) have been with us for a while now. The Model 2 Architecture has been implemented in various ways such as Struts, Turbine and Tapestry. Java Server Faces is supposed to be the next generation Java web model. So what's the plan of the Java community for the future of JSPs? Java Specification Request 52: The JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL). According to JSR 52, the purpose of JSTL is encapsulate common, core JSP functionality such as iteration, conditionals, XML support, SQL support, etc. and by doing so allow containers to optimize their respective implementations and allow developers to only have to learn a single API. The presentation will cover the following: - Introduction to JSTL - JSTL Syntax - Overview of JSTL tags - JSTL Code in Action Bio: Derek Lane is President and Chief Consultant of Gunslinger Software & Consulting, Inc., an exciting software development and consulting services company providing services to a range of clients from start-ups to Fortune 1000 corporations, specializing in new and emerging technologies and methodologies. Derek is the Founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas MicroJava User Group and has been active as a member, presenter and mentor for almost a decade in several Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas technology user groups. Derek can on occasion be found utilizing his background in engineering, Virtual Reality and 3D graphics to think in 4 or more dimensions - some of which have yet to be independently verified. When not exploring the bleeding edge of technology, he can be found listening to Bluegrass music and watching old Kung Fu movies - a dangerous combination from any point of view. Top

July 16 Keel Meta Framework presented by Michael Nash Meeting Sponsor: dataFundamentals datafundamentals helps firms promote their developers up the food chain. More specifically, promoting them up from copy-paste-modify positions. Abstract: How can a developer keep up with the best and the latest, without spending all of his time keeping up? How can I use the best today, without locking myself into APIs that won't work with the best tomorrow? How can my employer use open source frameworks to avoid the dead end of developing it's own substitute? How can I get multiple frameworks to work together in a cooperative fashion? How can I make sure I don't miss out on the latest security and database access APIs while I am focusing on the application side? Bio: Michael Nash is the author of "Java Frameworks & Components: Accelerate Your Web Application Development" (Cambridge University Press) and lead developer of the Keel framework. He was also the creator and lead developer of Expresso up to version 4.02. A long term industry veteran, he has spent many of his years servicing large international corporations with financial software. He has lived in the Bahamas for the past several years, and has enjoyed an excellent reputation as a very productive addition to the open source community. Top

August 13 Donald Smith, Director of Technology, Oracle9iAS Abstract: One of the major challenges faced by enterprise Java developers is overcoming the mismatch between objects and databases. Storing objects in Java is more than simple JDBC calls; a solid design incorporates a persistence layer that separates the details of the database from the business logic. The persistence layer should address mapping and run-time issues such as caching, object identity, inheritance, legacy database integration, querying, stored procedure use, storing objects across multiple tables, and transaction management. Additional challenges arise through the use of multi-tier architectures and application servers. Moreover, customers face challenges with disparate data sources and objects need to be mapped and integrated with relational data, mainframe data and ERP systems. Enterprise JavaBeans developers face additional challenges. Deciding what kind of EJB architecture should be used for data-centric enterprise applications, determining what persistence strategies are best suited to EJB, and understanding the problems specific to EJB are among the key issues that must be addressed. The purpose of this talk is to outline the persistence issues for Java objects and EJBs, and to describe the various strategies employed by persistence layers to solve these problems. We will also discuss these challenges and solutions in the context of various EJB application architectures. It is assumed the audience has some familiarity with Enterprise JavaBeans. Basic relational database and object modeling knowledge are also assumed. Bio: Donald Smith is a Technology Director at Oracle Corporation. Donald Smith has been Product Manager for the industry leading TopLink Persistence Architecture product. Donald spent several years as consultant for WebGain (formerly The Object People) focusing on persistence projects including object-relational and OO Database architectures. Aside from product management and consulting he has also instructed at all skill levels on several popular database related products including TopLink, Object Extender, GemStone and JDBC. Donald brings together the experiences of dozens of customers and projects from around the world, and includes small "dot-com" through Fortune 50 companies. Top

September 10 Java Persistence Frameworks presented by Bruce Tate Meeting Sponsor: Impact Innovations. Impact Innovations designs, implements, and manages technology to help its clients achieve their strategic objectives. Abstract: When your application is too complex for pure JDBC, you need to consider persistence frameworks, but the choices are daunting. Learn what makes a good persistence framework. Learn some of the common pitfalls around data persistence, and what add-ons are important for delivering good performance. You'll first learn about the principles of persistence frameworks. Then, you'll be able to compare and contrast the many Java persistence solutions, including in-depth discussions with Hibernate and JDO code examples. Bio: Bruce is a consultant with 15 years of IT experience. He worked for 13 years at IBM, in roles ranging from a database systems programmer to Java proof-of-concept team lead where he served on the certification board for the IT profession. He left IBM to build a solutions development team at a high-powered TL Ventures startup, and left that post to build his own consulting business. He has eight patents ranging from database design to development environment user interfaces, and is the author of three books, including the best selling "Bitter Java" and the just released 'Bitter EJB". Top

October 8 Model Driven Architecture (MDA) presented by Stanley J. Sewall Meeting Sponsor: CompuWare Corporation Top

November 12 New Language Features in Java 1.5 presented by Glenn Vanderburg Meeting Sponsor: Recursion Software, Inc. Recursion Software, Inc. implements proven object-oriented techniques to create a high impact set of development tools for software developers using Java, C++, or C#. Abstract: Any week now, beta versions of Java 1.5 will be available, bringing the biggest changes in the Java language since version 1.0. Shortly after that, Java-related tools will start changing, too. These changes promise to make the simple things easier, and the hard things somewhat less hard ... or do they? Come learn about Java generics, static imports, enums, easy iteration, and metadata -- and be ready for the next wave. Bio: Glenn Vanderburg has been programming with Java since it was a simple, small language, and has followed all of the twists and turns on the way to its next incarnation. Glenn was one of the original members of JavaMUG. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and was privileged to spend 2003 as a featured speaker on the "No Fluff, Just Stuff" software symposium tour. Top

December 10 ReportMill presented by Jeff Martin, Founder ReportMill Software, Inc. Abstract: This meeting will cover two very interesting Java developer tools, including their design and implementation. The first is an upcoming Swing GUI builder which makes Swing programming simple - simple to draw, simple to load (just one line of code), and simple to interact with (with a unified interface for accessing values from many different controls). This GUI builder is not a code generator - instead it stores a user interface as an XML description which can be re-hydrated. And this GUI builder cuts through the complexity of Swing layout managers by offering a powerful and simple "Springs and Struts" layout paradigm. Source code for the GUI engine will be provided. The second tool is ReportMill, a Java developer tool for dynamically generating web pages and reports from Java applications in formats such as PDF and Flash. It is the only reporting tool designed especially for reporting on Java applications and Java datasets (instead of a database). ReportMill is a full featured page layout and animation application written entirely in Java - and using the GUI builder described above (all of ReportMill's GUI is described in XML). We'll cover not only ReportMill's unique use of the powerful Java reflection API, but also ReportMill's unique use of XML for designing templates. This presentation will be technically oriented, covering how these tools are used in development and also the techniques used in the design of these tools. The presenter has implemented every aspect of these applications, so we can cover audience inspired topics as well. Bio: Jeff Martin came to ReportMill from Apple Computer/NeXT Software ('90-'97), where he was a member of the platform graphics group. At Apple and Next, Jeff worked with a number of graphics languages - PDF, PostScript, Display PostScript, Interactive RenderMan, QuickDraw, QuickTime, QuickDraw3D and OpenGL. In this time Jeff wrote an image painting application, a page layout application and a 3D modeling application. Jeff also contributed to Apple's own object oriented graphics library. At Next, Jeff spent time working on their database and web application software and worked as a field engineer for several important enterprise customers (Fannie Mae, Koch Industries, Bozell). This has given Jeff a unique background in enterprise database development, web applications development and graphics. In late 1997, Jeff founded ReportMill Software, Inc. to solve the problem of generating dynamic documents and reports for web applications. Jeff has been the lead architect and chief engineer on the ReportMill page layout application and developer library. ReportMill incorporates elements of Java Swing GUI design/implementation with both ReportMill's internal graphics architecture and Java2D programming. In addition, Jeff has been responsible for code in the following areas: Graphics Data Structures Text Layout and editing PDF Generation and parsing TrueType font parsing and manipulation Flash Generation/Animation programming Parser generation (Expressions, PDF, XML) Data manipulation (grouping, sorting, expression evaluation) Java Servlet integration and programming Jeff has also taken the leading role in establishing ReportMill as a major player in the Java application reporting market with accomplishments in sales, support, partnerships, management, release control, technical writing, web mastering and more. Top

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