NFJS Software Symposium Overview

Yesterday was the last day of the Northern Virginia Software Symposium. In general the sessions were interesting, sometimes there were more than one that I wanted to attend at the same time.

One thing that I thought was curious is that some of the speakers were pushing Ruby as opposed to Java for software development. This is supposed to be a Java conference, therefore I thought that was odd.

No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium Update

Today I recieved an email from the folks of the Northern Virginia Software Symposium with the final session schedule. Looks like David Geary won't be there. I was looking forward to some of his presentations, especially the one about JavaServer Faces tricks.

Looks like Kito Mann, author of JavaServer Faces in Action, will be doing some of the presentations that Geary was going to give (Intro to JSF and Shale).

I noticed a new session on integrating J2EE and Hibernate transaction management, I plan to attend that one.

Only two days until the symposium starts, I'm looking forward to it.

While waiting for my laptop to come back from the shop

My laptop is on the way to California to be repaired (boy, do I miss it!). While waiting, I've been looking at the current laptop offerings in the major computer chains online. While searching, I bumped into this baby in the CompUSA web site. Athlon 64 3500+, a gig of RAM, 100 gigs of hard drive. So what if I miss a mortgage payment? :) A guy can dream, can't him?

Laptop Sent For Repairs

Yesterday when coming home from work I accidentally dropped my laptop, an Averatec 3250H1. It hit the pavement from about 2 feet. After that the laptop would turn on but would not boot. I called Averatec support and they had me send it to them for repairs. Unfortunately it looks like I won't have it back before the Northern Virginia Software Symposium.

Free Tools to make your J2EE Development Easier

I've been writing Java and J2EE code for the past 9 years. Over the years I have found a number of free tools to make my life easier. Here is a list of my favorite time saving tools, feel free to add your own.

1. Eclipse - The best Java IDE (I know, Eclipse is more than an IDE, but it is widely used as one.).
2. XDoclet - Automatically generates Home and Remote interfaces, as well as deployment descriptors for EJBs (can also be used to generate deployment descriptors for Hibernate, JDO, Tapestry and many others).
3. Web Tools Project - An Eclipse plugin to facilitate J2EE development, I'm especially fond of the JSP editor.
4. Hibernate - Object Relational Mapping tool.
   

Hibernate

I've been playing around with Hibernate lately. Hibernate is an object-relational mapping tool, the developer creates an xml mapping file that maps Java code to database tables, then the Hibernate API can be used to access and modify database data through the Java value objects.

I also found an Eclipse plugin to aid in the generation of the mapping file and Java code. The plugin allows the generation of the hibernate mapping file from a database table, and the generation of Java code (value objects and Data Access Objects) from the mapping file. The plugin is called Hibernate Synchronizer. The only downside I found about it is that it generates Hibernate 2 artifacts. Hopefully it will catch up soon.

No Fluff, Just Stuff Software Symposium

I'll be attending the No Fluff, Just Stuff software symposium in Northern Virginia in a couple of weeks. Lots of good sessions running in parallel. I'll make sure to blog about my experience.