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November 21st, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provided by Sark
  
6:30 - 8:00  Drools - Brian Sam-Booden - Presentation and Source Code
  Software development is expensive, when business rules are hard-coded in your application’s source code, changes and additions to those rules translate to wasted time and money. Good object-oriented, component-based approaches can alleviate the burden of keeping up with changes in the business world but they still require that expert knowledge of the changes be passed from the decision makers to the business analysts and finally to programmers that need to implement these changes. Business Rule Engines and Business Rule Languages are based on the basic premise of separation of concerns by empowering business domain experts to express the rules of business in a way that it is directly usable by applications.
  Drools is an open source pure-Java implementation of a forward chaining rules engine. Drools can be used in a J2SE or J2EE application and allows you to express rules in a variety of scripting languages, including Python, Groovy and Java. Learn how Business Rules with Drools can make your Java applications more flexible and robust.
  
  About the speaker...
  Brian Sam-Booden comes to us from the CoJug
  Brian has spent over ten years working with object technologies, with an emphasis on the Java platform. He holds dual bachelor degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University in computer science and physics and is the president and chief software architect for Integrallis Software, where he focuses on object modeling and Java, particularly J2EE. As an independent consultant, he has promoted the use of open source in the industry by educating his clients on the cost benefits and productivity gains they can achieve. He is a frequent speaker at user groups and both national and international conferences. He is a Sun Certified Java Programmer, Developer, and Architect. Brian also co-authored the Apress Java title "Enterprise Java Development on a Budget: Leveraging Java Open Source Technologies." Aside from spending time with his wife and son, Brian spends most of his time writing code or on the mat practicing Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.
October 17th, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by Oracle
  
6:30 - 8:00  BPEL - Fred Louis and Rafael Torres
  The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) standard, managed by OASIS, has been widely adopted by customers and leading vendors. With native support for BPEL, Oracle BPEL Process Manager reduces the cost and complexity of integration projects while increasing their strategic value. Oracle BPEL Process Manager is available stand-alone and as an option to Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition.
  Together, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Oracle BPEL Process Manager deliver a modular, effective way for IT departments to save time and reduce costs in the deployment of new solutions, decrease maintenance costs, and quickly adapt to changing business requirements. Without a standard process technology, merging or redeploying processes-for example, adding process steps to meet regulatory mandates or when consolidating two business units-could take weeks or months.
  
  About the speakers...
  Fred Louis is a Principal Solution Architect for Oracle Corporation.
  Fred earned a BSBA degree in Information Systems from Xavier University. His professional expertise and industry knowledge has been built over the last 22 years in software product support, database administration and customer service. He has worked for over 11 years at Oracle Corporation helping customers in the Ohio Valley implement database applications and information based solutions in their organizations. By applying his experience and knowledge gained over this time, he adds value for Oracle's customers by demonstrating how Oracle products can be leveraged to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their organization.
  In the last 5 years, Fred has worked with organizations in several industries, ranging from retail to healthcare to financial services. Oracle's focus is to enable customers to operate information-driven enterprises and Fred's efforts are key to this focus. Fred is an active member in local Oracle User Groups in Cincinnati, Louisville and Columbus. He has been honored with Consultant of the Quarter awards at Oracle twice in the last five years.
  
  Rafael Torres is a Senior Solution Architect for Oracle Corporation.
  Rafael earned a BSA in Computer Science at Sacred Heart University (Puerto Rico). He recently joined Oracle from BEA Systems where he also worked in a pre-sales technical position. He worked 5.5 years at BEA. Prior to BEA he spent 9 years with Attachmate where he assisted customers with their mainframe and Unisys system connectivity. He also served in the U.S. Army stationed in Germany for 2 years.
  Rafael has spent the last 15 years helping customers in the Ohio Valley implement applications and information-based solutions in their organizations.
  
September 19th, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by Pillar Technology
6:30 - 8:00  Spring Framework - Patrick W. McMichael
  This presentation will provide attendees with a "wet your appetite" introduction to the Spring framework. While much of the popular buzz around Spring focuses on using it as an alternative to EJB containers, this presentation will actually highlight some practical ways in which Spring can really complement traditional J2EE activities. In fact, Spring's lightweight approach has blazed the trail for much of where EJB 3.0 is heading. Examples will show how the Spring meta-framework may be used in the J2EE space to architect solutions which exhibit extremely loose coupling and an incredible degree of flexibility. Emphasis will also be placed on Spring's contributions to agile/XP practices such as test-driven development.
  
  As a senior Java architect with Pillar Technology Group, Patrick has enjoyed the opportunity of helping some of the nation's leading companies successfully leverage the J2EE platform for large-scale, mission critical enterprise applications. His current work involves the migration of multiple legacy applications onto the J2EE platform, and the convergence of these same apps in support of the client's strategic business vision. Patrick has a Masters in Computer Science from Grand Valley State University, where he specialized in OOAD and distributed computing. Last, but not least, Patrick has a lovely wife of seven years, as well as a delightful daughter, the two ladies of his life.
August 15th, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by SARK
6:30 - 8:00  AJAX - Mike Ball and Jim Kriz
  Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is becoming a popular way to build dynamic web applications.  Even though Ajax is in it's infancy there is alot of exciting news and activity in the java community.

Mike will explore the short history of Ajax applications and talk about techniques, best practices and common issues.  This talk includes many Ajax examples, Demos and code walk throughs with open source Ajax engines.

Jim will look specifically at a Java based open source Ajax toolkit called DWR (Direct Web Remoting).  DWR provides a way to expose POJOs to Javascript clients from Java Web Applications.  This talk will include a detailed demo and code walk though of a DWR driven application.

The presentations: Ajax and DWR
July 18, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by SARK
6:30 - 8:00  Using Code Metrics for Targeted Code Refactoring by Andrew Glover 
   Often times, candidate code for refactoring is based upon a source file's smell, which its spotting can take time to acquire and is largely based upon subjective determinations. The proper use of code metrics, such as Cyclomatic Complexity, Fan-In, Fan-Out, and Depth of Inheritance can also facilitate the discovery of candidate code which is in need of refactoring.

 

For example, Cyclomatic Complexity is adept at spotting methods containing a high degree of conditional logic, which, conseqently, can be replaced with polymorphism as elaborated in Martin Fowler's seminal work, Refactoring with the Replace Conditional with Polymorphism pattern. Additionally, excessively deep hierarchy trees create problematic testing targets, which can be broken out into separate objects with Fowler's Replace Inheritance with Delegation and Collapse Hierarchy patterns. Fan-In and Fan-Out are quite effective at pinpointing brittle code, which can be refactored into a more stable state with a plethora of patterns including Extract Hiearchy and Extract Class. The knowledge of how to effectively spot smelly code and replace it with proven patterns will ultimately lead to a more stable, maintainable and elegant code base.
June 20, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by FusionAlliance
6:30 - 7:15  RAD That Ain't Bad: Domain Driven Development with Trails 
   Chris Nelson will preview his Trails presentation he will be giving at OSCON 2005
7:15 - 8:00  Dependency Injection and Dynamic Languages 
   Jim Weirich will preview his OSCON 2005 presentation
May 16, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by FusionAlliance
6:30 - ?  Echo Web Framework 
   Abdul Habra will be presenting the Echo web framework.
April 18, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by SARK
6:30 - ?  JBoss 
   Matt Quinlan (Lead Systems Engineer from JBoss) will be presenting on Hibernate 3 and Caching as well as answering questions about all JBoss technologies
February 21, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provide by FusionAlliance.
6:30 - ?  Mark Windholtz: Domain Design and Patterns, Avoiding the common approach of COBOL oriented J2EE 
   Most current J2EE applications separate Data and Processing just like the COBOL programs. This is the opposite of Object Oriented design.
  • Why does this happen?
  • When is this the right approach?
  • How do you recognize it quickly?
  • Tips on how to move to real OO driven J2EE applications.
January 17, 2005
6:00  Meet n' Eat 
   Food provided by FusionAlliance
6:30 - ?  Continuous Integration with CruiseControl 
   Chris Nelson and Jim Weirich will be talking about Continuous Integration and CruiseControl. Jim will show a neat demo of how to get CruiseControl integrated with the appliance of your choice.