Here we go…

By Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Who

This is the first posting of the newly launched blog for The Java Experts.   First, where does the name The Java Experts come from?   The Java Experts is a software and services consultancy that has offices in Virginia and New Jersey.    We do system integration, software development, training all around the Java/J2EE ecosystem. That is all I am going to say about the company for now. We are currently redoing our website (so it is barebones) and that will discuss the company and services and offerings. This blog will not be used for marketing.

For interacting with us you can comment here directly on the blog or via Twitter at www.twitter.com/brianeno.  Follow us there for updates, provide feedback and just follows discussions about the blog.

What

So, what will this blog do? Well this first entry will attempt to explain this and answer that question; we will discuss general direction and hopefully solicit feedback.   I can say that sitting here now, the goals are lofty and we are breaking one of the golden rules of software development, we are going to define a large scope up front!   So buckle up and read what we have intended. This blog is going to be a work in progress.     It will at the same time take two paths; it will be a meandering journey through the world of software development and; laser focused on building software using a best of breed collection of software tools for integration of applications and data. It will at times be a sharing of hard earned knowledge and an opportunity to learn new tools, techniques and frameworks. Our path to learning will be in two directions. We can learn by trying out new directions and we will learn from all of you. Rest assured, we are good at some things, probably better at others and not as experienced in some. We know others are better than us, always will be and therefore let’s make this a forum for sharing that information. Credit will be given where credit is due. This will be by a direct mention here or by cross linking from our blog to where this knowledge is stored. We will be corrected and hopefully (within friendly bounds) other alternatives will be presented.

This is all good, and we look forward to the conversation. As long time users of Eclipse and MyEclipse we have recently been using Netbeans for certain tasks and want to explore its use more. We were really impressed with the ability to generate a Java Swing application with DB access that provides basic CRUD access.

What are some items that are set in stone about this blog? Our blog will use Java most of the time, Groovy and Grails might be mixed in but no promise there, we will use Mule as an ESB and Web Services will be employed where it makes sense. Also Spring and Hibernate will be used. Apache ActiveMQ will be used where we have messaging requirements. There may be other constants we identify as time goes on, but these are the major ones.

Also, each blog post will provide a few links to other sites, books or sources of information we believe important or found interesting. What do I need you from you right now?

Well as I see it these two things.

– Ideas, direction, input and feedback?

– Ways to get the word out so we can grow the audience?

When This will be updated as often as we can, We would like to promise a schedule for this, but are going to refrain from putting ourselves in that position. Simple fact is professional and private responsibilities will always come first so a schedule here would be impossible.

Why

(For those of you interested in why we’re doing this, read on, for the rest of you you can skip to the Links section. There are a multitude of reasons why this blog is being done. Some of these reasons are professional and some of them are personal. Professionally it is a change to share and grow. In the spirit of the web today we think by sharing knowledge we will learn and grow. Personally, as a hobby writer this is an initial attempt at making some prose public. This will provide a chance to experiment with writing styles, get into the habit of writing more often and explore methods of presenting information.

Links

Our book recommendation for the week is Open Source ESB’s in Action authored by Tijs Rademakers and Jos Dirksen. This is an excellent discussion of this topic using Mule ESB and Apache ServiceMix.    What sets this book apart from others we have read is it tackles this important subject with a lot of practical advice, code examples and helpful insight. Up to the point of this release, in our opinion, there were some good books on the subject but they were more theoretical in nature. Note that there are or soon will be a few other books coming out that look very promising.

http://www.manning.com/rademakers/

A good general discussion on J2EE design and architecture covering a broad range of topics we found this useful. http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/3808106

Finally, more specific in nature there is a series on transactions being presented on IBM Developerworks, currently there are 2 articles that have been released.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts1.html?S_TACT=105AGX02&S_CMP=EDU

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts2.html?ca=drs-

See you soon…   Remember to come follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brianeno.