Red Hat Forum 2016 in Zurich

The Red Hat Forum that takes place next week in Zurich is a great place to learn about the latest in Red Hat/JBoss technologies, meet and share experiences with fellow professionals, experts and Red Hat partners.

With three keynotes, a panel discussion and four different tracks (with talks in English & German) it is a full day event for people that are passionate about Open Source.

Together with fellow Red Haters Thomas Heute and Hannes Sowa we are presenting at a special Deep Dive Session Track. My talk will be about increasing productivity by making use of Java EE 7 features on top of JBoss EAP 7.
 
You can check out the Agenda  and register for the (free) event here. There might still be some slot available, so hurry up.

See you in Zurich!

/Dimitris

New books from the WildFly/EAP team

I came to believe that building infrastructure software and tools for developers is the biggest challenge for a programmer (second only to actually inventing your own programming language), exactly because your end users are not normal people but other fellow developers: intelligent geeks that are very hard to impress.

And whereas in the old days tools development was kept, to a large extend proprietary, the larger percentage of languages, tools and framework are developed nowadays in the opensource, meaning your code is out there in the open to be scrutinized. Writing bad code is less easy when hundreds of eyes are watching you and your reputation is on the line.

There is one undeniable benefit, though, in working on the development of opensource projects like the WildFly application server and it's derivative RedHat JBoss EAP: it is quite possible you will become an expert in the implementation of a set of standards (Java EE or otherwise), or a technology area or a framework that interests many others.

Combine that with a knack for explaining how things work and expressing yourself clearly in written form and what you get is an excellent book writing opportunity. An opportunity that members of the WildFly/EAP will occasionally grab.

So without further ado, I'm happy to throw a plug for two books that came out recently from WildFly/EAP team members.

Mobile and Web Messaging, by Jeff Mesnil
Advanced JAX-WS Web Services, by Alessio Soldano.

Enjoy!

/Dimitris

JBoss AS7 at Profict

Last Friday I was invited to talk about the JBoss Application Server project/Enterprise Application Platform and Java EE6 at the Profict Java Summer Camp day in The Netherlands.

It was a bit of an exercise trying to spot the venue on Google Maps because all you could see at this point was a water tower! Apparently, the Google Maps picture was a bit outdated and there was a new office building next to the water tower, however, the renovated tower was indeed part of the complex and the Profict crew was kind enough to take us for a coffee at the top, which offers a great view to the surroundings.

Now onto the actual conference,  my talk was first so I had the opportunity to present Java EE6, from the point of view of the JBoss Application Server project. I've talked about how we started with JBoss AS6 implementing the Java EE6 profile, then moving on to AS7 with a radical architecture change, as well as our current plans about AS7.1 and full profile certification. Slides are available here.

EAP6 will be based off of JBoss AS 7.1 and if you want to get on the bandwagon there is an early access program, or alternatively, start off by developing on the "everything" distro of JBoss AS 7.0.2, released last week, and that should ease the transition to AS 7.1/EAP6 when the time is right.

If you want to use JBoss AS7 in a cloud context, try OpenShift Express/Flex, Red Hat's PaaS offering.

Next engagement is going to be at Devoxx11 for the JBoss AS7 Community BOF with a bunch of other JBoss Developers, so hope to see you there!

Cheers
/Dimitris