You've read that the relational model is old and busted, and there are newer, faster, web-scale ways to store your application's data. You've heard that NoSQL databases are the future! Well, what is all this NoSQL stuff about? Is it time to ditch Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server in favor of the new guard? To be able to make that call, there's a lot you'll have to learn.

With the forthcoming release of Java7, a number of things come to fruition, both in the Java language and in the libraries, and it's important for Java developers to know what those features are, and how they change the game of writing Java code--or not.

Programming concurrency has turned into a herculean task. I call the traditional approach as the synchronized and suffer model. Fortunately, there are other approaches to concurrency and you can reach out to those directly from your Java code.

Most of the time when people talk about agile software development, they talk about project and planning practices and never mention actual development practices. This talk delves into best development practices for agile projects, covering all of its aspects.

This session will survey a wide range of tools across the Java space. We'll look at utilities such as VisualVM, jstatd, jps, jhat, jmap, Eclipse Memory Analyzer, jtracert, btrace and more.

Open Source is not just a suite of libraries you consume within your application, but now reaches into the space of tools to help you troubleshoot and improve your applications. The price of these tools eliminates barriers to their use and their open source nature allows you to mix and match them into compositions that work well for your application's unique debugging needs.

Hadoop is a MapReduce framework that has literally sprung into the vernacular of "big data" developers everywhere. But coding to the raw Hadoop APIs can be a real chore. Data analysts can express what they want in more English-like vocabularies, but it seems the Hadoop APIs require us to be the translator to a less comprehensible functional and data-centric DSL.

The Cascading framework gives developers a convenient higher level abstraction for querying and scheduling complex jobs on a Hadoop cluster. Programmers can think more holistically about the questions being asked of the data and the flow that such data will take without concern for the minutia.

We'll explore how to set up, code to, and leverage the Cascading API on top of a Hadoop sample or production cluster for a more effective way to code MapReduce applications all while being able to think in a more natural (less than fully MapReduce) way.

Traditional collections on the Java platform focused on providing thread-safety at the expense of performance or scalability. More modern data structures strive to provide performance without compromising thread-safety. Some of them require you to adopt to a different semantics or programming model. In this presentation we will explore some data structures that can help reach both thread-safety and reasonable performance.

Emergent design is a big topic in the agile architecture and design community. This session covers the theory behind emergent design and shows examples of how you can implement this important concept.

Android is a new mobile development platform, based on the Java language and tool set, designed to allow developers to get up to speed writing mobile code on any of a number of handsets quickly. In this presentation, we'll go over the basic setup of the Android toolchain, how to deploy to a device, and basic constructs in the Android world.

Want to go deep on a popular NoSQL database? Cassandra is a scalable, highly available, column-oriented data store in use at Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, Rackspace, and other web-scale operations. It offers a compelling combination of a rich data model, a robust deployment track record, and a sound architecture, making it a good choice of NoSQL databases to study first.

"The Google Guava project contains a host of new features/classes for use by the Java programmer. Intended as a drop-in supplement for the standard JDK APIs, Guava provides features like immutable and forwarding collections, some concurrency utilities, more support for primitives, and so on.

Agile has matured to the point of mainstream success. Even large companies have discovered that it helps them build better quality software faster. But the agile practices that are mainstream today have been around for a long time. What is the next wave of innovation in the Agile world going to bring?

Quite a few languages have raised to prominence on the JVM. A frequently asked question is "How do I integrate my Java code with these?" This session answers that very specific question.

Does your application transmit customer information? Are there fields of sensitive customer data stored in your DB? Can your application be used on insecure networks? If so, you need a working knowledge of encryption and how to leverage Open Source APIs and libraries to make securing your data as easy as possible. Cryptography is quickly becoming a developer's new frontier of responsibility in many data-centric applications.

Building an application is not the straightforward exercise it used to be. Decisions regarding which architectural approaches to take (n-tier, client/server), which user interface approaches to take (Smart/rich client, thin client, Ajax), even how to communicate between processes (Web services, distributed objects, REST)... it's enough to drive the most dedicated designer nuts. This talk discusses the goals of an application architecture and why developers should concern themselves with architecture in the first place. Then, it dives into the meat of the various architectural considerations available; the pros and cons of JavaWebStart, ClickOnce, SWT, Swing, JavaFX, GWT, Ajax, RMI, JAX-WS, , JMS, MSMQ, transactional processing, and more.

One of the hallmarks of lean software development is the elimination of waste. Several of the key wastes in software development revolve around incomplete, incorrect, or obsolete documentation, especially documentation of requirements. One effective means of ensuring that your requirements documentation is complete, correct, and up-to-date is to make it executable. That sounds nice, but how do we get it done, especially in the world of modern, cross-browser web applications?

Most teams manage database change using an ad-hoc system of SQL migration scripts manually applied to various development, staging, and production servers. Some even contrive automated processes, but rarely does this surplus build engineering deliver value directly to the customer. We should be writing applications, not build tools.

Scala is a statically typed, fully OO, hybrid functional language that provides highly expressive syntax on the JVM. It is great for pattern matching, concurrency, and simply writing concise code for everyday tasks. If you're a Java programmer intrigued by this language and are interested in exploring further, this section is for you.

Cryptography at first seems like a daunting topic. But after a basic intro and the leverage of the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE), it seems downright feasible to add encryption and decryption capabilities to your application.

Developers weren't satisfied with just the JCE and its plug-in concepts though. Over the last few years, framework architects have made strides in either wrapping or re-writing the approachable JCE in more convenient APIs and fluent interfaces that make effective and accurate crypto down right simple.

Explore three of these libraries -- Jasypt, BouncyCastle and KeyCzar -- and how they can be leveraged to make your next Java cryptography and data security effort a simple exercise and not a tribulation.

Fred Brooks said, "How do we get great designers? Great designers design, of course." So how do we get great architects? Great architects architect. But architecting a software system is a rare opportunity for the non-architect.

The kata is an ancient tradition, born of the martial arts, designed to give the student the opportunity to practice more than basics in a semi-realistic way. The coding kata, created by Dave Thomas, is an opportunity for the developer to try a language or tool to solve a problem slightly more complex than "Hello world". The architectural kata, like the coding kata, is an opportunity for the student-architect to practice architecting a software system.

People are confused about the status of HTML 5. Is it ready? Is it not? What is part of the spec and what isn't? We'll talk about the situation in the "HTML 5 and the Kitchen Sink" discussion, but as always, the proof is in the pudding. We will introduce the most exciting new features of HTML 5 and its related technologies and build examples that use them.

Automated functional testing is very critical to ensure the code we write is relevant and continues to provide direct business value as it evolves. Business analyst and customers can help develop these tests and programmers can help maintain these. Easyb is a great tool for creating such automated tests.

One of the first principles of lean software development is the elimination of waste. Shigeo Shingo identified seven types of manufacturing waste in his "A Study of the Toyota Production System." Later, the Poppendieck's translated these to seven wastes of software development.

Computer science is built on a shaky tower of abstractions, but we've been distracted by other things until we believe it is reality.

A Technology Radar is a tool that forces you to organize and think about near term future technology decisions, both for you and your company.

Even with the recent explosion in alternative languages for the JVM, the vast majority of us are still writing code in "Java the language" in order to put bread on the table. Proper craftsmanship demands that we write the best Java code that we can possibly write. Fortunately we have a guide in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java.

Many development shops have made the leap from RCS, Perforce, ClearCase, PVCS, CVS, BitKeeper or SourceSafe to the modern Subversion (SVN) version control system. But why not take the next massive stride in productivity and get on board with Git, a distributed version control system (DVCS). Jump ahead of the masses staying on Subversion, and increase your team's productivity, debugging effectiveness, flexibility in cutting releases, and repository redundancy at $0 cost. Understand how distributed version control systems are game-changers and pick up the lingo that will become standard in the next few years.

The first in a series of talks that are part of an arc covering next-generation information-oriented, flexible, scalable architectures. The ideas presented apply to both external and internal-facing systems.

Git is a version control system you may have been hearing a bit about lately. But simply hearing more about it may not be enough to convince you of its value. Getting hands on experience is what really counts. In this workshop, you'll bring your Windows, Mac or Linux laptop and walk through downloading, installing, and using Git in a collaborative fashion.

Object-oriented programming was formally introduced in the 1970's with the advent of Smalltalk. C++ took it mainstream in the 1980's, and Java carried it to the next level in the 1990's. Unfortunately, if you examine the vast majority of Java codebases, what you'll find is a bunch of C-style structs (a.k.a. JavaBeans) and functions. As these codebases grow, a number of design smells can potentially crop up, which in turn cripple our ability to respond to change. We need SOLID principles that we can apply to keep our software clean and malleable.

Some systems are too large to be understood entirely by any one human mind. They are composed of a diverse array of individual components capable of interacting with each other and adapting to a changing environment. As systems, they produce behavior that differs in kind from the behavior of their components. Complexity Theory is an emerging discipline that seeks to describe such phenomena previously encountered in biology, sociology, economics, and other disciplines.

The second in a series of talks that are part of an arc covering next-generation information-oriented, flexible, scalable architectures. The ideas presented apply to both external and internal-facing systems.

Sure, Ajax might not be the hardest thing you'll have to do on your current project, but that doesn't mean we can't use a little help here and there. While there are a plethora of excellent choices in the Ajax library space, jQuery is fast becoming one of the most popular. In this talk, we'll see why. In addition to it's outstanding support for CSS selectors, dirt simple DOM manipulation, event handling and animations, jQuery also supports a rich ecosystem of plugins that provide an abundance of top notch widgets. Using various examples, this talk will help you understand what jQuery can do so you can see if it's right for your next project.

With the rise of multi-core processors, and their growing ubiquity (on client machines, to say nothing of the server machines on which Java applications most frequently execute), the need to "program concurrently" has risen from "nice-to-have" to "mandatory" requirement, and unfortunately the traditional threading-and-locking model is just too complicated for most Java developers--even the brightest of the lot--to keep track of with any degree of reliability. As a result, numerous new solutions are emerging, each of them with their own strengths and weaknesses, leaving the Java developer in a bit of a quandary as to which to examine.

The fourth of a series of talks that are part of an arc covering next-generation information-oriented, flexible, scalable architectures. The ideas presented apply to both external and internal-facing systems.

Groovy was never intended to replace Java. Instead, it expands Java capabilities and makes developers' lives easier. In this presentation, we'll survey many ways to make your Java systems easier by adding Groovy.

The word just came down from the VP - you need a mobile app and you need it yesterday. It needs to be polished and have that design stuff too. Oh and it needs to be on all the major platforms in time for the big marketing push next month. After a moment of panic, you wonder if it's too late to become a plumber but don't worry, there's hope! More and more developers are falling in love with the "write less do more" library and for good reason; it simplifies the job of today's front end engineer. But did you know jQuery could also help you with your mobile needs as well? That's right, jQuery Mobile is a touch optimized framework designed to provide a common look and feel across a wide variety of today's mot popular platforms. In this session, we'll take a look at all that jQuery Mobile has to offer and we'll convert a native application to an HTML5, jQuery Mobile masterpiece.

You've got your build automated using Ant/Maven/Gradle and you're building and running your unit test suite every time you check-in. That's easy. In fact, with Jenkins you can do this in under 5 minutes.

However, if we want to move beyond "mere" Continuous Integration to Continuous Delivery, there are many other areas in which we need to achieve "push button" automation. This talk will survey many of these areas and tie everything together with an integrated case study at the end.

The fifth in a series of talks that are part of an arc covering next-generation information-oriented, flexible, scalable architectures. The ideas presented apply to both external and internal-facing systems.

The Spock framework brings simple, elegant testing to Java and Groovy projects. It integrates cleanly with JUnit, so Spock tests can be integrated as part of an existing test suite. Spock also includes an embedded mocking framework that can be used right away.

Alistair Cockburn has described software development as a game in which we choose among three moves: invent, decide, and communicate. Most of our time at No Fluff is spent learning how to be better at inventing. Beyond that, we understand the importance of good communication, and take steps to improve in that capacity. Rarely, however, do we acknowledge the role of decision making in the life of software teams, what can cause it to go wrong, and how to improve it.

The sixth in a series of talks that are part of an arc covering next-generation information-oriented, flexible, scalable architectures. The ideas presented apply to both external and internal-facing systems.

Build processes are a pain point in most organizations. Ant is mature but very low level, Maven is powerful but hard to customize, and so on. The Gradle project brings the power and flexibility of Groovy to build files and processes.

Feature requests are steadily pouring in, but the team cannot respond to them. They are paralyzed. The codebase on which the company has "bet the business" is simply too hard to change. It's your job to clean up the mess and get things rolling again. Where do you begin? Your first task is to get the lay of the land by applying a family of techniques we'll call "Code Archaeology."

The single most important tool in any developers toolbox isn't a fancy IDE or some spiffy new language - it's our brain. Despite ever faster processors with multiple cores and expanding amounts of RAM, we haven't yet created a computer to rival the ultra lightweight one we carry around in our skulls - in this session we'll learn how to make the most of it. We'll talk about why multitasking is a myth, the difference between the left and the right side of your brain, the importance of flow and why exercise is good for more than just your waist line.

Games? What do games have to do with good business-oriented applications? Turns out, a lot of interesting little tidbits of user-interface, distribution, and emergence, found normally in the games we play, have direct implications on the way enterprise applications can (or should) be built.