Java's new Metadata facility introduced in J2SE 5.0 defines a way to attach decorations to classes, fields, methods, and even packages that can be extracted by the compiler or runtime tools to provide advanced functionality. Think of metadata as an extended @deprecated flag, or think of XDoclet++. In this tutorial session you'll learn how Metadata fits in the Java platform (and how it compares to the C# platform). We'll cover how to use the metadata attributes provided in the core J2SE libraries and how to write your own. We'll also show a bit of what's coming in JSR-181, tasked to define standard metadata attributes for web services.

Attendees should be skilled Java programmers ready to see what's possible in the latest release and learn to make the most of it.

XQuery is a new language from the W3C that lets you query and manipulate XML -- or anything that can be represented as XML, such as relational databases. As a Java developer -- especially a server-side Java developer -- XQuery is key to searching and manipulating large XML repositories or performing any XML-centric task.

This talk introduces XQuery. I'll explain the XQuery language; I'll show how to call XQuery from Java; and as the creator of JDOM, I'll also explain when to use XQuery instead of JDOM, and when to use both.

Attendees should have an interest or need in managing large sets of XML, but need not have any past experience with XQuery. After the session, attendees will be able to program XQuery and know which implementations to trust.

In this session I'll take some O'Reilly book content (encoded in Docbook XML) and show various ways that the content can be repurposed and made to sing and dance online using XQuery. I'll show several code scripts each less than a page long that do something interesting -- like combine chapters from various books to produce a dynamic table of contents or index, extract figures and graphics, perform targetted search, and print on demand.

Attendees are encouraged to take the Introduction to XQuery talk before this talk, but that's not a hard prerequisite especially for people who have XPath experience. After the session attendees will hopefully come away with an appreciation for how easy XQuery makes XML manipulation in a real world scenario.

Web Caching is very important for high traffic, high performance web site but few people know all the professional-level strategies. In this talk I'll share some of the tricks of the trade, including advanced tips from Yahoo's Mike Radwin.

We'll start with the basics: using client-side caches, conditional get, and proxies. Then we'll talk about more advanced features: how best to handle personalized content, setting up an image caching server, using a cookie-free domain for static content, and using randomization in URLs for accurate hit metering or sensitive content.

Attendees should have experience or interest in how the web works and in cajoling the web into doing their bidding.

There are many interesting and useful algorithms that people just don't remember or never learned. The Boyer-Moore string search algorithm is one prime example. The randomized skip list is another. Both solve common problems with wonderful flair and finesse -- and performance-wise they blow the pants off brute force solutions. This session covers these two algorithms plus several others. It's like your college algorithms course but with a practical bent and absolutely zero proofs. Extra bonus: The Google PageRank algorithm.

This session covers these two algorithms plus several others. It's like your college algorithms course but with a practical bent and absolutely zero proofs. Extra bonus: The Google PageRank algorithm.