Craig Walls

Building Next Generation Apps Workshop

For a long while, we've built applications pretty much the same way. Regardless of the frameworks (or even languages and platforms) employed, we've packaged up our web application, deployed it to a server somewhere, and asked our users to point their web browser at it.

But now we're seeing a shift in not only how applications are deployed, but also in how they're consumed. The cost and hassle of setting up dedicated servers is driving more applications into the cloud. Meanwhile, our users are on-the-go more than ever, consuming applications from their mobile devices more often than a traditional desktop browser. And even the desktop user is expecting a more interactive experience than is offered by simple page-based HTML sites.

With this shift comes new programming models and frameworks. It also involves a shift in how we think about our application design. Standing up a simple HTML-based application is no longer good enough.

Building Next Generation Apps Workshop

For a long while, we've built applications pretty much the same way. Regardless of the frameworks (or even languages and platforms) employed, we've packaged up our web application, deployed it to a server somewhere, and asked our users to point their web browser at it.

But now we're seeing a shift in not only how applications are deployed, but also in how they're consumed. The cost and hassle of setting up dedicated servers is driving more applications into the cloud. Meanwhile, our users are on-the-go more than ever, consuming applications from their mobile devices more often than a traditional desktop browser. And even the desktop user is expecting a more interactive experience than is offered by simple page-based HTML sites.

With this shift comes new programming models and frameworks. It also involves a shift in how we think about our application design. Standing up a simple HTML-based application is no longer good enough.

Effective Spring Workshop

After over 10 years and several significant releases, Spring has gone a long way from challenging the then-current Java standards to becoming the de facto enterprise standard itself. Although the Spring programming model continues to evolve, it still maintains backward compatibility with many of its earlier features and paradigms. Consequently, there's often more than one way to do anything in Spring. How do you know which way is the right way?

Effective Spring Workshop

After over 10 years and several significant releases, Spring has gone a long way from challenging the then-current Java standards to becoming the de facto enterprise standard itself. Although the Spring programming model continues to evolve, it still maintains backward compatibility with many of its earlier features and paradigms. Consequently, there's often more than one way to do anything in Spring. How do you know which way is the right way?

Cujo.js: Rabid Application Development in Javascript

In modern applications, Javascript is increasingly prevalent both on the client-side and to some degree on the server-side. As we continue to crank out more Javascript code, we're finding that many of the same hard-lessons we learned in writing decoupled Java code are equally desirable in Javascript code. Without the benefit of dependency injection and AOP, both Java and Javascript code can quickly become an unnavigable and untestable mess.

Where frameworks like Spring have helped us gain control over our Java code, Cujo.js similarly aims to give our Javascript code more structure and testability.

Cujo.js: Rabid Application Development in Javascript

In modern applications, Javascript is increasingly prevalent both on the client-side and to some degree on the server-side. As we continue to crank out more Javascript code, we're finding that many of the same hard-lessons we learned in writing decoupled Java code are equally desirable in Javascript code. Without the benefit of dependency injection and AOP, both Java and Javascript code can quickly become an unnavigable and untestable mess.

Where frameworks like Spring have helped us gain control over our Java code, Cujo.js similarly aims to give our Javascript code more structure and testability.

Spring Data Workshop

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in how data is stored. Although RDBMS has long been treated as a one-size-fits-all solution for data storage, a new breed of datastores has arrived to offer a best-fit solution. Key-value stores, column stores, document stores, graph databases, as well as the traditional relational database are options to consider.

With these new data storage options come new and different ways of interacting with data. Even though all of these data storage options offer Java APIs, they are widely different from each other and the learning curve can be quite steep. Even if you understand the concepts and benefits of each database type, there's still the huge barrier of understanding how to work with each database's individual API.

Spring Data is a project that makes it easier to build Spring-powered applications that use new data, offering a reasonably consistent programming model regardless of which type of database you choose. In addition to supporting the new “NoSQL” databases such as document and graph databases, Spring Data also greatly simplifies working with RDBMS-oriented datastores using JPA.

Spring Data Workshop

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in how data is stored. Although RDBMS has long been treated as a one-size-fits-all solution for data storage, a new breed of datastores has arrived to offer a best-fit solution. Key-value stores, column stores, document stores, graph databases, as well as the traditional relational database are options to consider.

With these new data storage options come new and different ways of interacting with data. Even though all of these data storage options offer Java APIs, they are widely different from each other and the learning curve can be quite steep. Even if you understand the concepts and benefits of each database type, there's still the huge barrier of understanding how to work with each database's individual API.

Spring Data is a project that makes it easier to build Spring-powered applications that use new data, offering a reasonably consistent programming model regardless of which type of database you choose. In addition to supporting the new “NoSQL” databases such as document and graph databases, Spring Data also greatly simplifies working with RDBMS-oriented datastores using JPA.