OOW & JavaOne 2012: Monday

Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday

 

CON6234 Do You Really Get Class Loaders?

Good session on not only the way classloaders are working and how many there actually are, but also on what situations you can get yourself into as a developer and how (not also) to solve this.  The use of real examples and naming the different type of exceptions and errors possible in a certain situation, was well received.
What was new for me :

• Normally a classloader checks first the parent classloader and then his context in searching for a class.  Except the WAR-classloader, he checks first his own context and then calls out to his parent classloader.
• You can get the URI of the class that is being loaded.  Doing this shows you from where the class is really loaded.
• Nice help is the "-verbose:class" jvm attribute and the "javap -private MyClass" command to help you understand how the classloaders are loading your class
• The full classname is build up from the Class name and the Classloader name, the same goes for the packaging.  This means that when different classloaders are loading classes from the same package, you can get into trouble.
• Classloaders are build for applets, not application servers (according to the speaker).  Hence the different kind of problems you can run into.

What I'm not sure about, is the fact whether all JVM's do this in the same way.  But at least, if(when) something goes wrong, you know where to look for.
One really clear message he had for all of us: never trust your assumptions. Always verify them.

GEN9433 General Session: Oracle Fusion Applications - Overview, Strategy and Roadmap

A really packed session.  I counted 828 chairs, not one was free when the session started.
The strategy of Apps remains the same as it was years before:

• Continued investment in the "old" applications (Siebel, eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, ...)
• Combine both the "old" apps with the new Fusion Applications.
• Or go for the full suite.

The objectives of Fusion Apps:

• User Experience : Intelligent, Social, Mobile
• Innovation : Easy extensions, Upgrade friendly, Standards base
• Deployment : Incremental, Cloud, Engineerd

I still got the feeling they have some work to do on these objects :-).

Release 5 of 11g is coming out this or next month.

Something new, that I wasn't expecting to hear, was the fact that you are able to get information from the "social  network" sites on the internet, like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, discussion forums, on your brand.
There are 4 area's of personalization in the Fustion Apps:

1. BI Perspective: changing graphs
2. Application Composer: change business objects and logic
3. Process Composer : change the business processes themselves
4. Page Composer : personalize the pages themselves

They also have there mobile solution ready.  It is based on ADF Mobile (which itself is not available yet), allowing them to run on browsers, native apps and smarphone apps.  In this solution they take the ADF Mobile approach of having ADF UI and then using the REST SDK to call out to the REST API's of the Fusion Apps.

What does the future holds:

• More Localization
• More Mobile
• More Industries
• More Power (Exa-ranges)
• More Configurability

What's coming in Release 5:

• Time & Labor
• Social Marketing
• Resource and Project "Management"

 Your choice:

• Continuee on your current path ("old" apps)
• Adopt a Co-Existence Solution
• Embrace the Complete Suite

GEN11418 General Session: Overview of Oracle's Public Cloud Strategy

They see a shift in the Cloud offerings from a "capacity cloud" to a "capability cloud".
Famous quote : "Think big, start small, fail fast, scale soon".
Technology trends:

• Globalization
• Big Data
• Modernization
• Mobility
• Social Interactions

I believe these were the same last year also :-).
You have to look at cloud as a key enable of choice between service delivery (IAAS, PAAS, SAAS) and service deployment (private, hybrid, public).

IAAS offering: Storage, Compute, Secure Identity, Cache, Queues, Messaging services
PAAS offering: DB, Java, Developer, Mobile, Collaboration and Analytics services and Application Store.  These PAAS offering is based on the use of the IAAS offering !!
And PAAS itself is fully integrated with their SAAS solution.
On the SAAS side, much effort is done on the Social part of the cake, in terms of Social Marketing and Social Campaign.

My colleague will have more in depth information on this session.

CON8914 Oracle Coherence: past, present and future

Very nice overview on the history of Coherence.  A clean picture on the evolution of the product over the years.
Currently Coherence is focusing on the on-premises and cloud adoption.  In the whole Oracle FMW stack, Coherence is suited in the Oracle Cloud Application Foundation.  In the context of the Exa-machines, what important is to Coherence here is the Infiniband network, which reduces the time to recover a node by 1/16th.

Now that we know where we are coming from, let's see where we are going to.
Coherence 12c (12.1.2) will be expected somewhere next year (how very precise :-)).  The fact that Coherence got now a FMW numbering, remember they are coming from 3.7.x), signifies the importance of this product in the entire FMW stack.
Here are the themes for this release:

• Database sync: use of the Goldengate adaptor to sync changes in the database with the grid.
• Configuration and Usability Improvements
• One programming model for all events (triggers, backing maps, ...).  Curious how that would like and how they would make sure all existing applications on Coherence wouldn't break.
• Configuration Modernization
• Asynchronous backups: speed vs consistency.  Possible use-cases: session management (apps servers are working like this also) and when you have big processing to be done when setting a value, like a Ticker feed.
• Backup Management improvements.  This talks about the backups of your primary objects and backups above 1.  These weren't always assured.  They will also add rack- and server-safe backups.  Now only the primary objects had this feature.
• Exabus Improvement
• Install, Upgrade and Patching: they are going to use the OUI Installer for production release and a Quick Installer for development releases.  For patching they will be using OPatch.
  Oh my God!!!  I believe this was the pay off to have a FMW numbering :-)
• Managed Coherence Servers being able to make use of the GAR (grid archive file)
• Maven support
• Execution Context ID (ECID).  This is something really cool.  Other FMW components had this already.  It is a unique id for a request throughout the entire FMW stack.  This enables you to follow the request from WebServer to Database and Coherence in between.  Very nice feature for debugging and impact analysis.
• Dynamic Thread Pool Sizing for Proxy Servers.
• OSGi support via Library bundling
• Enterprise Manager 12c
• OEPE support
• Coherence Incubator

What's coming after 12c (initial release, except for everything that didn't went into the first release):

• Cache Persistence: this feature will allow you to dump the cache objects onto discs and load it backup again after a crash or when you had data loss in the grid. 2 approaches : per node (very scalable) or by a network drive (less scalable).
• Federated Caching: this actually the inclusion of a Coherence Incubator pattern in the product with some enhancements to it.  Allowing you to easily setup an Active-Active, Active-Passive and Hub&Spoke configuration.

CON4038 Project EASEL: Developing and Managing HTML5 in a Java World

Impressive project of the NetBeans people.  You can test it using the NetBeans 7.3 Beta release.
It is all about a client-side project and JQuery knowledge in the editor.  It gives you a very nice tight integration between the browser and your IDE.  Selecting something in the browser (with the install of the NetBeans plugin) will set the focus in the IDE to this component and viceversa.
Again, very impressive.

Nice after thought: there is a big change that this feature will find his way also into JDeveloper.  Thanks a lot for that folks.

BOF4279 In-dept layout and styling with the JavaFX Scene Builder

Nice overview of some techniques to take into account when working with the JavaFX Scene Builder.  There is already a preview version of the 1.1 available, worth while to test it out.

BeNeLux Architect Event @Jasper's

I traded in 3 sessions for this event and it was a good descission.
We had the opportunity to talk to the Oracle experts on different domains, like database, WebLogic Server, ADF, SOA, WebCenter (thanks to Yannick) and the applications.  Very good admosphere and I had many good and open conversations with the pm's.
Also nice to know that there is still a place for me @Oracle.  Thanks folks, very much appreciated.