Many useful sessions on Application Development in the Oracle DEVELOP track at Oracle Open World 2006

I will go to Oracle Open World this year. The last time I visited the real OOW – not the European or Australian version that I attended in the past – was back in 1998 where I spent most of my time on the Oracle Consulting campground. I do not have too many very fond memories of that conference – apart from being introduced to Austin Powers. Don’t ask. This time I am very much looking forward to it. The main reason for this, is the Oracle DEVELOP mini-conference, a three day program that focuses entirely on developers and development technology. From Steve Muench’s blog on OOW: "a developer-focused learning event during the show called Oracle Develop.
It’s a great chance to catch up on all the latest technologies, tips,
and tricks to head back to the office with a leg up on building
applications with Oracle and Java technologies. It’s a great chance to
network with other developers as well, not to mention checking out the
local San Francisco attractions, OpenWorld parties, and vast Oracle
demo ground to chat with Oracle product managers working on the latest
releases of our products." 

Oracle DEVELOP is located at the Hilton Hotel. Instead of drowning in the 35.000 people visiting OOW this year, it has its own 3000 or so audience that has this venue to itself. Of course we will still participate in and enjoy the excitement of the larger event, but also have a focused group of fellow developers. This overcome most of my hesitation and reluctance I felt in the past, where finding sessions on application development was akin to needle and haystack. I annually visit the ODTUG conference and I hope this Oracle DEVELOP will be very much like that, only at a grander scale: 5 times or so the number of visitors and parallel tracks. 

Last Sunday, I used the Schedule Builder tool for OOW to compose my agenda and secure entry to the sessions I want to attend. It was quite difficult to decide on which sessions to attend: too much on offer in each slot. Besides, there are three sessions I have attend – since I am presenting them. Always the uncertain developer, I had submitted three presentations, for fear of not being accepted on the first or second attempt. However, all three were accepted- which is good and bad at the same time. Three presentations are fun to do – yet take a lot of time and take away the opportunity of attending three presentations by fellow presenters.

The subjects I am focused on during the three days of Oracle DEVELOP are the new SOA Suite – primarily the Enterprise Service Bus as well as BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) -, the RDBMS with a bit of performance tuning, some availablility stuff and hopefully a brush of 11g, a tat of Business Intelligence, a little bit of Java (JDBC to be exact). Furthermore I hope meet a lot of old friends and acqaintances from previous events.  

The three presentations I wll be doing – and I hope to meet some of you there as well – are:

Session Title: Integration Between Java and Oracle BPEL Process Manager: What Every Java Developer Should Know About BPEL

Session Id: S281847
Track: Java and Java Enterprise Edition
Room: Continental Ballroom 6 – Hilton
Date: 23-OCT-06
Start Time: 12:45

Abstract: Thinking in terms of Services and Reuse is all the rage in this day of Service Oriented Architecture. Oracle BPEL PM is very well positioned to play a key role in the SOA of many organizations, by tying together services published in many different technologies – from PL/SQL and Java to Oracle Applications, FTP Servers, Http Services and of course SOAP Web Services.

In this presentation, we will discuss how Java developers will be interacting with Oracle BPEL PM. We will discuss three main areas, illustrated with many demonstrations:
* Calling BPEL Services from Java applications
* Calling Services implemented in Java from BPEL Processes (including POJO, Servlet, SOAP WS and EJB based services)
* Providing a custom user interface for Human Workflow Steps in BPEL Processes using Java development technology

This presentation will equip Java developers and architects with a good insight of how to combine the worlds of Java and Oracle BPEL PM, thereby truly enabling Service Orientation in the enterprise.

Session Title: Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 Persistence: Objects Working on Their Database Relations

Session Id: S281848
Track: Java and Java Enterprise Edition
Room: Continental Parlor 7&8 – Hilton
Date: 23-OCT-06
Start Time: 16:15

Abstract: Objects in Java are volatile memory constructs. Pull the plug, collect the garbage and gone are your objects. Persisting objects to and instantiating objects from relational databases has been an important challenge in Java/J2EE application architectures. There have been a plethora of so called Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks to address this issue, from EJB to ADF Business Components and from Hibernate and Oracle TopLink to iBatis and plain JDBC. 2006 is the year of JEE 5 and of EJB 3.0 Persistence: a combination of a standard specification, an API and an open source Reference Implementation. EJB 3.0 will provide the new uniform way of linking Java objects to the database. This presentation will introduce EJB 3.0, providing some historical background and painting the O/RM landscape. It will show how Plain Old Java Objects can be mapped to tables and columns using very simple Annotations and how the EJB 3.0 EntityManager can be used in stand-alone Java applications to access databases in a simple, standard and portable manner.

Session Title: Pretty JavaServer Faces: Breakthrough of Attractive and Productive User Interface Development

Session Id: S281846
Track: Java and Java Enterprise Edition
Room: Continental Ballroom 6 – Hilton
Date: 24-OCT-06
Start Time: 11:15

Abstract: The development of Web-based user interfaces for Java/J2EE applications has frequently been found to be complex and unproductive. And the results are often disappointing: unattractive and feature poor screens. All of this is about to change
with the breakthrough of Java Server Faces (JSF). JSF is a relatively new yet widely supported J2EE standard for the View/Controller component of J2EE Web Applications. Using a generic approach, available in many IDEs and vendor technology stacks, we can define page layout, event handling, navigation, validation and messaging, using one or even several of many availalbe JSF implementations. Oracle created ADF Faces and donated it as Apache MyFaces Project Trinidad to the open source community.

This presentation introduces Java Server Faces and discusses each of the essential parts of JSF. It will then demonstrate the enormous value of using an IDE such as JDeveloper 10.1.3 for very productive JSF development. ADF Faces adds an additional layer of both productivity and UI richness. Finally we go into the ADF Framework and the fastest way around for developing fully standard JSF applications against an Oracle Database.

The paper written for this presentation is nominated for Best Paper at ODTUG 2006.

See here for an overview of all Technical Sessions in the Oracle DEVELOP track at OOW 2006.