If you have not seen the slide deck last year, you should definitely take a look at this updated version with more recent information. I also incorporated valuable information from discussions with attendees in 2015’s sessions about this topic.

This time, the live demo included a Microservice Cloud Architecture with TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition for developing and coordinating Microservices, TIBCO Mashery for packaging and publishing Microservices, and Papertrail for monitoring and analyzing the log events of distributed Microservices.

I also recommend my article at Voxxed about this topic, which has already around 30.000 view in January 2016: “Do Good Microservices Architectures Spell the Death of the Enterprise Service Bus?“

The post Microservices = Death of the ESB? (2016, Meetup Dublin) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Besides all of the Hadoop related projects, I was especially interested in Apache Syncope, an open source system for managing digital identities in enterprise environments, and Apache Streams, a new Incubator project that aims to develop a scalable server for the publication, aggregation, filtering and re-exposure of enterprise social activities.

My session was named “Systems Integration in the NoSQL Era with Apache Camel“. I showed how to integrate several different NoSQL databases such as MongoDB (document), Neo4j (graph), HBase (column), AWS S3 (key-value), or Hazelcast (in-memory). I used Apache Camel with text editor and IDE. Besides, I showed some open source tooling on top of Camel with Talend ESB. With Talend, you  can use a graphical user interface, all Camel code is generated. You have just to configure your routes.

Here are the slides from my talk:

If you have any further questions, feel free to write a comment or contact me via Twitter, email or social networks (LinkedIn, Xing).

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Systems Integration in the NoSQL Era with Apache Camel and Talend (MongoDB, Neo4j, HBase, AWS S3, Hazelcast, CouchDB) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Lessons learned: Use of Modern JVM Languages besides Java

I explain my lessones learned while using other programming languages on the Java Platform besides Java, e.g. Groovy, Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Jypthon, Erjang, and others.

Systems Integration in the Cloud Era with Apache Camel

I already hold this session on some other conferences. I introduce the open source integration framework Apache Camel, then I show how easy it is do integrate cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (IaaS), Google App Engine (PaaS), and Salesforce (SaaS).

The post My Talks at JavaOne 2012: “Lessons learned from JVM Languages (Java vs Groovy vs Scala vs Clojure vs JRuby vs Jython vs Kotlin)” and “Cloud Integration with Apache Camel” appeared first on Kai Waehner.

I was at this conference for the second time. Two year ago, the conference took place in Berlin. Unfortunately, the venue was awful this time. It was uncomfortable, no seats / tables available, and the rooms for the sessions were tough to find. Nevertheless, it was an awesome international conference with plenty of good content regarding SOA and Cloud Computing.

My talk was about systems integration in the cloud era. I showed several different alternatives for integrating cloud services, especially generic APIs such as jclouds, integration frameworks such as Apache Camel, and Enterprise Service Bus solutions such as Talend ESB. I also explained when to use which alternative.

Here are the slides:
 

 
I am really looking forward to the next SOA CLOUD Symposium…

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Systems Integration in the Cloud Era – API vs. Integration Framework vs. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Content

Sessions covered several open source projects such as Apache Camel, Apache ActiveMQ, Apache ServiceMix, and Apache CXF. Attendees learned directly from their peers and other industry experts how open source can deliver measurable technical and business benefits to their organizations.

Besides Camel, ActiveMQ, ServiceMix and CXF, several other interesting topics were covered, for example:

• Gamification – using fun and engagement to build great software. In this session, author and industry expert Gabe Zichermann presented the key patterns and pitfalls of gamification, providing a technology and strategy-focused session that covers the most critical things you need to know about this trend.
• The Apache Way provided an introduction to “The Apache Software Foundation” – it’s history, organization and principles, and how Apache projects work.
• JBoss presented its new Enterprise Service Bus  (ESB) “SwitchYard” which is based on Apache Camel.
• Apache Apollo is a subproject of ActiveMQ and offers a next generation messaging system with better performance and scalability. Apollo is implemented in Scala and offers plugins for several modern communication protocols.

Of course, FuseSource also showed its newest product releases. For instance, Fuse IDE is an awesome tool for creating Camel routes and managing deployments of ServiceMix.

All sessions were recorded. Videos and slides will be available at the CamelOne website soon – free for everybody.

My Sessions

I had two presentations at CamelOne 2012. Both contained advanced content about Apache Camel (no surprise) including several live demos.

Spoilt for Choice – Which Integration Framework to choose?

The interfaces between different applications use different technologies, protocols and data formats. Three integration frameworks are available in the JVM environment which implement the well-known Enteprise Integration Patterns (EIP) and therefore offers a standardized, domain-specific language to integrate applications – Apache Camel, Spring Integration and Mule. In this session, Kai will compare the three alternatives and discuss the pros and cons of each. Kai will also recommend when to use a more powerful Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) such as Apache ServiceMix.

######

Spoiler:

Even though it is CamelOne, I do not recommend to always use Camel

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BPM beyond Web Services

Business Process Management (BPM) is an emerging approach to optimize business processes and increase efficiency. Today, interfaces are usually specified through Web Service standards. The limitation is unflexible and insufficient. This session shows the powerful combination of two open source products: Activiti for BPM and the integration framework Apache Camel. This combination allows to model and realize BPM. While the model and execution base on the new BPMN 2.0 standard, the integration of every thinkable technology besides Web Services, such as FTP, JMS, cloud services, and many more, is supported by Apache Camel.

Location

The conference took place at Sheraton Boston Hotel. Presentation rooms, food and organization were nice. Just the rooms were really expensive: About  $300 per night – even with FuseSource special rate. However, Boston is one of the most expensive locations in the United States, so even a cheaper hotel costs $200 and more. At least, the conference was a nice low-budget event with a price of only $595.

Conclusion

CamelOne 2012 was an awesome conference about open source projects. Great talks, interesting people, and good discussions were present everywhere. Several committers from different companies were ready to answer questions and discuss best practices and future roadmaps. Thus, attendants could learn a lot – not just about open source Apache integration projects, but about open source in general…

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Progress Report from CamelOne 2012 in Boston (Apache Camel, ActiveMQ, ServiceMix, CXF) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Sessions

There were six main topics for this year’s conference:

• Concurrent Programming
• Mobile Development
• Cloud Computing
• HTML5 and Modern Web Architectures
• Latest and Greatest in Java EE
• NoSQL

The sessions were split into introductory and advanced sessions. There were introductions to several important technology trends, such as Java EE 7, NoSQL databases, the build management system Gradle, or cross-platform mobile development. Besides, several advanced sessions went into more detail, e.g. for DCVS Git, Java EE 6’s CDI, or web frameworks (JSF, Wicket, Tapestry). Surprisingly, Scala or other modern JVM languages besides Groovy were missing totally.

In the following, some more details about two of the sessions:

Tiggzi

Tiggzi – which I have never heard before – is an interesting cloud-based rich internet application for building mobile HTML5, iPhone, and Android apps. Internally it uses jQuery and PhoneGap. Tiggzi is definitely worth a look. Try out for yourself if its promises are true to be “the fastest & easiest way to create mobile apps”.

Better Presentations of Software Developers and Architects

An awesome off-topic presentation by Michael Plöd from Senacor Technologies has to be mentioned, too: “Better presentations of software developers and architects” explains how everybody can make good presentations. If you have to do internal or external presentations sometimes, then take a look at these (German) slides!

My Session: Systems Integration in the Cloud Era

My talk was about Systems Integration in the Cloud Era with the lightweight open source integration framework Apache Camel.

Abstract

“Cloud Computing is the future! Nevertheless, everybody should be aware that there won’t be one single cloud solution, but several clouds. These clouds will be hosted at different providers, use different deployment models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and use products, technologies and APIs from different vendors. Thus, in the future you will have to integrate these clouds as you integrate applications today.

The open source integration framework Apache Camel is already prepared for this challenging task. Apache Camel implements the well-known Enteprise Integration Patterns (EIP) and therefore offers a standardized, domain-specific language to integrate applications and clouds. The efficiency is even more increased through the use of the modern JVM languages such as Groovy or Scala. It can be used in almost every integration project within the JVM environment. All integration projects can be realized in a consistent way without redundant boilerplate code. Even automatic testing is supported.

This session demonstrates the elegance of Apache Camel for cloud integration. Several examples are shown for all deployment models by integrating cloud services from Amazon Web Services (IaaS), Google App Engine (PaaS) and salesforce.com (SaaS). If the required cloud service is not supported by Apache Camel, you can easily create your own Camel component with very low effort. This procedure is explained at the end of the session.”

Slides

Here are the slides from the talk:

Location

The conference was in Leogang, Salzburg (Austria) at Krallerhof – a really nice location! Presentation rooms, food, hotel rooms, etc. were awesome. Nevertheless, the location had a huge problem: It was in the middle of nowhere. No airport, no good train connection, no motorway. So, reaching the hotel was not really comfortable. Due to this, the number of attendees was far smaller than in the last years. However, the location was really great and all guys enjoyed it. Nevertheless, the conference will probably head back to Vienna next year. I heard some rumors that a cinema is considered as location for 2013 – which I think is the best place for conferences (see Jazoon, Devoxx, etc.).

Conclusion

Confess 2012 was a great conference with many high quality sessions. Due to the low number of attendees and a family-like environment, there were great discussions all over the day. Definitely, Confess is a nice alternative to larger, more expensive conferences in DACH countries such as JAX or Jazoon.

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Progress Report from the Java EE Conference “Confess 2012” in Leogang, Salzburg (Austria) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

A keynote of Dalibor Topic (Oracle) criticizes the Java-Release-Cycles of Sun Microsystems at the Java conference „CONFESS 2011“ in Vienna, Austria. After showing the past of Java SE from version 1 to 6, he showed a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) named „SWOT – Sun days“ (Picture from my Tweet). One weakness stated the slow release cycle of Java SE. Oracle will do a better job in the future, beginning with Java 7 in 2011 and Java 8 in 2012. Further releases (Java 9 and so on) also seem to be in planning stage already. Java shall remain the most used language!

OpenJDK will become more important  for Oracle than it was for Sun

However, a strength of Sun was the large Java community. Oracle recognized its bad name in the Java community as it was stated in the „Java SWOT – Oracle“, which followed Sun’s SWOT analysis. Oracle will re-connect to the community in the future. An important statement of the talk is related to the OpenJDK: „ I think, Open JDK will become more important for Oracle than it was for Sun.“ Therefore, JRockit content will be merged to OpenJDK. The JDK / JRE will still be free in the future, and contain the same license as before. Of course, Oracle will offer premium services such as JFR, JRMC, JFB or support.

Trends for Oracle: Multi Core, Dynamic Languages, DSLs, Cloud and Mobiles

At the end, Dalibor Topic showed which trends will be important in the Java / JVM environment for Oracle in the next years: Multi core processors, dynamic langugages, domain specific languages, cloud computing, smart phones and tablets. No surprise after all

My conclusion: The critique about the slow Java-Release-Cycles is true. The plan of Oracle for the future of Java sounds good! What do you think?

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Oracle complains about Sun’s Java-Release-Cycles – OpenJDK will become more important appeared first on Kai Waehner.

Las Vegas lies in the desert of Nevada, USA and is well-known for gambling. More than 35 million visitors come to this awesome town every year. But people do not come here just for gambling. Besides many attractions and famous shows, there are also many business events. One such business event is the Java Symposium, which informs about important new developments and concepts within the Java enterprise environenment.

Java Symposium at Caesars Palace

The conference exists since 2000 and takes place at Ceasars Palace for the seventh time in a row, one of the largest and well-established hotels directly in the middle of the strip of Las Vegas. Current developments in the Java environment are presented by well-known speakers.

Several „classic“ Java-Topics

The motto this year was „Java is everywhere, but it’s not always Java as we know“. Developers, architects and managers should be able to gain knowledge and capabilities to be successful today and in the future in projects within the heterogeneous Java environment.

Thus, an important trend can be seen at the Java Symposium, just like at other IT conferences: Besides Java desktop and web applications using Java SE and EE, Java is also well-established in many other important environments such as mobile, embedded or cloud. Java is not the only used language. Often other JVM-compatible languages like Groovy, Scala, Clojure, JRuby or Jython make sense under certain circumstances.

Many well-known Speakers

Many well-known speakers arrived in Las Vegas to talk about new developments and to discuss with other participants. James Gosling, the father of Java, clarified in his opening keynote that the most important ingredient of Java is not the programming language, but the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which is used as integration hub for many programming languages such as Java, Groovy or Scala and for diverse devices such as server, laptops or mobile phones.

In the following three days, many other familiar speakers held presentations, e.g. Steve Harry of Oracle or the creator of the Spring-Framework Rod Johnson. Two colleagues from my home country Germany were also present: Adam Bien and Andy Bosch talked about their area of expertise JEE6 respectively JSF.

One of the most interesting sessions was the panel discussion with Patrick Curran (JCP Chair), Reza Rahman (Developer of the JEE Application Server Resin) and James Gosling („Father of Java“). The conclusion was, that a huge problem is the lack of further independant developers which participate: „A democracy can only work if many people participate!“. Thus, moderator Cameron McKenzie appealed to participate in the JCP. You can do this already by reading a JSR-specification and give feedback – but you have to do it before the specification is finalized!

Another important insight is, that JEE 6 is already established in companies at the beginning of 2011. While Adam Bien presented best practices, Reza Rahman informed the attendees about how to test JEE 6 applications using e.g. embedded application servers and JBoss arquillian – testing was so aweful with J2EE 1.4 and even JEE 5. Oracle already talked about JEE 7, which will deal especially with cloud computing (no surprise!).

The range of languages, frameworks and tools is huge in the Java environment due to the large community and many commercial and open source vendors. This is basically very positive and creates many innovations. Nevertheless, you have to gain an overview about all those alternatives to choose the right tool for the right job. Therefore, Matt Raible showed a matrix to compare web frameworks. An important note is, that there is no „best“ web framework. So you have to adjust the weighting of the matrix to match your requirements. Then you can exclude non-matching frameworks and make a proof of concept with some few web frameworks which seem appropriate for your project.  A panel discussion about JVM languages – moderated by Cameran McKenzie – concluded that the next language, which will be established on the JVM besides Java, has to offer a good programming model for concurrency. Thus, Scala, Erlang and Clojure will have good chances to win this competition, whereupon Scala is my absolute favorite.

Modern Concepts for a more intensive Experience

The tracks themselves did not surprise and were structured into Core Java, Architecture, Language, Tools & Techniques, Agile, SOA and Cloud. Nevertheless, the Java Symposium differentiates a lot from many other IT conferences. Modern, unusual concepts were used, besides traditional keynotes and 60-minute sessions.

5-minute Lightening Talks avoided boredom (similar to Pecha Kucha where every speaker may only talk 20 seconds and use 20 slides). Panel discussions are also a relatively new medium for knowledge transfer. I appreciate, that even a keynote used this style.  Each day after the last session, the participants had the possibility to discuss with the speakers while having a snack sponsored by a vendor.

Another very unusual, but nice event was the „Dinner for Strangers“, where participants and speakers met each other in some of the best restaurants of Las Vegas to talk shop using the motto „go as strangers, leave as friends“.

These new concepts created a lot of communication between all parties. Long breaks between sessions were not necessary, and were reduced to 10 minutes.

Conclusion: Great Java Enterprise Conference

The main goal of the conference was to establish a surrounding area for the participants where they are able to gain an overview about new technologies and concepts within the Java environment to be successful in future projects. A high value is set on communication with other participants and speakers. The seats were limited, thus a maximial speaker-attendee-ratio of 1 to 10 was assured (I think it was rather about 1 to 15 or 1 to 20, but that was also acceptable).

The new concepts such as lightening talks and several panel discussions paid off, the goal was reached in my opinion. In these three days, each participant was able to study further in the broad Java spectrum. The organizer also gave a 100-percent money back guarantee if expectations were not fulfilled – no questions asked.

Not least because of that, every developer should circle the date for Java Symposium 2012 in red on his calendar right away. Even if you are from Europe like me: If you have some budget for education, you should think about visiting the Java Symposium. Because of low conference costs, cheap hotels and a weak US Dollar, this trip should be affordable and cost not much more than a European conference such as QCon or JAX. Add some days of vacation to this educational trip and have a great week in Las Vegas….

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post First-hand Report from TheServerSide Java Symposium 2011 (Las Vegas, USA) appeared first on Kai Waehner.

In January, I spent a lot of time playing with Apache Camel. I really like this EAI-framework. Thus, I will hold a workshop in our company and at some external events, e.g. at the IT conference “Confess 2011” in Vienna.  It helps you a lot in any integration project within the Java environment. The book “Camel in Action” released some weeks ago. If you want to learn Apache Camel, you need this book! Here is my short review.

Review “Camel in Action”

Camel in Action is for you, if you want to learn Apache Camel. This EAI-framework implements the well-known Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). There is no other alternative to this book on the market yet. The book is good for beginners and for advanced users, so actually an alternative is not necessary.

The first two chapters contain some „getting started“ information with a „hello world“ example. Afterwards, all concepts of Camel are described in detail, especially routing, transformation, error handling, testing, several components and many important EIPs. Some further chapters describe how to create, deploy and monitor Camel applications. The appendix contains interesting stuff, too (e.g. how to use Scala with Camel in a meaningful way using Akka).

All chapters contain good examples, realized in both, Java DSL and Spring XML. All examples can be reproduced using JUnit-Tests (all source code can be downloaded). Thus, you can get practical experience to understand the Camel concepts. If you just read the book, you will probably  forget most details within one week.

I recommend this book to everybody who wants to do some smart and efficient Enterprise Application Integration within the Java environment. There is no alternative to this book if you want to learn Camel the easy way. After you have worked through this book, you can easily learn additional features using the camel website, mailing list and google. In the past (without this book), it was much more tough to get started with Camel.

For the next version of this book, I would like to see some examples with relevant proprietary products (e.g. WebSphere MQ in addition to ActiveMQ) and some more Scala and Groovy code in an advanced section. Some examples are very concise or missing (e.g. for specific components), too. But nevertheless, my final conclusion: Get this book, if you want to learn Apache Camel…

Author / Committer gives Forum Support for Book Content

BTW: As with each Manning Book, there is also forum support for the book content. Claus Ibsen (Author of the book and Camel Committer) helps you with your questions. He answers very quickly (usually within 24 hours). I appreciate that a lot!

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

The post Book Review “Apache Camel In Action” appeared first on Kai Waehner.

In October 2010, I was at the IT conference „SOA / Cloud Symposium 2010“. I really liked the conference as I stated in another blog entry (http://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2010/10/06/soa-cloud-symposium-2010-in-berlin/). But one concern really upset me…

What is a good keynote?

I really enjoyed the very good keynote of Christian Klezl (Vice President and Cloud Leader  of IBM Northeast Europe). This keynote contained everything I expect from a keynote: Good slides, good body language, interesting information, and a structured presentation which never becomes boring. Good job!

A Keynote as Skype Call?

The last keynote was ridicolous: It should be presented via a Skype call! No joke…

So I am glad that they had technical problems. They tried for 15 minutes to resolve the problems, but finally this keynote was not presented.

In my opinion, a keynote via Skype is an absolute No-Go

What is your Opinion?

I think an extra blog entry is worthy, because I really wanna state that I hope this will not happen again – and I do not mean the technical problems, but the idea to present a keynote via skype… (Remember that the visitors paid about 1000 Euros to participate! Not including traveling costs)

And please dont get me wrong: I really like webinars! I often watch them when I wanna see for example a presentation of a product. But that is not appropriate at an IT conference!

So what so you think about keynotes or presentations in general at IT conferences via Skype (i.e. as webinar)?

Best regards,

Kai Wähner

The post Bad Idea: A Keynote at SOA / Cloud Symposium 2010 in Berlin as Skype Call appeared first on Kai Waehner.