Presented by Martijn Dashorst, author of Wicket in Action and Vice President of the Wicket project
What is Wicket - if you ask me, Martijn, or many of the attendees of this class, it is simply the best java web framework available. More technically, it is a component oriented open source web application framework using just Java and HTML. “Writing a Wicket app is rather more like writing an event-based desktop application than a web application” - Michael Porter. How can you make use of this powerful, easy to use framework? Read more to find out.
Need help or training using Wicket? See http://www.wickettraining.com for professional training services. Team and individual training is available, as well as consulting, phone or email support, or custom coding on your project.
Presented by J Aaron Farr, Treasurer for Apache Software Foundation
Aaron tries to unravel the mysteries of the various open source licenses for us. Starting by answering questions from the floor (only one was asked), and then moving into an explanation of open source licenses that are available, he is covering a lot of ground in fifty minutes. I really enjoyed the breakdown of licenses into three categories and the simple explanation of these categories.
Presented by John Coggeshall, author of PHP 5 Unleashed
The “fastest” approach isn’t always the most scalable. John covers how to scale everything from your data, your code, to your team. He quotes Theo Schlossnagle saying “Scalability marginally impacts procedure, procedure grossly impacts scalability”.
Performance and resource scalability requires forethought and process. Besides obvious things like version control, it is very helpful to set performance goals and metric measurements ahead of time, as well as API documentation and internal development mailing lists. One of the first things to consider is what it means to your application and business to perform - 10 / 100 / 1000 requests per second? What are your performance requirements?
(Note that he focuses primarily on PHP, but some of the tips are generic for all apps)
Presented by Erik Hatcher - author of Lucene in Action
Reader beware - this post is not very interesting. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I was a little disappointed by the session. It was basically a list of projects that have used Lucene. You can tell that Erik is very knowledgeable (obviously) in use of Lucene. Unfortunately, though, he starts by listing several projects that he did as pet projects that he has since let die, and most of the rest of the session was a list of projects that use Lucene or Solr.
My one takeaway is that I do need to look into Solr more - but I use Lucene already very extensively, and wasn’t introduced to anything in Lucene in this session that I haven’t already done.
Presented by Michael Busch of IBM
This class was packed out - people were sitting in every chair, and others on the floor in the back of the room. Michael starts by briefly telling us about some new features in Lucene 2.4 - the latest release. For instance, payloads have been introduced to allow a certain amount of metadata to be stored in the index. He gives a very good explanation of how inverted indexes work and how payloads work in the latest release.
Presented by David Recordon of the Open Web Foundation, and works at SixApart
“Open data is increasingly important as services move online” - Tom O’Reilly (OSCON ‘07). We don’t necessarily want to run our own copy of products like GMail - but we need uninhibited access to our data everywhere. This requires open specifications / open APIs and open data access.
Presented by Jim Jagielski, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation board of directors ASF started with 21 members, 2 projects (httpd and comcon - the conferences), and now has 270 members, over 63 top level projects and 32 in the incubator with 1920 committers. One of the core things that the foundation provides is providing the infrastructure, as well as the legal infrastructure, so that open source projects can focus on what they do best - releasing great software.
Wednesday morning is starting off with the “Open Plenary and State of the Feature” by Shane Curcuru and Jim Jagielski, followed by a keynote address entitled: “Learning from Apache to Create Open Specifications” by David Recordon with the Open Web Foundation. Of course, when you come in to register, you have to stop and get your “swag”. Today’s swag is the obligatory t-shirt and bag. Also included was a PrimeLine Robot Series Book Light.
All of us have at one time or another told ourselves that we were going to start writing interesting posts in our blog. If you’re a geek like me, you started by installing a blog software package on your server and testing it out. But - then what? That’s where I’ve been several times. Blog software ready - blogger not ready. So, since I have the privilege of attending the 2008 US ApacheCon event here in New Orleans, I am going to use it as an opportunity to seed my blog with entries on the sessions I attend.
Today was the second day of the ApacheCon US 2008 Hackathon in New Orleans and I was able to attend. For most of the day, I was able to sit at a table with Martijn Dashorst and Bruno Borges from the Wicket community. It was nice getting to meet both of them in person and talk about Wicket, Rio de Janeiro and Holland. I tried to spend most of the day doing something productive for Wicket.