You are cordially invited to the Gateway JUG's first meeting of the new year on January 5th, 2010. The meeting topic will be, "What's New In Spring 3.0?"
Before telling you about the meeting topic, I have a very important announcement to make:
For almost 10 years, the Gateway JUG has met at 6:00pm. That's changing... kind of...
Beginning in 2010, the Gateway JUG has teamed up with the Gateway Groovy Users Group to bring you Groovy, Grails and Java at the same place, on the same night.
Dave Klein, author the the Pragmatic Programmer's book, "Grails: A Quick-Start Guide" is heading up the Gateway Groovy Users group.
For more than a year, we at the Gateway JUG have been stressing the importance of your beginning the process of learning Groovy and Grails.
In case you missed it while picking the anchovies off your pizza, Groovy is Java's dynamic language cousin. Groovy classes compile to JVM bytecode and run in the JVM alongside Java classes. Groovy classes can call Java classes directly and Java classes can call Groovy classes directly. Of course, Java can't "see" dynamic methods on Groovy classes and can't take advantage of all of Groovy's features. Still, the interoperability between the two is very high, particularly when leveraging existing Java code and APIs in Groovy.
Grails is to Groovy what Struts and JSF are to Java; that is, Grails is Groovy's web framework. Because Grails leverages the power of Groovy's dynamic language features, it does far more elegantly than Struts or JavaServer Faces does, but in a distinctly more elegant way. However, Grails builds on a stack of proven Java technologies, like Hibernate, Spring, SiteMesh, Log4J, and more. Grails uses the best of what Java and Groovy have to offer.
Several large Java shops in town are already using Groovy in some way or another, and at least one has multiple Grails projects underway.
So beginning January 5th, the Gateway Groovy Users group will meet from 6:00pm - 7:00pm on the first Tuesday of the month in the same location as the Gateway JUG meets. The Gateway JUG meeting will then commence at 7:00pm. We'll share the same meeting location, date, and sponsor. We'll wrap up at 8:30pm.
We'll publish details on the January 5th Gateway Groovy Users meeting topic as soon as it becomes available.
Now about our Gateway JUG meeting
... which will start at 7:00pm
... following the Gateway Groovy Users group meeting
... that will start at 6:00pm...
The January Gateway JUG meeting topic will be, "What's New In Spring 3.0?"
Spring has become one of the "must know" frameworks used in professional Java development. From it's earliest days as a simple IoC (Inversion of Control) container, to its latest incarnation spanning a wide range of Java enterprise capabilities, Spring has consistently added a lot of value without a lot of bloat. (Well, at least relative to the full J2EE/JEE competition.)
So let's see what's new in 3.0.
First, we'll briefly discuss the Spring framework. Next, we'll have a very brief recap of Spring 2.5 to give us a basis for comparison. Then, we'll dive into plenty of examples and code to catch you up on many new, cool Spring 3.0 features, including:
- Spring Core Updates for Java 5 Language Features
- Spring Expression Language
- IoC enhancements/Java based bean metadata
- General-purpose type conversion system and field formatting system
- Object to XML mapping functionality (OXM) moved from Spring Web Services project
- Comprehensive REST support
- @MVC additions
- Declarative model validation
- Early support for Java EE 6
- Embedded database support
To RSVP, please follow the instructions at http://www.gatewayjug.org/rsvp-instructions.html which have recently changed.
The important part of the instruction update is that we're now using Meetup.com for our RSVPs. To RSVP, please visit http://www.meetup.com/GatewayJUG and register to attend. Your e-mail address will be requested so that we may contact you in the event of a meeting cancellation or important update. (This time of year, having a way to reach you is especially important.)
Note: To RSVP for the Gateway Groovy Users group meeting that precedes our meeting (and you really should attend it!), please visit http://www.meetup.com/GatewayGroovyUsers/
To RecapThe Gateway JUG meeting will start at 7:00pm on January 5th and will immediately follow the meeting of the Gateway Groovy Users Group meeting that will start at 6:00pm. I strongly encourage all of you to attend both meetings; the extra 30 minutes over our old 2 hour format will be well worth it!
Speaker: Jack Frosch
Sponsor: ComSys
Meeting Notes: Download PDF
