Progress Report from the Java EE Conference “Confess 2012” in Leogang, Salzburg (Austria)

This week, I was at Confess 2012 (http://2012.con-fess.com) in Leogang, Salzburg (Austria). Confess is an international conference for Java professionals in its fifth year, organized by IRIAN and the EJUG Austria. It is reasonably priced with 275 € for the two-day conference, and 500 € for the workshop day. The speaker lineup is very good with many well-known international speakers, such as JSF spec lead Edwuard Burns from Oracle America, Hazem Saleh from IBM Egypt, or Jürgen Höller from SpringSource.
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Apache Camel Tutorial – Introduction to EIP, Routes, Components, Testing, and other Concepts

Data exchanges between companies increase a lot. The number of applications, which must be integrated increases, too. The interfaces use different technologies, protocols and data formats. Nevertheless, the integration of these applications shall be modeled in a standardized way, realized efficiently and supported by automatic tests. Such a standard exists with the Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) [1], which have become the industry standard for describing, documenting and implementing integration problems. Apache Camel [2] implements the EIPs and offers a standardized, internal domain-specific language (DSL) [3] to integrate applications. This article gives an introduction to Apache Camel including several code examples.
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Spoilt for Choice: Which Integration Framework to use – Spring Integration, Mule ESB or Apache Camel?

Three lightweight integration frameworks are available in the JVM environment: Spring Integration, Mule ESB and Apache Camel. They implement the well-known Enteprise Integration Patterns (EIP, http://www.eaipatterns.com) and therefore offer a standardized, domain-specific language to integrate applications. These integration frameworks can be used in almost every integration project within the JVM environment – no matter which technologies, transport protocols or data formats are used. All integration projects can be realized in a consistent way without redundant boilerplate code. This article compares all three alternatives and discusses their pros and cons.
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Why I will use Java EE (JEE, and not J2EE) instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java Projects in 2012

The question comes up often. It came up in my new project in November 2011, too. I will use Java EE (JEE, and not J2EE) instead of the Spring framework in this new Enterprise Java project. I know: Several articles, blogs and forum discussions are available regarding this topic. Why is there a need for one more? Because many blogs talk about older versions of Java EE or because they are not neutral (I hope to be neutral). And because many people still think thank EJBs are heavy! And because the time has changed: It is Java EE 6 time now, J2EE is dead. Finally! Finally, because not only JEE 6 is available, but also several application servers. I do not want to start a flame war (too many exist already), I just want to describe my personal opinion of the JEE vs. Spring „fight“…
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Pros and Cons – When to use a Portal and Portlets instead of just Java Web-Frameworks

I had to answer the following question: Shall we use a Portal and if yes, should it be Liferay Portal or Oracle Portal? Or shall we use just one or more Java web frameworks? This article shows my result. The short answer: A Portal makes sense only in a few use cases, in the majority of cases you should not use one. In my case, we will not use one.
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Cloud Integration with Apache Camel and Amazon Web Services (AWS): S3, SQS and SNS

The integration framework Apache Camel already supports several important cloud services. This article describes the combination of Apache Camel and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) interfaces of Simple Storage Service (S3), Simple Queue Service (SQS) and Simple Notification Service (SNS). Thus, The concept of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is used to access messaging systems and data storage without any need for configuration.
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Rapid Cloud Development with Spring Roo – Part 2: VMware Cloud Foundry

Spring Roo is a tool to offer rapid application development on the Java platform. It supports two solutions for Cloud Computing at the moment: Google App Engine (GAE) and VMware Cloud Foundry. Both provide the Platform as a Service (PaaS) concept. This article will discuss the Cloud Foundry support of Spring Roo. GAE was discussed in part 1 of this article series (https://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2011/07/18/rapid-cloud-development-with-spring-roo-%E2%80%93-part-1-google-app-engine-gae).
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Rapid Cloud Development with Spring Roo – Part 1: Google App Engine (GAE)

Spring Roo is a tool to offer rapid application development on the Java platform. I already explained when to use it: https://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2011/04/05/when-to-use-spring-roo. Spring Roo supports two solutions for Cloud Computing at the moment: Google App Engine (GAE) and VMware Cloud Foundry. Both provide the Platform as a Service (PaaS) concept. This article will discuss the GAE support of Spring Roo. Cloud Foundry will be analyzed in part 2 of this article series.
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Cloud Computing Heterogeneity will require Cloud Integration – Apache Camel is already prepared!

Cloud Computing is the future – if you believe market forecasts from companies such as Gartner. I think so, too. But 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 products and APIs from different vendors and use different concepts (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Thus, in the future you will have to integrate these clouds as you integrate applications today.
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