Architecture

Choosing the right architecture and working within its capabilities can make the difference between an application that has a long and useful lifecycle and one that fails to satisfy business needs. The Architecture track takes a hard look at the structure behind applications, examining different approaches to designing applications that perform and scale, including SOA, REST, JMS, and OSGi.

Technical sessions being finalized in the coming weeks. Here are a few of the sessions already confirmed:

• A General-Purpose Object Marshalling Framework
• Building Server Platforms with OSGi and Equinox
• Enterprise Application Integration, and Spring
• Navigating the SOA Mine Field: Optimized Application Architectures
• Rapid, Large-Scale SOA - Connected Products at Leapfrog Enterprises
• Resource-Oriented Enterprise Architecture

 

A General-Purpose Object Marshalling Framework

David Lloyd, Software Engineer, JBoss; Creator, JBoss Marshalling Framework

Java object serialization is a notion that is losing popularity in the face of myriad portable object serialization formats and libraries. However, Serializable and Externalizable objects are still at the core of many applications and frameworks today. These applications are stuck with classic Java serialization, which does not scale well in many usage patterns, and has many API limitations.

JBoss Marshalling is a framework which allows pluggable marshalling implementations (multiple protocols), flexible configuration (performance tuning, pluggable object and class resolvers and tables, and pluggable externalizers), and is designed for scalability whether you're dealing with small or large messages; yet it remains compatible with Java Serializable and Externalizable objects. This talk illustrates the framework API and includes in-depth usage examples.

This session illustrates:

• The pluggable marshalling implementations and flexible configuration of JBoss Marshalling;
• The features of JBoss Marshalling that allow you to build applications that perform and scale;
• The compatibility of JBoss Marshalling with Java Serializable and Externalizable objects;
• In-depth usage examples of working with the framework.

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Building Server Platforms with OSGi and Equinox

Rob Harrop, Lead Engineer, SpringSource dm Server; Member, JSR-255 Expert Group

More and more developers are looking for improved time-to-market and reduced development costs. Java developers seeking a component approach to server-based application development to address these issues are drawn toward OSGi. While there are several implementations of the OSGi core framework, one popular one is the Eclipse Equinox platform, which is used as the foundation of Eclipse 3.X. SpringSource dm Server lead engineer presents a real-world case study of building large-scale middleware on OSGi with Eclipse Equinox. You learn best practices and problem solving solutions.  If you are looking to build your own OSGi-based application, you will find this real-world case study enlightening and informative.

In this session you learn how to:

• Partition your system into modules;
• Manage dependencies between modules;
• Extend Equinox to support custom functionality;
• Handle highly concurrent environments with OSGi;
• Use OSGi metadata to drive provisioning.

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Enterprise Application Integration, and Spring

Josh Long, Senior Software Engineer, Wells Fargo

As SOA gains ground, more and more enterprises are trying to reuse and leverage existing applications, services and infrastructure. Historically, such reuse meant integration, and integration meant any number of things depending on the project. Today, a new breed of middleware, the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), has emerged to unify a lot of the disparate integration methodologies.

This session explores an integration challenge using Spring Integration. Spring Integration enables messaging among Spring components and adapters for integration with external systems. The session describes the problem and walks through the implementation, employing and expanding on the basic patterns of Enterprise Application Integration to tie together components into a function integration solution, and then demonstrates how Spring Integration helps address the integration requirements. Finally, it looks at the landscape of application integration solutions, including Mule and the JBI specification.

In this session you learn:

• How to employ open source software to address complex EAI challenges;
• How to use Spring Integration to integrate between Spring components and to connect Spring components to external systems;
• How to employ Spring Integration as an enterprise application integration solution.

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Navigating the SOA mine field: Optimized Application Architectures

Heath Kesler, Open Source Software Evangelist

Enterprise architecture is a complex subject that needs direction on how to properly consume services of disparate systems. Because of that complexity, understanding the proper way to implement Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) can be difficult.

This session gives you tips and tricks for consuming services from disparate systems based on real-life production examples and case studies. Learn how to avoid some common mistakes as a consumer of SOA and how to identify pitfalls that can cause major headaches with performance, as well as avoid problems with queuing. This session teaches you how to efficiently interact and develop with components of a heterogeneous Service-Oriented Architecture.

In this session you learn:

• When to use synchronous vs. asynchronous communications;
• How to use queuing systems like ActiveMQ;
• How to integrate with external systems;
• Real world experiences for consuming Web services of disparate systems.

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Rapid Large-Scale SOA - Connected Products at Leapfrog Enterprises

Jason Whaley, Build/Release and Infrastructure Engineer, Leapfrog Enterprises

This session presents a case study of the Connected Products project at Leapfrog Enterprises which depended on the implementation of a mission critical Java-based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) consisting of a variety of Web services supporting the launch of four new Internet-enabled commercial toys and several Web applications. Implemented using a mix of open source platforms, open source frameworks, a content management system, and the unification of efforts from several geographical diverse teams, Leapfrog's Connected Products architecture was designed and implemented successfully in under a year – a major undertaking that could take typical organizations twice the time to implement successfully. Further, it was implemented primarily through the use of open source components, including Day Communique, Mule, Apache Wicket, Atlassian Crowd, Cruise Control, and Apache Maven.

Specific topics covered in the case study:

1) Platform and Framework selection – The tools used and their relevant advantages.

2) Architectural design and overview – What the actual implementation looks like and why.

3) Development Lifecycle – Usage of continuous integration and rapid deployment to meet aggressive deadlines.

4) Scalability – Analysis of the architecture as it was first deployed and how it was reworked to prepare for heavy traffic during peak season.

5) Lessons Learned – What could have been (and can still be done) differently.

In this session you will:

• Understand the planning processes and tradeoffs inherent in a large-scale enterprise SOA architecture and development effort;
• Comprehend how open source components can work together to achieve significant efficiencies in design and implementation;
• Be able to apply lessons learned to similar SOA projects in your own organization.

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Resource-Oriented Enterprise Architecture

Jeremy Deane, Technical Architect, Collaborative Consulting

Many organizations are tired of dealing with the ever-changing vendor driven SOAP specifications (WS-*) and are adopting RESTful Web Services. REST is based on a small set of widely-accepted standards, such as HTTP and XML and requires far fewer development steps, toolkits and execution engines than SOAP.

Resource-Oriented Architecture goes beyond RESTful Web Services and provides a more extensible and transport independent foundation. A Resource-Oriented approach not only decreases time to market and lowers the cost of entry, but pushes the integration functionality to the edge of the network (as a URI), translating into better service management and scalability.

The session reviews the key concepts and benefits of Resource-Oriented Architecture in the context of enterprise integration. Examples are presented using HttpClient, NetKernel and ActiveMQ.

In this session you learn:

• The key concepts and benefits of Resource-Oriented Architecture in terms of enterprise integration;
• How Resource-Oriented Architecture decreases time to market, lowers the cost of entry, pushes the integration functionality to the edge of the network and translates into better service management and scalability;
• Examples of implementing Resource-Oriented Architecture using HttpClient, NetKernel and ActiveMQ.