T4: JBoss: Aspect-Oriented Middleware

Date	Tuesday, March 23, 2004, morning (half day)
Presenters	Marc Fleury, JBoss Group, LLC Bill Burke, JBoss Group, LLC
Level	Introductory: Attendees should have experience with Java programming, distributed computing in general, and J2EE concepts in particular. Prior experience with aspect-oriented programming is helpful, but not required.

Abstract

JBoss is one of the most popular Java application servers in the industry. Developed as open source software, and with over four million downloads since inception, JBoss is arguably the de facto Java application server development standard. JBoss includes full support for J2EE-based APIs, but beyond that, it provides many new and novel features for enterprise development, including a powerful framework for aspect-oriented programming (AOP).

In JBoss, simple Java objects can leverage features such as transactions and security that are usually reserved for J2EE (e.g., EJB) objects. These features are provided as a collection of predefined aspects, and can be applied to application objects via dynamic weaving, without requiring the application itself to be recompiled. In other words, the JBoss AOP framework allows developers to write plain Java objects and apply enterprise-type services later on in the development cycle --- without changing a line of Java code.

This tutorial details the JBoss AOP framework that allows software developers to build, apply, and deploy aspects into their applications. Attendees will learn about the unique features of the framework, understand how those features are used in the middleware aspects that JBoss provides, and learn how to apply those aspects in building their own applications. The tutorial will describe in detail the set of aspects that come with JBoss: aspects for remoteness, acidity, transactions, security, asynchronous invocations, and replicated/transactional caching. At the end of the tutorial, participants will understand how to use the JBoss AOP framework to make their software development processes more dynamic and fluid.

JBoss is available at http://www.jboss.org/.

Biographies

Marc Fleury started in sales at Sun Microsystems France and then transitioned to engineering. After working in SAP development while at sun, he became bored and started JBoss. Marc currently serves as the President of the JBoss Group, LLC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. A graduate of X, and an ex-Lieutenant in the paratroopers, he has a masters degree in theoretical physics from the ENS ULM and a PhD in physics for experimental work he did as a visiting scientist from X at MIT's RLE. Marc enjoys the extended family feel of the Open Source business model. He is dedicated to making JBoss Group the dominant Web-application server company.

Bill Burke fell in love with middleware when he was introduced to DCE while at the parent company of Open Environment Corporation. He later went on to being a core member of the Orbix2000 team at Iona, where he helped build some of their CORBA products. After weathering a few failed Internet startups, Bill stumbled into JBoss and helped them with their clustering architecture and EJB container. Now, as lead architect of JBoss 4, his main focus is on bringing AOP concepts and technology to the JBoss application server. Bill is a co-author of O'Reilly's JBoss 3.2 Workbook, and has numerous other online publications. He graduated magna cum laude with a BS in computer science from Northeastern University in Boston in 1994.