JCAPS Training Notes

The JCAPS training I attended (Foundations of Java CAPS II) was excellent. We screamed through the course material in 3 days and had discussions on other JCAPS topics the other 2 days. Here were my impressions.
  • I enjoyed learning about the eInsight Business Process Manager. The tools and steps involved in creating a business process are very similar to those used to create a JCD. There are a lot of interesting constructs like correlation and the "flow" element, which easily enable parallel processing. One frequent topic of discussion, was when to use an business process (eInsight) rather than a JCD. There's a certain flexibility to creating a business process, gained at the cost of speed. Since you can do virtually everything in a JCD that can be done by a business process, we questioned when each was a better fit. We didn't reach a consensus and I'm sure we'll be talking about this again.
  • We explored the shortcomings of the repository and the best way to manage releases. In the short term we are going to rely on branching, which is kind of a pain because the entire repository must be branched. Longer term we are waiting for the 5.2 release, which will allow us to move to a different repository version.
  • Speaking of Java Caps 5.2, it should be released later this year with a beta version coming at the end of this quarter (1Q2008). eDesigner should see the biggest changes. As I understand it, it'll be based on the Netbeans 6.0 release. I'm hoping that the JCAPS functionality will be provided as a plugin to this IDE, keeping intact all other Netbeans functionality. This should allow a more natural way to create subprojects (JARS or 3rd party libraries) which can then be easily integrated into JCDs and other JCAPS components.
  • We took a quick look at eView which is an interesting utility providing the logic to form a single customer view from information silos. We've been facing some performance and maintenance problems in this area so it was nice to get some insight.
  • Unit Testing is still a bit of a question mark. The instructor pointed us toward JUnit and JMeter, but I'm having a hard time figuring how to call JCDs from these tools.

Overall, a great week learning!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Believe...

A recent reorg at my company left me with a new manager - and a different approach to software development than my team had been previously following.  Our new approach is one that I don’t necessarily agree with, but it led me to think about - and reevaluate -  those tenets of software development that I think are important and that I believe lead to increased quality and productivity. This post will consist of fairly high level discussions about how to organize code, teams, and projects - but contain very little actual code. Many of these ideas will not be my own.  They are mostly ideas I’ve learned from others and their willingness to share their experiences with me.  They are, however, ideas that I’ve practiced and hardened as I’ve worked to build my own ideal environment for delivering value through software . Many of these ideas I now take for granted as commonplace (even though they aren’t).  I felt a need to document them anyway - so people can unde...
Read more

More stuff to get excited about

Chrome OS I'm excited about Google's announcement to release what sounds like an ultra lightweight OS to basically surf the Internet. I'm hoping this device will allow me (and others) to breathe new life into old, underpowered laptops, allowing them to essentially work as netbooks. This could also open up new and inexpensive opportunities for schools to recycle or prolong the life of expensive computing equipment and expand horizons of their students. I've been watching the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) movement for some time and I see this as another avenue toward their goal. I don't share the optimism that this OS will somehow replace Windows. Sometimes you need extra horsepower and functionality. I edit a lot of photos and create some simple video, but the web tools I've tried to do either task can't hold a candle to the four-year-old version of Photoshop Elements I own. I'm not sure CPU intensive apps like this will port very well to the web....
Read more

A few quick notes

It's been a quiet few months. I haven't worked on too many things I've felt like writing about. That's not to say I haven't been busy. One thing I've been reading more about building great teams and delivering more to our customers. I'm just starting to read Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney . Obvious from the title, this book outlines the approach Disney teaches all of it's Cast Members (employees) on how to be great leaders and provide their visitors with great experiences. I've been wanting to read this for some time and I'll be sure to write more as I work my way through it. Some related blog posts I've enjoyed recently are: The Duct Tape Programmer from Joel on Software where he reviews a chapter of the book Coders at Work . The post basically talks about doing the simplest thing possible to get something out the door and into people's hands. Amen to that! I've also been enjoyi...
Read more