JavaRanch at JavaOne 2003

by Jessica Sant

If you're attending JavaOne, be sure to check out your fellow JavaRanchers!

BOF-3061: Certification Roundtable with Michael Ernest and Jessica Sant

This informal session offers help, advice, and guidelines for anybody who wishes to start or is following the Sun certification process. This session is not a technical Q&A forum, but rather an interactive forum where the panel answers questions and offers advice in the way of reading lists, tips for study, and tips for the exams.

The panel includes Sun certified JavaTM technology platform technologists at all levels, with the added bonus that they help run the JavaRanch Web site, one of the largest independent Java technology communities on the Internet with a strong focus on the certification programs.

BOF-2955:JavaTM Technology in the Classroom: Teaching Finance Using Java Technology with Mark Herschberg and Jon Gadzik

Finance is a field traditionally taught through books and lectures. However the application of the knowledge is often illustrated through executing actions through software. Harvard Business School has sought to revolutionize the teaching of finance by having a game-based lesson model. Software, written to mimic trading applications used on Wall Street, is used extensively to teach each lesson throughout the semester long course. This session discusses how we were able to employ JavaTM technologies to quickly and easily create a such a game, and how these Java technology-based games may enhance the educational experience.

BOF-1672: Design Patterns and Best Practices for JavaTM Technology-Based Mobile Applications with Michael Yuan and Ju Long

Mobile commerce requires sophisticated enterprise backends and pervasive user interfaces. Due to the limitations of mobile devices and wireless networks, some unique design and implementation issues must be addressed when developing end-to-end mobile commerce applications. In this presentation, we discuss design patterns and best practices in mobile application development. We focus on two crucial aspects: smart mobile client and seamless client-server integration. We use several concrete mobile JavaTM technology-based applications, including the Sun Smart Ticket blueprint, as examples.

Smart mobile client must take advantage of the performance, reliability, and rich UI benefits offered by thick client technology. At the same time, it must be light enough to fit into and run smoothly on small handhold devices. We discuss the benefits and implementation of MVC and variant patterns, background thread and gauges, cache for performance, reliability, and security.

On the integration front, the diversity of mobile applications calls for a variety of integration schemes. We discuss important integration techniques, including Remote method call, asynchronous messaging, binary-over-HTTP, XML, SOAP Web services, SyncML, and session tracking.

After this talk, you have a better understandings of the unique challenges facing mobile application development; get familiar with common approaches; be able to judge which pattern is the best based on application circumstances; learn other people's approaches from discussions. This is an intermediate to advanced level session. Prerequisites: Working knowledge on design patterns, client-server model, MIDP, XML, Java technology stream I/O, SOAP Web services, and HTTP.