Win a free eBook copy of WildFly Performance Tuning

This is a seriously good start into a new area. I thought you might be interested in winning Packt's latest book about WildFly Performance Tuning. So, this is the contest to make it happen.
I have 2 eBook copies of WildFly Performance Tuning to be given away to two (2) lucky winners.

Here are the Rules
- The contest is running from today (07/09/14, 5:45a UTC) to next Wednesday (07/16/14, 5:45a UTC).
- Answer the three questions below correctly about WildFly and put down a comment on this blog with the answers.
- If more than three correct answers are posted, I will let my daughters draw the two winners.

The Questions to Answer
1) When was WildFly 8.1.0.Final released?
2) What is the name of the Red Hat project, that offers help with Java EE application migration?
3) Who wrote the WildFly Plugin for NetBeans 8?

Content of the Book
Chapter 1, The Science of Performance Tuning, talks about what performance tuning is all about and how it can be applied within an organization.
Chapter 2, Tools of the Tuning Trade, introduces some useful Open Source tools to use when performance tuning anything covered in this book.
Chapter 3, Tuning the Java Virtual Machine, covers what the engine of Java is and how to tune it as well as all other Java-based applications.
Chapter 4, Tuning WildFly, explains what can be tuned in the WildFly
Application Server.
Chapter 5, EJB Tuning in WildFly, talks about how Enterprise JavaBeans can be tuned.
Chapter 6, Tuning the Persistence Layer, covers how to design an effective database as well as how to tune JPA and queries.
Chapter 7, Tuning the Web Container in WildFly, explores Undertow—the blazingly fast, new web container in WildFly—and discusses how it can be tuned to become even better.
Chapter 8, Tuning Web Applications and Services, covers numerous tuning tricks and tips surrounding the web applications and services based on Java EE.
Chapter 9, JMS and HornetQ, explains how JMS works and can be tuned in HornetQ, the JMS provider of WildFly.
Chapter 10, WildFly Clustering, explores tuning in a clustered WildFly, HornetQ, and Java EE components.

About the Author
Anders Welén embraced the object-oriented techniques of the Java language early in life, and later evolved to Java Enterprise specifications. As a true believer and evangelist of Open Source, he naturally discovered the JBoss Application Server,
which led to years of providing expert consultation, training, and support for the JBoss and Java EE infrastructures.

Good Luck everybody!

Farewell msg systems ...

.. and thank you for amazing 14 years. It's true: I've been within the msg group for an incredibly long time  and have been working in the Java/Java EE space almost all of it. Next Friday (07/11/14) will be my last day. Now it is time to move on.
I've been working with customers and internal Java EE projects all over the place, blogged, authored articles and have been speaking at conferences a lot. The passion for Java and mostly Java EE related topics is burning even hotter these days.

I'm more than proud to announce that as of calendar week 29 (7/14/14), I'll be joining Red Hat as Developer Advocate in Arun Gupta's team.
My main topics are technologies related to Red Hat JBoss Middleware including WildFly and the broader JBoss technology stack. So, I will be blogging, speaking and spreading the word about the most important and relevant parts in today's Enterprise Java world. There's no need to be afraid of this blog turning into a sales slide-deck. As you're used to, I'll mostly stick to technology and conference reports. So you don't even have to update your bookmarks as this blog is here to stay.

So, if you have ideas, requests, wishes or if you're just hungry for something new, just give me a ping on @myfear or leave a comment in this blog and I'll be more than happy to respond. Just reach out to me.

Arun and Markus at JavaLand 2014

"Mad Matter: "Have I gone mad?"
Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
Lewis Caroll, Alice no País das Maravilhas

Java EE 8 - Deliver More Apps to More Devices

If there's one thing I dislike about summer, it is the fact that there isn't much news to share or talk about. Who ever decided to put the Java Day Tokyo into this boring time of the year did a pretty good job and gave me an opportunity to write a blog post about new and upcoming Java EE 8 specification enriched with some more thoughts and pointers.
As announced on the Java EE 7 EG Mailinglist beginning of June the new EE 8 JSR is going to be filed shortly (before JavaOne).

Contents of EE 8
Unlike the first version of EE 7 which was totally dominated by the word "cloud" and later re-aligned with the hard facts, this new Java EE version will basically stick to three different areas of improvement.

• HTML 5 / Web Tier Enhancements
• CDI Alignment / Ease-of-Development
• Cloud Enablement

All three can be seen as a continued evolution of what EE 7 already delivered and there is no real surprise in it at all. Head over to The Aquarium to read more about the details.

Cameron Purdy about EE 8 at Java Day Tokyo 2014

Hidden Gems - What might come up at JavaOne

The Java Day Tokyo was held recently and with Cameron Purdy as a keynote speaker about Java EE and it's general direction (mp4 download, 363MB) this probably was one of the first chances to see, what will be the overall story for JavaOne with regards to the platform. As Oracle should have learned the Java community isn't interested in big and unpleasant surprises. Strategic directions are communicated and prepared a bit more carefully. We all have seen and heard about the IoT hype and the efforts everybody puts in it. This obviously also seems to have some outreach into Java EE. Beside the general topics and contents of EE 8 the Purdy keynote also contained a slide titled "Powering Java Standard in the Cloud - Deliver Mode Apps to More Devices with Confidence". 

Java Standards in the Cloud.

And yes, you are correct about thinking that this is EE 7 coverage. It actually is. But at least for me it is the first time, that individual features have been isolated from individual technical specifications and put into a complete, strategic picture outlining use-cases in the enterprise. It will be interesting to see, if there is something more like this to be shown at JavaOne and how much IoT we will see in EE 8 when it finally hits the road.

I'm speaking at JavaOne 2014, September 28 to October 2, 2014 in San Francisco, California, USA

Just a short 104 days to go until the number one Java event is going to happen again. JavaOne opens it's doors again beginning 28th of September till the 2nd of October this year. After intense months of work in the program committee for both the Server-side Java and the Java in the Cloud track, where we dug through all the proposals the final program has been selected and the notifications have been send out.

And I am proud to contribute again this year. After the intense event last year, this is going to be a bit more relaxed with only one session.

Session ID: CON1747
Session Title: JavaScript in the Enterprise
Session Abstract: Instead of exclusively using JavaScript on front-ends what else can be done with it on Java EE servers? Looking into Nashorn, Avatar, Scripting JSR and other possible options of also using JavaScript as an enterprise workhorse.

Beside this I am going to contribute to the NetBeans day and moderate the "Free Java Tools for Maven and Java EE" panel.

There'll be tons of amazing sessions in the content catalog and if you haven't you should register today!

Review: "Java EE 7 with GlassFish 4 Application Server" by David Heffelfinger

The third edition of David Heffelfinger's Java EE book has been recently released. This updated edition is covering the latest Java EE 7 Platform. Thanks to Packt Publishing for giving me a review copy to look at.

Abstract
This book is a practical guide and follows a very user-friendly approach. The book aims to get the reader up to speed in Java EE 7 development. All major Java EE 7 APIs and the details of the GlassFish 4 server are covered followed by examples of their use. If you are a Java developers who wants to become proficient with Java EE 7 this book is ideal for you. Readers are expected to have some experience with Java and to have developed and deployed applications in the past, but don t need any previous knowledge of Java EE or J2EE. It teaches the reader how to use GlassFish 4 to develop and deploy applications.

Book: "Java EE 7 with GlassFish 4 Application Server"
Language : English
Paperback: 400 pages
Release Date : March 26, 2014
ISBN-10: 1782176888
ISBN-13: 978-1782176886

The Author
David Heffelfinger (@ensode) is the Chief Technology Officer of Ensode Technology, LLC, a software consulting firm based in the greater Washington DC area. He has been architecting, designing and developing software professionally since 1995 and has been using Java as his primary programming language since 1996. He has worked on many large scale projects for several clients including the US Department of Homeland Security, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the US Department of Defense. He has a Masters degree in Software Engineering from Southern Methodist University. David is editor in chief of Ensode.net, a website about Java, Linux, and other technology topics.

The Content
This is actually the third edition of the book. All you need to know about Java EE 7 and latest GlassFish 4 release is packed into 11 chapters. Ranging from a getting started introduction with GlassFish to developing with latest Java EE 7 core technologies, like JSF, EJB and such it is also covering how to secure your applications. The 400 pages bring a net content of 313 real content (removing preface and appendix kind of stuff). It is a fast paced tutorial for Java EE 7.

Writing and Style
 If you are used to technical documentation you shouldn't struggle with this book. For a non native speaker it reads very easy and I didn't find very many complex sentences which stopped my reading. The examples always interrupt the overall reading flow but this book isn't meant to just be read. You need to get hands on the sample code and learn to use it.

Conclusion and recommendation
The book is keeping things simple enough to make it easy to start with almost the complete platform at a beginner level, summing up the concepts and without getting intimidated. The large amount of sample code, examples and pictorial representations improve the understanding of the content a lot.
It is an easy read and you can quickly work your way through it. Go get it, while it is hot!