Richmond Java Users Group: JBoss Seam May 20, 2009

JBoss Seam
The talk consists of four parts: the purpose of a page flow and how it works, how page flows are implemented in Seam, how they are implemented in Spring Web Flow, and finally a comparison between the two frameworks. I use the example of a pre-flight check-in to demonstrate how to develop a page flow with each frameworks, highlighting unique features such as Seam's workspaces and Spring Web Flow's partial page updates. Throughout the talk, there is an underlying theme of an extended persistence context and its role in a database-oriented page flow. The talk briefly visits Seam's ad-hoc conversations and how they differ from a page flow.

Not too long ago, the Web came out of its shell and became social, not only on social networking sites but also in terms of communication between individual page views. Seam and Spring Web Flow both introduce the concept of a conversation context whose purpose is to maintain state that pertains to a use case across a series of pages. Conversations help ween developers off the HTTP session and are a far more attractive option because they can remain isolated from one another. They also last minutes on the order of minutes rather than hours, reducing the memory footprint on the server. In addition to a long-running context, conversations can be combined with page flows offered by each framework, which constrain a user's navigation path to a predefined sequence. As such, page flows can help reduce the complexity of navigation in an application.

This session presents the approach to conversations and page flows taken by each framework. It addresses their pros and cons, focusing primarily on how well they fit with the JavaServer™ Faces platform.

The target audience is anyone developing an application that involves a sequence of steps or who struggles with maintaining state in a Web application.

The session covers
• The definition of a page flow
• How page flows are developed in Seam
• How page flows are developed in Spring Web Flow
• Seam's ad hoc conversations

Biography
Dan Allen is a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, author of Seam in Action, and open source advocate. He has nearly a decade of development experience using technologies that include Java EE frameworks (Seam, JSF, EJB3, Hibernate, Spring, Struts), Java testing frameworks (JUnit, TestNG), JavaScript and DOM scripting, CSS and page layouts, Maven 2, Ant, Groovy, and many others.
After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Materials Science and Engineering in 2000, Dan became captivated by the world of free and open source software and began pursuing his interest in software development full time. He eventually discovered the combination of Linux and the Java EE platform to be the ideal blend on which to build his professional career. After sampling a myriad of frameworks, he found a good fit with Seam. He started writing about the framework and later joined the Seam project team, first as a community member and later as an employee of Red Hat.

Dan is a strong supporter of the open source development model and avid writer. He lives with his supportive wife in Laurel, MD. You can keep up with Dan's development experiences by subscribing to his blog at http://mojavelinux.com.

Registration
Please register here for the meeting so that we can have enough food and seats available.

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