Thursday March 13, 2008
Thursday March 13, 2008
Sun Tech Days, Day 2, Johannesburg, 2008
Another pretty excellent day. I basically spent the entire day at the booth. Sang had asked me to join him in his hands on lab on performance and profiling for web applications, because of that topic's connection to VisualVM. He proposed that I would spend some of the hands on lab introducing VisualVM. I didn't think I'd be able to say that much about it (it is, after all, a visual application, hence spending a lot of time talking about it seems slightly beside the point), but then I thought: "What if I show them how easy it is to create plugins for VisualVM?"
That was a cool idea, but then I needed to make sure that it really IS easy, otherwise I'd be undermining VisualVM completely (imagine if I were to say "it is really easy to extend VisualVM" and then were to spend the next half hour going through some complex procedure with many twists and turns). So I spent most of the day at the booth working on what became the VisualVM View Template. Because of the many interesting discussions that kept on arising due to people stopping by to ask something about NetBeans, it was only during Sang's part of the hands on lab (which was the last session of the day) that I actually finished the template and uploaded it to the Plugin Portal. Right after that I used it live in my presentation! There were not very many people, but I think it was a good opportunity to show that it really is easy to slide your own JPanel into a plugin's newly created VisualVM tab. (I used the Memory Monitor JPanel from the JDK's demo/management folder as an example, installing it into VisualVM, typing only a single line to do so.) People were pretty impressed with the GlassFish plugin. One of them wants to start working on a WebSphere plugin. That would be pretty cool.
Apart from that, i.e., before Sang's hands on lab, I had many conversations with users. One of them said, literally: "Whenever I open NetBeans IDE, I feel like applauding." (She knows about my blog and so if I am lying, she'll be sure to leave a comment saying so!) One of the most interesting ideas came from someone called Gareth Uren who asked for a drop down button factory displaying recently run projects that can then be selected and then immediately run again (which is something he missed from having used Eclipse). I agree, that would be a good thing. I wonder if there is an API that can be used to detect whether/which applications have been (successfully) deployed. If there is such a thing, it would be easy to put the name of those deployed applications in a drop down button. Then, somehow, the link between the name in the list and the actual application needs to be maintained so that the application can be redeployed. But I wouldn't be surprised if it were doable and I'd like to investigate this.
Someone else is working on an extension to WSDL files. I showed him how to add a menu item to the WSDL file's contextual menu item. And also how to get the editor's content from that menu item. He wants to use that starting point as a means to generating stubs for various clients (PHP, Java, C++, etc), based on the WSDL file's content. And that would then be displayed in an HTML page (or in a new window) or something like that. Sounds like an interesting plan. He had some web services running on his own site and I showed how to create clients (both desktop and web) with a very few clicks, with the results put in the Output window. I also demoed quite a bit of other web service related activities, some with my favorite Shakespeare web service (which retrieves texts based on a phrase you send it). People were really impressed by how easy it is to create web service clients (and showing the drag/drop of web service methods into the editor is always a winner).
I met quite a few people from Sun, in one way or another. Especially the Java CAPS people, across the room from the NetBeans booth, were interesting. They showed me how Java CAPS now runs on a very recent NetBeans IDE 6.1 development build! They were very positive about the NetBeans Platform. I arranged to do an interview with one of them sometime and also to put a screenshot of their application on the NetBeans Platform screenshots page, to show yet another example of the power of the NetBeans Platform.
I've received a couple of e-mails from some of the people I've met, reiterating the enhancement ideas they have for NetBeans IDE. (One of them is going to create new hints for the NetBeans Java editor!) I'll blog about those sometime soon I hope. Quite a lot of people were introduced to my blog for the first time, so I'm looking forward to hearing from them! After the hands on lab with Sang Shin was over, I went with Schalk Neethling (also a DZone leader) and a few of the others for a beer across the street. Rick Ross told me some days ago that he would pay for all our drinks if Schalk and I ended up hanging out with some other developers and, well, Rick, here's the evidence:
And then I had dinner with some colleagues. It was a pretty good day. I met very many nice and enthusiastic NetBeans users. I do believe that Dale wins the prize for most enthusiastic NetBeans user, since he spent so much time at our booth! Hoping to meet the people I met again when/if the next Sun Tech Days happens here again! On top of all that, when I got back to my hotel, I found that I had been upgraded to a much better room. Cool ending to a great day.
Mar 13 2008, 01:27:53 PM PDT Permalink
1 Comment
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/geertjan/entry/sun_tech_days_day_2
Comments:
Thanks Geertjan from Jeresin(John - Second from left & Hennie - Second from right). Was a great Conference. Can't wait for the SunTechDays.nextConference();
Having a great time with NetBeans. Keep up the great work.
Posted by John Eatwell on March 17, 2008 at 02:14 AM PDT #
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