USPJUG November Meeting and REST

This Monday we had our monthly Java Users Group meeting, where I gave a talk about RESTful Web Services and JSR-311. You can find the slides below.

Since the year is ending and this was my last tech demo of 2007, I thought I should try to list what worked and what didn't:

• Attendance: not great, I really need to work harder on publicizing the meetings, since this has been a problem throughout the year.
• The Topic: This item is mixed. On the one hand I've heard comments that the subject of the presentation could've been more inviting for students that are just beginning to program. On the other, there was productive discussion and interesting questions from the attendees. All in all, I think this kind of topic can work, but maybe I should actively promote our sessions among grad-students as well; right now most of the communication effort is being directed at undergrads (such as myself).
• The slide-set and topic organization: Again, mixed. I think the flow was good overall, but there was a point, when I introduced the main concepts (or constraints) of REST, where things got too abstract. I sensed that when preparing the talk, but thought that the following examples would clarify any murky points. Now I realize I was wrong and I must insert at least some diagrams to help make the ideas more palatable. That said, I think everything was understood after some improvised blackboard diagramming :)
• The Demo: My sample was a simple Student-Course enrollment system. I decided not to live-code my sample because it wouldn't have been possible to go deeper into interesting issues regarding the framework and resource design. Now I see that it was the right choice, the time was well spent discussing HTTP status codes, Jersey marshaling options and design alternatives. If I'm lucky enough to ever get to do this demo again, it may be interesting to show a small client application, but it's not really necessary since the combination of NetBeans tooling and curl are enough to smoke-test the service.
• The Food: As happened on the other tech demos, the food was over before I got a chance to get my hands in it, bummer... This time I didn't even saw the pastries!

Here are the slides, in portuguese:

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If anyone is interested, I can make the demo code available as well, just leave a comment.