Paul Grenyer

This was my first London Java Community event. I've heard of cloud computing and was looking for a bit more. The evening started off with a lightning talk about the Lift web framework. This was really very interesting, but after so long with the Java of GWT I look at web frameworks that involve HTML and big round trips to the server to display pages and page updates with quite a lot of caution. Nikita Ivanov seemed to have a lot of very interesting things to say. I just couldn't understand 90% of what he said. I don't know if this was caused by where I was sitting of the PA. Anyway, he demonstrated very well how simply distributed programs could be written in Scala. The most impressive thing he demonstrated was the lack of a deployment stage and how the runtime adjusted effortlessly to the realtime addition and removal of processing nodes. Unfortunately not the best presented presentation, but enough to impress me and for me to buy a Scala book.

Mark Dalgarno, with the support of Redgate Software , is using Software East to do great things for the software community in Cambridge. Software East has been running frequent evening events on topics including Agile and iPhone development and attracted a number of ACCU speakers including Allan Kelly, Pete Goodliffe and everyone's favourite Mac pusher, Phil Nash. Not content with rivalling ACCU London 's events Software East has gone further and put on their own Agile conference over two days in the heart of Cambridge. I was pleased to be asked to speak and enjoyed both thoroughly exhausting days. What follows are some of the highlights for me. Agile Cambridge was the first conference I have attended as a Twitter user. It's an amazing tool for not only communicating with the the attendees and passing on words of wisdom from one session to another, but also for keeping those who could not attend up-to-date and wetting their appetites for next time. I do not know what it ...

Although I have done it (tongue in cheek) before, I don't like reviewing my own presentations. So I was delighted when Giovanni Asproni, ( ACCU conference chair) reviewed my participation at Agile Cambridge 2010 and was kind enough to allow me to publish his comments: Rachel (Davies) spoke about building trust in agile teams. Setting aside lots of interesting material about the importance of trust in teams and on various techniques to use or avoid in order to earn trust, the highlight of her keynote was an exercise where Paul Grenyer was volunteered by Rachel to do a stage diving (interestingly enough, Rachel, Allan, Paul and I had talked about it the night before at the pub, but we didn’t think Rachel was going to take the conversation seriously ;-)). He accepted and was caught by a group of six or eight people (which included Jon Jagger and Allan Kelly who joined them to make sure the ACCU didn’t loose one of its most valued members). I’m happy to report that Paul was not hurt ...

By Alistair Reynolds ISBN-13: 978-0575084551 I loved Zima Blue even more than House of Suns . The standout stories in this collection are those based around the Merlin character. Superb space opera from the master. Not every story is a winner and a couple of them are conduits for explaining science. In some places modified humans are back and there's space travel and extension of the human life span. All the classic Reynolds winners. I only have Terminal World left to read now, so Alistair needs to get on and write something else!

Plenty of you will have heard me banging on about Cerberus recently and some will be wondering what it is, other than the multi-headed hound that guards Hades of course. Cerberus is an application I have been working on that monitors websites. Features so far include: URL checking at configurable intervals up to once a minute Measurement and recording of response times Email notification on URL failure Email notification on URL recovery I'm currently running a free trial for a handful of websites and it's going very well. If you would like me to monitor your site, please contact me and I will be happy to add you to the trial. Up and coming features include: Dashboard for user monitoring User configurable URLs URL statistics Automated reporting

Session title: Web Application Development with Spring, GWT and MVP Session type: Case Study / Experience Report Session duration: 90 Speaker: Paul Grenyer Biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul is now happy somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for a company based in Norwich where he heads up an ever growing team of senior and highly skilled people. When he's not programming and family life allows, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling. Session description: In Enterprise Web Application Development in Java with AJAX and ORMs (ACCU London March 2010 and ACCU2010) I spoke about how to develop and test a Data Access Layer and integrate it with a very simple Google Web Toolkit (GWT) based fr...

Session title: Agile is a journey not a destination. Session type: Case Study / Experience Report Session duration: 45 Speaker: Paul Grenyer Biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul is now happy somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for a company based in Norwich where he heads up an ever growing team of senior and highly skilled people. When he's not programming and family life allows, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling. Session description: I work for a young company that has made a big impact in its market and has quickly established a strong foothold and a growing reputation for product innovation and time-to-market delivery. A company that at times needed to be “more agile than agi...

By Ken Arnold, James Gosling, David Holmes ISBN: 978-0321349804 I decided to read this book about 18 months after having to learn Java in a hurry after discovering what I had been lead to believe was a C# role turned out to be a Java role. Despite several years of programming in C++ and C# I figured there must be lots of stuff that was different in Java and that this book would be a good way to find out. The first chapter is a 40 page general introduction to Java and I found it such a dry read that I gave up. Then, twelve months later, I decided I really should read it cover to cover to find out what I was missing and it took me five months to do it! Although solid and reasonable well written the book is a dry read most of the way through. The chapter on streams is especially hard going. Although in many cases each method of a class being discussed is described in detail, this book represents a medium level (as opposed to high or low level) introduction to the language. As you would e...

I have just had confirmation that I will be speaking at Agile Cambridge at 2.15pm on Thursday 14th October 2010. Please come and see me! Session title: Agile is a journey not a destination. Session type: Case Study / Experience Report Session duration: 45 Session abstract: Agile is a journey not a destination describes a software team's two and a half year journey from inception to really becoming agile, the evolving process that was adopted and the lessons learnt in the first iterations. Session description: This is a success story. A young company that has made a big impact in its market and has quickly established a strong foothold and a growing reputation for product innovation and time-to-market delivery. A stretching but credible business strategy will see the company broaden and deepen its market proposition; a future that is critically enabled through a fully distributable software platform. A company that at times needed to be “more agile than agile”, as was a freque...

It's been a while since I have had chance to blog and this time it's with good reason! I am very happy to say that Charlotte and I had a baby on Monday (2nd August 2010) at 8.53am. After going to the hospital on Saturday at 4pm and following a long painful labour, Nathaniel was finally born in a speedy 90 seconds. I almost missed it! He was born at the very healthy weight of 7lb2. Mother and baby are continuing to do very well! I need sleep.....

This was this first Software East presentation I have attended. It was hosted at the Redgate offices just off the A14. They were very nice, if not as technologically advanced as Morgan Stanley. It just so happened that Allen Kelly, the speaker, was arriving as I phoned him from the car park, so we wondered in together to find no receptionist and a sign directing us to the Seagull Suite on the first floor. From the first floor there was no indication of where the Seagull Suite was, so Allan gave Mark Dalgarno, the event organiser a call and he showed us to the suite via the “SQL Servery”, Red Gate's appropriately named cafeteria. The presentation was scheduled to take place between 6.30pm and 8.30pm. Two hours is a long time for these events, even though I can imagine Allan speaking for two hours without a problem. I found out that the first half hour is for networking and buffet eating, so I tucked in and chatted to Allan and Pete Goodliffe. Allan spoke about setting up your own ...

by Mike Cohn ISBN: 978-0321205681 After reading Agile Estimating and Planning , also by Mike Cohn, I was rather disappointed with User Stories Applied. Then I saw that Agile Estimating and Planning was published in November 2005 and User Stories Applied was published twenty months earlier in march 2004. A lot of the material in User Stories Applied forms the basis for and is expanded in Agile Estimating and Planning. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that Mike Cohn spent the twenty months between the two books improving as a writer! However, I think there is great scope for merging the two books and coming up with a better title. There is not enough user story based material here for a single book. Only about half the book is actually about writing user stories. The other sections cover things like planning and testing. There is also some discussion about identifying roles within a system which, on the first read, felt a bit thin. Then when the case study came at the end and I h...

The Roots of Scrum: How the Japanese Lean Experience Changed Global Software Development Jeff Sutherland Dr. Jeff Sutherland covers the history of Scrum from its inception thru his participation with Ken Schwaber in rolling out Scrum to industry, to its impact on Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Siemans, Philips, GE, and thousands of other companies. He describes the relationship of Scrum to experience at Bell Labs, MIT, iRobot, and the Grameen Bank, his communications with Kent Beck who used Scrum experience to help create XP, and how the Agile Manifesto accelerated Scrum adoption. Most important, he concludes by describing how team spirit is at the root of product innovation and hyperproductive teams and how that spirit can transform organizations. Just as last year with Robert Martin's key note, the 2010 ACCU conference got off to a storming start with this key note from Jeff Sutherland, that I wish I could have got my entire team, the managers and to some extent the board to s...

by Ken Schwaber ISBN: 978-0735619937 I bought this book when it looked like I was going to be doing the Certified Scrum Master course at the ACCU Conference , as it's required reading. I was hoping for a detailed explanation of the Scrum process, but this book actually contains a number of case studies which describe how Scrum has been implemented in different places, what worked well and what didn't. Even thought the book didn't contain what I expected, I found it quite interesting and informative and it made me think about how our agile team could improve. It's quite a short book at only 153 pages and very easy to read. Consequently I ploughed through it in about a weeks intensive reading.

by Mike Cohn ISBN: 978-0131479418 I bought this book because I'm generally rubbish at estimating (I usually under estimate). Also, although we have the technical elements of agile (source control, unit tests, continuous integration, etc) sorted, my agile project management is not all it could be. Agile Estimating and Planning may be as close as I ever get to a silver bullet. To be honest I expected to be let down and that the scenarios described in the book would not match the situations I find myself in. I was not let down at all. The book covers both planning when features are important and planning when a deadline is important. It taught me that it was wrong to break stories into tasks when release planning and to leave that for iteration planning. The book discusses the use of both story points and ideal days in estimating, what they both are, the differences between them and then suggests you should use story points. It described what release and iteration planning are and whe...

Last night I presented the 60 minute version of Enterprise Application Development in Java with AJAX and ORM for ACCU London . A couple of people asked for the slides, so here they are: http://paulgrenyer.net/dnld/Enterprise_Application_Development_-_ACCU_London.pdf and the video can be found here: Part 1 Part 2

I always say this and I'll say it again: London is a long way to go from Norwich for the evening. On this occasion it was worth it, as it always is for ACCU London . This dark, cold, late February evening had the added drawback of torrential rain. To make matters worse, while looking for the JP Morgan building at 125 London Wall, we got to the junction of Moorgate to find a sign suggesting we had been walking in the wrong direction. With faith in a printed google map and iPhone GPS we forged on another fifty yards and found 125 London Wall exactly where we expected. I have been in many offices belonging to a number of financial corporations and JP Morgan is no different to any of them, except for the lifts! Instead of calling the lifts by pressing a button next to them, you have to go to a set of small screens in the middle of the lobby. On one of these screens you select the floor you want and it indicates which lift you have to get in. The assigned lift then opens and takes you t...

EJB3 In Action By Debu Panda, Reza Rahman, Derek Lane ISBN-13: 978-1933988344 I bought and read this book as I wanted to learn about Enterprise Java Beans having only used Spring for Enterprise Java development up to this point. This is an excellent book for just that. It explains in a reasonable amount of detail what stableful and stateless session beans, message driven beans and entity beans are. After a number of chapters describing how to use session beans and a further chapter on message driven beans a large amount of the book is turned over to entity beans and the Java Persistence API. As a user of Hibernate I found going over a very similar API somewhat tedious in places, but I am sure this would not be the case for a novice ORM user. I also think Hibernate does it better. I found the general style of the book, although chatty, quite easy to read. Although the authors mention many of the areas where Spring has similar or even better functionality it is clear, as you would expect...

Ever since the company I work for changed to a Fortinet VPN I have been looking for a Linux client that will work with Ubuntu. Today I found one: forticlientsslvpn_linux_4.0.2010.tar.gz Install and use instructions can be found here .

If you want to reference one (master) Nexus repository from another (slave) Nexus repository this is what you have to do: Add 2 proxy repositories to the slave Nexus, one configured for releases and one configured for snapshots. Set the remote url in both to: http://<master>:<port>/nexus/content/groups/public Then add the releases proxy to the public group and the snapshots repository to the snapshots group. Thank you to Damian Bradicich of the nexus-users group for these instructions.

I will be giving my Enterprise Web Application Development in Java with AJAX and ORMs presentation for ACCU London at 7pm at 7 City (4 Chiswell Street, London, EC1Y 4UP ) on Thursday 18 March 2010. Registration will be required.

My blog has always been personal and professional so I want to share the most important news I have ever had and the best thing that's happened to me since I got married.

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) can be used to persist Java objects to databases. However JDBC is verbose and difficult to use cleanly and therefore is not really suitable for enterprise scale applications. In this article I will demonstrate how to replace JDBC persistence code with an Object Resource Mapper to reduce its verbosity and complexity and then, through the use of the appropriate patterns, show how you might design a more complete data access layer for a Java enterprise application. Read more.

There are some known issues with installing VMWare 2.0.x on Ubuntu 9.10 which are described well here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-2-0-x-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic.html so I am not going to repeat them. However I will add the following: Make sure you have build-essentials installed so VMWare can build its special kernel modules: sudo apt-get install build-essentials Make sure you have the linux headers installed. To obtain your kernel version execute: sudo uname -r Then to install the headers: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-<kernel version> In the configuration step, following the install, you will be asked which user you want to be able to log into VMWare as. The default is root and since root is not enabled by default on Ubuntu you should choose another user with root permissions rather than enabling root.