1999

03.12.1999

two Presentations

Laura: The Xerox Advanced Print Server Architecture

SPEAKER: Thomas Jenny, Zühlke Engineering
SPEAKER: René Lanz and Roland Meier, Xerox AG, Switzerland
SLIDES: 991203_Laura.pdf (pdf-File)

Laura is a novel print server developed by Xerox AG, Switzerland. Laura serves as a printing middleware and administrates printing objects, processes documents, automatically routes jobs to the appropriate output device, inserts auxiliary and banner sheets, keeps log-files, and much more. Key requirements for the project were strong script capabilities, a thorough modular structure, and a very open architecture to guarantee maximal flexibility and easy integration into an existing, customer-specific environment. Laura is almost entirely written in Java and employs a wide range of technologies, ranging from RMI communication, smart parsing techniques, etc, to the use of a database. A particular strength of Laura is the rigorous implementation of an object-oriented concept, where - far beyond jobs - every entity administrated by the print server Laura is represented by an object and corresponding attributes. Following a general introduction to the product and a few words on the basic architecture, we will shift the focus toward a few selected topics. Notably we will report on experiences gained and describe our development tools. Further subjects will be the background loading strategy of the Graphical User Interface and our implementation of the document processors.

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IPS the International Program System

SPEAKER: Rolf Fischer and Wolfgang Eppler, Zürich Versicherung - Financial Services, Switzerland

For its Corporate Customer Division, Zurich Insurance Company is currently building IPS, the International Program System, which will ultimately replace a host based system now in use within Zurich. The replacement system's architecture is a classic three tier with DB2 as as the database and Java 1.1 as the software environment for the middle and the client tier. To bridge the object relational gap we use TopLink with underyling JDBC, while we employ RMI as the lightweight protocol of choice for the client server connection. To maintain and eventually reduce the interfaces to other systems we use well-defined mixture of legacy-style interfaces, i.e. COBOL, and newer technologies such as message queues and XML.

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19.11.1999

The Rise of Open Source Software

JUGS, Swiss Open Systems User Group Switzerland (/ch/open) and the IT Support Group, Department of Electrical Engineering ETH Zurich realized the following event:

The Open Source Revolution

SPEAKER: Eric S. Raymond, Open Source Evangelist

The successes of the Internet infrastructure and the Linux operating system have electrified the software industry. The call into question many of our traditional development practices and the business models that surround them.

Eric Raymond, author of the well known paper The Cathedral and The Bazaar, will describe in this talk the open-source development model, its practices, sketch the social dynamics of the surrounding culture and discuss the new business models that are evolving around it.

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Behind the scenes of OSS development

SPEAKER: Ralf S. Engelschall, Apache Software Foundation, co-developper of the Apache webserver, Author of mod_ssl and mod_rewrite

In this 60 minute long talk the author presents insights into the Open Source projects Apache, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, WML, GNU Pth, and others in which he is personally involved on a daily basis as a developer. The projects are introduced from a developers point of view, that is, their development environment and the way of cooperation and communication between developers are presented and compared. Additionally problems are described which occur in contrast to the usual software engineering projects in an industry environment. As a result the audience gets an impression how totally different Open Source projects can be and how problems were actually solved in practice.

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11.11.1999

Testing and Software Quality for Java Applications

As the industry embraces Java in projects of increasing size and scope, solutions for software testing and software quality in Java applications become a major issue. The event focuses on techniques and tools for instrumenting Java software, for designing and conducting systematic test strategies, for defining and controlling quality metrics and coding standards for Java software components.

Testing and Debugging Java Based Systems

SPEAKER: Sriram Sankar, Metamata Inc.

This presentation will cover different approaches to the task of testing and debugging Java systems. We will discuss specific issues surrounding the use of Java in a variety of networked environments ranging from applets to application servers to embedded systems, and given its unique features such as being an interpreted language and having automatic garbage collection.
Sriram SankarI will talk about his own experience related to building a large amount of Java software products and how they have gone about ensuring quality, robustness, and portability.
The audience is encouraged to participate during the presentation and share their own real-life problems related to testing and debugging Java based systems so that we can attempt to address them during the presentation.

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Executable Interface Specifications for Java

SPEAKER: Peter Müller, Fernuniversität Hagen

Executable interface specification languages allow for expressive documentation and efficient testing and debugging. Since they are based on expressions of the underlying programming language, they can easily be applied by programmers without requiring mathematical skills. In this talk, Peter Müller presents an executable interface specification language for Java. Its main contributions are an extensive coverage of side-effects on object structures, and a clean semantics. The presented techniques can be implemented without modifications to the Java compiler or the virtual machine.

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14.09.1999

PJama  Orthogonal Persistence for the Java platform

SPEAKER: Michael Van De Vanter, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
SLIDES: persistence.pdf

PJama is an experimental persistent programming system for the Java programming language that is being developed by the Forest project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. PJama embodies the notion of orthogonal persistence an approach to making application data persist between program executions with the minimum possible effort required from the application programs themselves.
Orthogonal persistence is characterized by three simple principles.
TYPE ORTHOGONALITY persistence is available for all objects irrespective of type.
PERSISTENCE BY REACHABILITY the lifetime of each object is determined by reachability from a set of root objects.
PERSISTENCE INDEPENDENCE code is identical whether it is operating on short-lived or long-lived objects.

This presentation will discuss the motivation for orthogonal persistence, current technology, example applications, and future prospects.  A PJama release is available for research and evaluation purposes.

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06.09.1999

eXtreme Programming

SPEAKER: Kent Beck

eXtreme Programming (XP) turns the knobs on good software engineering practices all the way to 10. Iteration, close communication with users, testing, reviews - all are done intensely. The result is a process that looks chaotic from the perspective of the change-averse waterfall. However, the risks accepted by XP allow the control of other risks - business and technical change, lack of progress, personal dissatisfaction - that are often thought out of the control of programmers.
The talk will survey the techniques of XP, discuss some of its philosophical and political foundations, and propose a process for gradually adopting XP.

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16.08.1999

Java for Embedded Systems

SPEAKER: Markus Pilz, esmertec ag

Even if the future of Java seems to be in the embedded systems world, making Java well suited for resource critical embedded devices and systems with 'hard' real-time constraints is difficult. In this talk, Markus will discuss key technologies like Java bytecode compilation, class filtering, garbage collection, and novel scheduling schemes, as implemented in Jbed. Jbed is a pure Java 'hard' real-time kernel with integrated Java virtual machine. Jbed allows to develop embedded systems entirely in Java with a memory footprint as low as 10 Kb (120 Kb with TCP/IP stack, 256 Kb with target bytecode compiler for 'hot' code loading). The talk will be followed by a short demo of Jbed.

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01.07.1999

Java Performance
Sun HotSpot und IBM Mixed Mode Interpreter

Die Performance von Java war von Anfang an eines der grössten Probleme für einen Einsatz im Unternehmen. Die Compiler-Technologie hat in den letzten vier Jahren grosse Fortschritte gemacht, um dieses Problem zu lösen. Die heutigen JIT-Compiler liefern meist eine brauchbare Performance, kommen aber noch nicht an die C++ Performance heran.
Dieses Jahr ist jedoch eine neue Generation von Compilern herausgekommen. Der Vortrag stellte IBM's Mixed Mode Interpreter für Java2 und Sun's HotSpot Performance Engine vor, zwei konkurrierende Produkte, die uns zeigen, wie schnell Java heute sein kann. Wieviel Leistung können wir erwarten?
Die Referenten Rob Lougher und Robert Griesemer präsentierten die "Rennmaschinen", an denen sie selber gefeilt haben.

IBM's JVM

SPEAKER:Dr. Rob Lougher, IBM Java Technology Centre, Hursley/UK, Lead designer and developer of Mixed Mode Interpreter for Java2
SLIDES: 990701_mmi_a4.pdf, 990701_mmi_letter.pdf

In this talk I will discuss IBM's 3rd generation JIT compiler, contained within IBM's Java VM. This JIT incoporates many state of the art techniques, and is one of a set of performance enhancements which has made IBM's JVM the fastest on the market. Unfortunately, like other state of the art VM's, this performance has come at the expense of dramatically increased start-up times. In this talk I will discuss the issues involved and present possible solutions. I will introduce IBM's new Mixed Mode Interpreter, this addresses the problem through the use of dynamic profiling, and enables IBM's JIT compiler to achieve even greater optimisations in the future.

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HotSpot

SPEAKER:Dr. Robert Griesemer, Sun Microsystems, Cupertino, CA, Staff Engineer Java HotSpot Performance Engine
SLIDES: 990701_HotSpotTechnicalTour.ps.gz (758 kb) oder 990701_hstt.tar.gz (490 kb), 990701_HotSpotConsequences.ps.gz (392kb) oder 990701_hsc.tar.gz (261 kb)

1. Teil: Sun's Java HotSpot (TM) Performance Engine - Eine technische Übersicht

Die Java Programmiersprache stellt eine Menge von Herausforderungen an eine schnelle Implementation. Grundlegend verschiedene Lösungsansätze, reichend von komplet statischer Kompilation zu total dynamisch optimierenden Systemen, werden von der Industrie angepriesen und als Hochleistungs-Java Implementationen angeboten.
In diesem Vortrag illustrieren wir die technischen Grundlagen auf welchen Sun Microsystem's neue Java HotSpot (TM) Performance Engine basiert. Diese Implementation erreicht Spitzenausführungsgeschwindigkeiten für Java Programme ohne die Sprachsemantik oder Portabilität im geringsten zu beeinträchtigen. Wir diskutieren kritische Eigenschaften der Java Sprache und zeigen wie sie das Design der HotSpot (TM) Performance Engine beinflussen. Schliesslich geben wir eine kurze Uebersicht über mögliche Weiterentwicklungen der Java Virtual Machine Technologie.

HotSpot 2. Teil: Konsequenzen für Java Anwender

In vielen einschlägigen technischen Zeitschriften und Magazinen werden Programmierhinweise angeboten mit dem Ziel die Ausführungsgeschwindigkeit von Java Programmen zu erhöhen. Häufig sind diese Tips und Tricks leider nicht fundiert, oder schlimmer gewisse Techniken können sich langfristig als nachteilig erweisen; dann naemlich, wenn die Virtual Machine Technologie solche Tricks überflüssig macht. Wir zeigen warum man in Programmen auf dieses "Tuning" verzichten sollte, und wieso die HotSpot Technologie einen konsequent objekt-orientierten Programmierstil ohne Geschwindigkeitseinbusse ermöglicht.

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25.05.1999

ULC - A Thin Client Architecture for Java and Smalltalk

SPEAKER: Erich Gamma, Object Technology International. He is the technical director of their Software Technology Center in Zurich, Switzerland
SLIDES: 990525_ULC-ETH99.zip (PowerPoint97 - 134kb)

ULC (Ultra Light Client) is an architecture which supports the deployment of applications with a portable thin client. By using so called faceless ULC widgets an application can run its user interface in a transparent way on a remote machine. ULC widgets communicate with a User Interface Engine which takes care of presenting the user interface on the client with real widgets. This engine is implemented in Java and can be run either as an applet inside a browser or as a standalone application. The construction of a user interface with ULC widgets is done with the standard VisualAge Composition editor. This talk gives an overview of the ULC technology and reports experience in applying this technology in different projects.

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23.04.1999

Application Servers

SPEAKER: Dean Jacobs, BEA WebXpress
SLIDES: 990525_ClusterTalk.zip (zip-File - 129kb)

This talk discusses the ways in which object-oriented technology can be used to construct large-scale, mission-critical distributed systems. The first part of the talk starts with an overview of past and present middleware architectures. It goes on to describe the new object- and component-based distributed programming models, drawing examples from Java, CORBA, and Microsoft. Finally, it shows how the middleware infrastructure must be adapted to support these models, as well as browser/HTTP-based client access. An important theme throughout is the way clustering can be used to provide scalable, highly-available services.
The second part of the talk after the coffee break presents an overview of The WebLogic Application Server. WebLogic provides an integrated, all-Java implementation of the Enterprise Java APIs including RMI, EJB, JNDI, JSP/Servlets, JDBC, and JMS. WebLogic is based on a lightweight, message-passing kernel that manages threading, sockets, peer-JVM connections, and routing. Notably, the kernel allows the peer-to-peer RMI programming model to be implemented on top of a multi-tier infrastructure. WebLogic clusters provide scalable, highly-available services using a variety of load balancing and failover techniques. The cluster implementation contains a number of interesting distributed algorithms, including an IP multicast-based protocol for constructing a replicated naming service, and a mechanism for constructing primary/secondary process pairs.

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03.1999

Java, Corba and SSL
Experience Report of an Extranet Application

SPEAKER: Dr. Alain Hsiung, ideartis consulting
SLIDES: 9903_Java-IIOP-SSL.zip (pps-File - 130kb)

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15.01.1999

Welcome to Direct Net

SPEAKER: Jakob Magun, Ergon Informatik AG
SLIDES: 990105_DirectNetJava.pdf