WUG 6/27 - BIRT / WAS Advanced Technologies

The WUG is having two talks on Tuesday that I think will appeal to JUG members.

The first at 5:30 is on Eclipse BIRT for Business Reporting, which is 
enjoying broad success in the open-source world as part of Eclipse Tools, 
and has a good chance to replace Crystal Reports for many purposes..  It 
will have a prominent role in the coordinated Callisto release June 30th 
with the release of Eclipse 3.2, and IBM will be picking it up in its 
tooling too.

The second, at 6:30, covers high-end scaling and ObjectGrid 
capabilities.  Many of the approaches have application beyond 
WebSphere,  to WebLogic, JBoss, and Tomcat.   Bearing in mind the JUG 
attendees, we have asked our speaker to focus more on the technologies than 
on the products.

So we hope to see lots of JUG members there.   It is free to all, and the 
pizza and drinks are free too.

Regards,

Don


Java Reporting / WebSphere Advanced and High-end Technologies

Tues. June 27, 2006
IBM Building 500 Cafeteria
Research Triangle Park, NC

Schedule

5:30 p.m. (sharp) BIRT for Reporting with Eclipse and RAD
6:15 p.m. Pizza and Drinks sponsored by Actuate
6:15 p.m. Announcements, Group Business
6:30 p.m. Main Presentation - WebSphere Advanced and High End Technologies
8:15 p.m. (approx.) Questions / Discussion
8:30 p.m. (approx.) Adjournment

Admission is free of charge.  Pre-registration is helpful but not mandatory 
(see below).


Early Talk (5:30 p.m.)

Reporting and Business Intelligence for Java using Eclipse and RAD

You probably know that Crystal Reports has dominated Business Reporting in 
Java until now.   It has even been distributed by IBM with WebSphere and 
RAD.   That is about to change.  On June 30, Eclipse will release version 
3.2 and Callisto.  Later this year, IBM will release RAD 7 including 
Eclipse 3.2, and also supporting BIRT.

Eclipse BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) is the new 
standard for  Eclipse users generally and, later this year, for IBM RAD 7 
users.   Come and see a full demonstration of how you can use it right now 
to produce compelling reports for both web and PDF, including powerful 
graphics.  You will also see that it exceeds the capabilities of the 
competition, and is far better integrated into Java.

This talk will be given by Actuate, the lead developers of BIRT.


Featured Talk (6:30 p.m.)

WebSphere Advanced and High-end Technologies
Jason McGee,
Distinguished Engineer, WebSphere XD,
Chief Architect, WebSphere Advanced Technology


IBM's most advanced application server technologies are in an add-on called 
XD (for Extended Deployment). Autonomic capabilities -- dynamic clusters 
and health monitoring - are included. It is aimed particularly at the 
Telco, financial and high volume OLTP spaces, but also has much broader 
application. It is competitive with BEA Tuxedo, IBM Encina, and other 
transaction monitors.

The ObjectGrid Java Object Caching framework is a set of advanced object 
caching and replication technologies that is transactional and highly 
customizable. OjectGrid is supported in ANY J2SE (not just servers) 1.4.x 
Java environment. As an example, at one site this feature is being used 
inside Tomcat to reduce database MIPS on a mainframe. The results they are 
seeing is a MIPS reduction of 95%!

The On-Demand Router (ODR) component can be placed in front of any HTTP 
endpoint (older WAS, BEA, Tomcat, JBoss, .NET, static web servers, etc). 
This topology allows providing advanced, policy-based, autonomic workload 
management to any of these server environments (or a mixture of all of them).

One customer in the investment banking sector used the partition facility 
to build an OLTP partitioned stateful grid and the WorkManager/CommonJ APIs 
for advanced threading supporting each partition, using CMP for 
persistence. The solution exceeded objectives by a factor of ten.

This talk is not a sales talk.  Its applicability is not restricted to IBM 
environments.  These technologies have broad relevance  If you have any 
interest whatsoever in Application Server deployment (IBM or non-IBM) for 
high performance, this talk will be rewarding for you.

Jason McGee is Distinguished Engineer, WebSphere XD and Chief Architect, 
WebSphere Advanced Technology, and will discuss WebSphere Advanced 
Technologies.   He is one of the most senior technical architects of 
WebSphere, managing a team of other architects.


Directions to the Meeting

Distance from Raleigh (17 miles) / Durham (8 miles) / Chapel Hill (12 miles)

 From I-40, take Exit 280 - Davis Drive. At the end of the exit ramp, take 
a right (North) onto Davis Drive. Continue straight on Davis Drive for 
about 0.5 miles. Take a right on Cornwallis road. Go about 1/2 mile, you 
will cross over railroad tracks. At the IBM gate keep to the right.

If the rightmost gate is down,  press on the intercom button and tell the 
remote guard that you are attending the WebSphere User Group meeting, and 
give him your name. He will open the gate for you.

Our IBM host is Greg Ackerman - they may ask for his name.

Go through gate, follow the road around past the first Tivoli Building, 
looking for signs leading to Building 500 or "Software Group." It should be 
the third road on the left.

It can be a little tricky, so please allow some extra time the first time.

You will see a visitors' parking lot. Turn in and park, and walk to the 
Building 500 lobby.   If that parking lot is not accessible, you would need 
to continue on and park behind the building.

See 
<http://www.rtprug.org/sitemap.pdf>http://www.rtpwug.org/sitemap.pdf  for a 
map.

Pre-Registration

We have implemented a pre-registration system for meetings. While not 
mandatory for attendance, this will allow us to provide pre-printed 
attendance badges at the door that will get you into the meeting more quickly.

If you would like to pre-register,  please send email 
to<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]  with your
    * name
    * organization (e.g. company or school or self)
    * citizenship
    * date of birth (needed only if citizenship is other than U.S.)
    * email address

Please note that:
    * If you are a citizen of Hong Kong, Macao, or PR China (and not a 
permanent U.S resident with a "green card" or IBMer) pre-registration is 
mandatory, since your visit must be pre-approved. Please contact 
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] for details.
    * If you are NOT a citizen of Hong Kong, Macao, or the PRC (and not an 
IBMer or U.S. permanent resident with a "green card") pre-registration is 
NOT mandatory, but it is quicker: we will need to log the information above 
at the door, which might take a few minutes.
    * IBM staff with active badges can enter the building in the usual 
manner, without pre-approval or pre-registration.

  If it's getting late, that's no problem at all.  Just show up and we will 
make out a badge at the door.