I was fortunate enough to attend the No Fluff Just Stuff JSF Summit this week in Orlando Florida.  I entered with an open mind and left with a long list of technologies to evaluate.  As expected, I left with a greater understanding of CDI and JSF 2.0.  The presenters were  friendly and accessible and made a great effort to reach out to new users.  I had an opportunity to speak to all the presenters individually at the many breaks and social events.  They all listened to my perspective as well as the perspectives of the other attendees and seemed to genuinely respect our input.  I came in knowing no one and left meeting many new friends.  Like all NFJS presentations, the catering and accommodations was first rate.

The presenters included influential Java celebrities and presentation circuit veterans like Ed Burns, David Geary, Andy Schwartz, Kito Mann, and Dan Allen.  Arguably more interesting were the presentations for technologies from presenters you may not have heard of yet.  Stan Silvert, Cagatay Civici, and Lincoln Baxter III surprised many of us with excellent presentations on JSFSpy, PrimeFaces, and PrettyFaces.  Many other presentations got rave reviews, but I wasn’t able to attend all of them The overall theme was JSF 2.0 as well as components of JEE6 and JSF 1.2 technologies.  No technical conference would be complete without good speeches.  Dan Allen’s JEE6 keynote was energetic and genuinely inspiring and Jay Balunas’ closing speech on the virtues standardization was an enjoyable close to a wonderful conference.

For me, the technical highlights were CDI, JSF 2.0 standardized ajax, view parameters, view parameter templating and converters, composite components, and resource handling in JSF 2.  I’ll attempt to give the features the coverage they deserve in individual blog posts next year. The JEE6 release is more than exciting, it’s a game-changer.  The JCP has come up with the best JEE release yet and from what I’ve seen, they have a better stack than any competing technology on the market.  With modest promotion effort, they are likely to expand their marketshare beyond existing JSF users to new users from other frameworks and even win back a few frustrated Java users who defected to Ruby, PHP, and .NET.

I left the long conference both exhausted and full of hope for the future of the Java platform.

The specific sessions I attended were:

• JSF 2: Keeping Progress Coming by Dan Allen and Andy Schwartz
• EZComp: Composite Components in JSF 2.0 by Ed Burns
• Polyglot JavaServer Faces by Kito Mann
• Maturing your application’s security with Seam Security by Dan Allen
• CDI (JSR-299), Weld and the future of Seam by Dan Allen
• Killer Web apps with JSF 2.0: Ajax by David Geary
• Upgrading to JSF 2 by Kito Mann
• The Portlet Bridge and the 2.0s by Michael Freedman
• JSF Component Behaviors Deep Dive by Andy Schwartz
• PrettyFaces – Harness SEO, Improve User Experience, Ease Development by Lincoln Baxter III
• Dumping JSF by Stan Silvert

Lincoln Baxter III deserves special mention for delivering the most entertaining session of the bunch.  He not only delivered a first rate presentation on his PrettyFaces project, but he rickrolled the audience and segued into a brief dance routine…all in the name of demonstrating the importance of RESTful URLs…something the Java community needs to take more seriously.

I left the conference very hopeful for the JEE platform and think 2010 will a great year for the Java platform.

Further Reading

• JSF 2.0 Community Homepage http://www.javaserverfaces.org/
• JSFSpy:  http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/JSFSpy
• PrettyFaces RESTful URLs http://ocpsoft.com/prettyfaces/
• PrimeFaces JSF Components http://primefaces.prime.com.tr/en/
• RichFaces 4.0
• JSF Summit