PinoyJUG 2010: Selenium :: Spring Technology

The Association of Filipino Java Developers(PinoyJUG) will have another set of activity from 7:00 to 11:00 PM on January 29, 2010. It will be held at the G2iX Techbar (5F Orient Square Bldg. F. Ortigas Jr. Rd., Ortigas Center, Pasig City).

This time, there are two topics: Automated Testing with Selenium and Spring Technology. The speaker for the first topic is Aaron Tinio, a senior QA engineer at G2iX and specializes on test automation using Selenium and Ruby. He is a contributor to the Selenium-Client Project, the official Ruby client API for Selenium Remote Control.

He will discuss the advantages of Selenium and how you can utilize it to save you time and achieve flexibility and greater control over your testing.

The next speaker will be Jasper Blues, a software engineer at ValueCommerce Phils. He has been working in the software industry since 1997. Prior to ValueCommerce, he was involved with the development of a product strategy and the design of Microlink's next generation core banking solution - which is based on a grid computing infrastructure. He has also worked for SpringSource Australia - the company behind the leading enterprise framework for Java. During his days at SpringSource, he actively contributed to a number of Spring projects, and was the founder and lead developer of Spring Ldap-ODM, on of the first object to LDAP directory implementations.

In his presentation, he will code live on stage to demonstrate some of the Aspect Oriented Programming features that the Spring Framework provides. It'll all conclude with a bang, when he shows off Spring's answer to the "Aneamic Domain Model" anti-pattern - creating rich domain objects using AspectJ weaving.

According to the organizers, the event will also streamed. Those in Cebu can watch the stream at the G2iX Cebu Techbar.

2009: The Year that was...

The year 2009 has been one of the busiest yet greatest year of my life. Now that it is over, I made a blog entry summarizing what happened to me last year.

There are too many events in this year that are worth remembering. Most notably, I had finished my undergraduate thesis just in time and graduated cum laude despite all the hardships and troubles that came my way. The best thing that happened is my employment at Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Inc.

I attended Orange and Bronze's Java Boot Camp during my first few weeks in the company. During that time, I had gained more knowledge in Java, especially the Java Best practices. It also made me realized the truth about Object-oriented programming. I had learned JSP (Java Server Pages) and Servlets, along with Agile practices, Version Control System, Trac, Design Patterns, Unit Testing and TDD (Test Driven Development). It also made me aware and interested in Groovy and Grails and Java frameworks like Struts, Spring and Hibernate.

I also joined various meetups of the (Association of Filipino Java Developers (PinoyJUG) and Google Technology Users Group Philipines where I learned various technologies and updates. I also attended a Globe+Google Developer Workshop where I have seenththe Google APIs(Application Programming Interface) , Globe APIs, Open Social APIs and other APIs. I became interested to try and use them. My interest in Google technologies extended to Google App Engine and Google Wave. I was one of those who was given a Google Wave developer sandbox account and also one of the few who received Google Wave account early.

In 2009, I also started to read and study books and other instructional materials. As of now, I am studying Groovy and Grails. I also developed a simple Java-based records management app for the student publication (where I once was a part of) of my Alma Mater, Cavite State University Naic Campus. It has already been deployed and is starting to be used. I am already doing the reports feature to be added in the app so users can view and print hard copies of the records.

Other events in 2009 are my creation of a personal blog and registration for accounts in Twitter and Plurk.

Now that 2010 is here, I am expecting it to be another fun, exciting, and educational year. There are a lot of things, technologies and frameworks I want to know more of.

A dream come true?

It is one of my dreams to see the teacher evaluation app we've developed for our school as our thesis project be implemented and used. I had almost given up on this... Now, it is almost a reality...

Manual teacher evaluation in our school normally takes a lot of time and effort. It is one of the reasons I chose to develop a software to help in the evaluation processes. We developed a teacher evaluation app using Java for this.

I had always wanted for our app to be implemented. Thus, I gave my all in that endeavor. We finished developing it after almost sleepless nights and sacrifices. The app we made is still not perfect but it can already be used.

After graduation, I have no idea if they will use it or let it rot along with our thesis documentation. I am not the type of person who would insist to ask them to use it for their own good. After all, there are still some persons who still prefer manual processes over technological advancements right by their sight. So, I just let them do what they want with it... They already have the required files and the user manual to use it anyway.

I had been surprised when my former thesis adviser sent me a message a few days ago. It seems that our school is now interested in using our app but it must be presented to and approved by the Administrative Council first. That actually made my day.

However, they are having problems in setting it up. They want me to help them out. I already have a detailed explanation in the user manual so I don't understand how the error happened. But I am still looking on the positive side of the story. Our app is so close to implementation now.

So on December 11, 2009, I will be going back to my Alma Mater. I am hoping I can set it up properly and wishing it will be approved for implementation next year.