APAC Trip, JBoss AS5, Red Hat and Google on Next Generation Web Application Development

it’s been a week that I came back from a long trip around Asia with Peter Muir. Now that the backlog of emails and urgent tasks is reduced to a decent size, it is time to write about some of the most interesting events that happened in the last few weeks.
The one that keeps coming to mind is: JBoss AS 5 is now GA !
Well, you must think, that’s been a week now, wake up Bruno. Anyway, I just want to say thanks to the JBoss team and the numerous contributors who made this possible. I am sure you read Sacha’s blog, but if you haven’t then you should: http://sacha.labourey.com/2008/12/05/as-500-we-are-done-next/
I also like reading Rich Sharples Blog: http://blog.softwhere.org/. I read both Rich and Sacha’s not only because I’ll be able to find anything that’s happening at JBoss, but more importantly they inspire me with their vision and insight in the software engineering world.

So now I am also done with AS5 and getting some browny points from Sacha and Rich, let’s get onto other interesting move in the RIA space, read here:
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2078429/

Google Web Toolkit and Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware Enable Next Generation Web Application Development

The announcement that Red Hat has signed the Google Contributor Agreement confirmed our commitment to provide the most flexible, open and productive development framework.
When traveling with Pete, I learned a lot about Seam and Web Beans and I was really impressed by Seam’s flexible architecture and the Team’s commitment to give developers the ability to select between different technology. For example you can choose Flex which is fully integrated with Seam. [http://www.seamframework.org/Community/FlexAndSeamIntegration].

Another great addition to our new Microcontainer is the ability to provide enteprise capabilities to apps build with Ruby on Rails or even CFML.

Check out Bob’s blog: http://oddthesis.org/theses/enterprise-on-rails

And Gert Franz’s CFML Engine: Railo [http://www.railo-technologies.com/en/index.cfm?treeID=357] which is soon going to enjoy the same level of  integration.

While my Korean, Chineese and Japaneese are close to non-existant, I would like to give you some feedback on the Opensource eco-system on that side of the world.

We’ll start with Korea since this is where we first landed after our Australian visit. Pete and I where presenting at the opensource symposium and we had the opportunity to meet with some of the JCO [http://www.javacommunity.org/] community members, including Hyung-Bai Kim, Vice President. After the event which counted a large crowd (over 600 participant) we sat together for hours, sharing our  opensource vision and epxerience. It was a great meeting followed by a traditional Korean dinner. I was impressed by the breadth and depth of their technical expertise. I can’t wait to meet with them again, it is such a great opportunity to build a relationship with the Korean community.

JCO has an impressive community, over 100,000 java developers. Local JBoss team contributed to create a localized  web site: http://www.jbossian.com/.

Korean’s trip was a very nice experience.

Japan was next. First, it felt like Blade Runner, as we arrived late at night, jet lagged to the max and really tired from the Korean treatment . We got ready for the next couple of days of meetings with fellow open-sourcers and some analysts. The event “JBoss Compass Tokyo” [http://www.jp.redhat.com/event/200811jboss_compass.html] was packed with a very techie audience. Questions not only targeted JBoss and Java technology, instead there was a strong focus on our opensource strategy and roadmap. It was very important for the Japanese public to understand that JBoss is and will remain open source.

China should have been next, however due to issues getting a Visa on time, the trip is postponed.

Stay tuned.