[ajug-members] If you were interviewing a Java architect...

Fri Feb 9 13:29:20 EST 2007

At an AJUG meeting last summer, Burr did a "raise you hand if" survey of the crowd.  Significantly more hands went up when he asked "if you are using Spring and Hibernate" versus when he asked "if you are using EJB".  So it appears that's what the cool kids were using, at least last summer, but that was before many containers were supporting EJB3.  A quick search on Monster gives 286 results for EJB and 250 for Spring and Hibernate.  I'd wager that Spring and Hibernate would have gotten very few hits just a year or two ago, so EJB definitely lost some ground to those technologies.  There's also a book out, "J2EE Development Without EJB", which I've heard good things about but haven't read.  Two years ago if you said that you were going to architect a J2EE system with significant transactional business logic without EJB, people in the Corporate Architecture Office would have had you hung without a trial (Joe, ask Dave Abeita about that).  These days, you would at least have
 a shot at getting a fair trial.  People seem to be asking the question, "do I really need EJBs?", rather than taking for granted that J2EE means a system that includes EJBs.  I think that is a good thing.

Douglas Morgan, Ph.D. 
President 
Breakpoint LLC 
Suite 100 
1217 Bellaire Drive 
Atlanta, GA 30319 
404.316.8451 phone 
866.308.3261 fax 
doug.morgan at breakpointllc.com

----- Original Message ----
From: Joe Eugene <eugene.joe at gmail.com>
To: General AJUG membership forum (100-200 messages/month) <ajug-members at ajug.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2007 11:46:09 PM
Subject: Re: [ajug-members] If you were interviewing a Java architect...

> Besides, EJBs are out of date, it's all Spring and Hibernate these
days.

Jave EE 5 EJBs out of date? the current spec seems to have evolved
from authors of popular frameworks.

- Joe

On 2/7/07, douglas at morganatlanta.com <douglas at morganatlanta.com> wrote:
>
>
> Check out the International Association of Software Architects
> http://www.iasahome.org/web/home/home
>
> If you can understand just a small portion of what people talk about on that
> site, you'll do fine.
>
> Just kidding.  Sort of.  I had the title of Chief Architect for a large
> software company and didn't understand half of it.  Mostly because half of
> it solves problems I didn't have, and you probably don't have in your area
> of applications.  Knowing which half is important to you is part of what
> being a good architect is all about.  Maybe you just don't need SOA for your
> thing, but you should know what SOA stands for and when you might need it.
>
> To move from being a developer to being an architect you need to understand
> the various patterns that cut across applications in your domain.  Note the
> "in your domain" part.  This generally requires some specialization, so
> don't feel too bad if you don't have much experience with EJBs.  Have you
> developed state management and secuirty frameworks for JSP/Struts/JSF?
> That's architecture and just as complex and difficult as what you'll do in
> EJBs.  Besides, EJBs are out of date, it's all Spring and Hibernate these
> days.  Actually, that was last year.  It's probably something else by now...
>
> The things I found useful were books on patterns (Design Patterns, Patterns
> of Enterprise Architectures) and digging into the code behind some of the
> popular frameworks.  This is a way to review really smart peoples' work.
> Ask yourself questions like what does
> Spring/Hibernate/JSF/NextBigThing really do?  What problems
> with the earlier method were they trying to solve?  What tradeoffs did the
> designers make?  Why did they choose to do it that way?  Why are people
> ditching EJB for Spring/Hibernate?  Why do some otherwise reasonable people
> prefer .NET over J2EE?  What's this Ruby thing all about?  Where is that
> useful?  In what situations would an ESB be useful?  How might using JSF
> instead of Struts help an organization?  If you had an application with 500
> configuration options and you had to manage 50 different installations of
> the application, how might you want to store and manage the individual
> installation's options?  How would you make your application agnostic as to
> how you stored those options?  What if you had to create a second, third or
> fourth application with similar characteristics, would that change your
> answer?  If you had to regularly share security credentials with other
> applications for single sign on, and none of those applications followed any
> standard for what those credentials were and how that would be handed back
> and forth, how might you want to design your application's handling of
> security credentials?  (those were a couple of my problems, not necessarily
> one you'd run into).  If you could stand up at the white board in an
> interview and answer questions like that you'd do fine.
>
> Oh, and to be a really good architect you have to be a really good developer
> first, so all requirements for that job apply as well.
>  Douglas Morgan, Ph.D.
> President
> Breakpoint LLC
> Suite 100
> 1217 Bellaire Drive
> Atlanta, GA 30319
> 404.316.8451 phone
> 866.308.3261 fax
> doug.morgan at breakpointllc.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Parna Hiram <parna.hiram at gmail.com>
> To: ajug-members at ajug.org
> Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 9:32:14 AM
> Subject: [ajug-members] If you were interviewing a Java architect...
>
> What questions would you ask?
>
> I'm looking to step up to the next level. I have years of Java experience
> but have stayed mainly in developer roles officially. However, I'd like to
> pursue a position as an architect. I feel I have served from time to time as
> this role for our group, but nothing seriously substantial over time.
>
> If you were hiring a Java architect, what questions would you ask? What
> would be important? What would capture your attention in a good way? In a
> bad way? What are the absolute minimum requirements?
>
> Additionally, most of my time has been spent on the Servlet/JSP world...not
> so much on the EJB side. What might I do to shore up my experience on this
> end?
>
> Finally, is there a required reading list?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Kind regards,
> Parna
> _______________________________________________
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