Rod Johnson, Creator, Spring

Rod is the father of Spring. The Spring Framework open source project began in February 2003, based on the Interface21 framework published with Rod's best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development.

Rod is one of the world's leading authorities on Java and J2EE development. He is a best-selling author, experienced consultant, and open source developer, as well as a popular conference speaker.

Rod's best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (2002) was one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE. The sequel, J2EE without EJB (July 2004, with Juergen Hoeller), has proven almost equally significant, establishing a comprehensive vision for lightweight, post-EJB J2EE development.

Rod has extensive experience as a consultant in a wide range of industries: principally, finance, media and insurance. He has specialized in server-side Java development since 1996. Prior to that, he worked mainly in C and C++. His experience as a consultant has led him to see problems from a client's perspective as well as a technology perspective, and has driven his influential criticism of bloated, inefficient, orthodox approaches to J2EE architecture, which have delivered very poor results for stakeholders.

Rod is the founder of the Spring Framework, which began from code published with Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development. Along with Juergen Hoeller, he continues to lead the development of Spring.

He regularly speaks at conferences in the US, Europe and Asia, including the ServerSide Symposium (2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006), JavaPolis (Europe's leading Java conference) in 2004 and 2005, JavaZone (2004 and 2005) and JAOO (2004). He was awarded a prize for giving one of the top 20 presentations (by evaluation) at JavaOne in 2005, and delivered keynotes at the JavaWorld conference in Tokyo, June, 2005, the JAX conference in Munich (October, 2005) and the Spring Experience conference in Bal Harbour, Florida, in December 2005.

Rod serves in the JCP on the Expert Groups defining the Servlet 2.4 and JDO 2.0 specifications. His status as a leader in the Java community has been recognized through his invitation to Sun's Java Champions program. Rod continues to be actively involved in client projects at Interface21, as well as Spring development, writing and evangelism.

Rod Johnson's Weblog.

Presentation: "Spring 2 and Beyond"

Track: Java in Action

Time: Wednesday 11:00 - 12:00

Location: Elizabeth Windsor

Abstract:

Spring 2.0 takes POJO-based development to a new level of sophistication. The themes of Spring 2.0 are simplicity and power: it makes existing tasks even easier, while extending the power of Spring to new areas.

In this session, Rod Johnson will explain a number of the important enhancements and new features, including:

XML extensibility features, allowing "custom tags" to extend the capabilities of Spring configuration
Significant enhancements in the Spring AOP framework, making the powerful AspectJ pointcut expression language available in the Spring runtime
First-class support for dynamic languages such as Groovy and JRuby, as the Spring component model becomes cross-language
Integration with the new Java Persistence API standard for O/R mapping

Rod will also explain how Spring 2.0 is not merely an end in itself, but a launchpad for further innovation, giving you an insight into the roadmap and plans for 2007.

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Presentation: "AOP in the Enterprise"

Track: Java in Action

Time: Wednesday 14:30 - 15:30

Location: Elizabeth Windsor

Abstract:

Wouldn't it be good if we could always implement requirements using the vocabulary in which we naturally talk about them? Wouldn't it be good if we could banish cut-and-paste coding and implement each requirement in a single code module?

In this session Rod Johnson will describe the place of AOP in the construction of enterprise applications, without buzzwords. Using a practical, example-driven approach, attendees will learn how to simplify the implementation of many common enterprise application requirements. The way you think about software may never be the same again...

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