Maxa Blog

Add BIRT Reporting to JSF Applications using RichFaces recording is available here. You can also download the complete application I showed during the webinar here.

Next week (Thursday, Feb 25th) I will be teaching 1-day RichFaces workshop on the last day of JSFDays conference in Vienna, Austria. If you are new to RichFaces, this is an excellent opportunity to learn everything you need in just 1 day. RichFaces is very simple, yet powerful and flexible if you just know a few basics (1. sending an Ajax request, 2. partial tree processing, 3. partial page update, 4. using queues, 5. using component JS API).

I’ve been teaching RichFaces for over 4 years and I always tell my students, you really just need to be familiar with a few core concepts. That’s it, everything else is based on these concepts. Now, if you have been using RichFaces for some time, you will greatly benefit from the workshop as well. You will learn new features and concepts that you might not know existed. You don’t know how many times I heard form students that used RichFaces previously: “we didn’t know we can do that, now it makes sense, it’s so easy”.

All the core concepts are carried to using rich: tags as well. We will cover a few extra features such as using built-in RichFaces functions, component JavaScript API and facets. Again, once you know the basics, you can use any component in RichFaces. We will then cover using and customising skins. We will finish with RichFaces 4 and what features it adds on top of JSF 2 and specifically Ajax features.

You can review the outline for the workshop here. There is still time to register!

I’m also doing a general session on RichFaces on Tuesday, Feb 23rd. Exadel is a sponsor and we are going to have a table at the conference so stop by and say hello.

Several members of the RichFaces and JBoss Tools teams will be presenting at the Modern Java Technologies Workshop in Minsk, Belarus. From the RichFaces team Nick Belaevski and Ilya Shaikovsky will be discussing Java Server Faces 2.0, and then two topics on RichFaces 3.3.X and 4.0.X.

More information (more information in Russian).

To register, send an email to conference@exadel.com

Exadel and Actuate are doing a webinar on how to add BIRT reporting to JSF application with RichFaces. Virgil Dodson, Developer Evangelist (Actuate) and myself will be presenting during the webinar.

Register here

Abstract:
In this technical session, you will be introduced to the popular open source Eclipse BIRT technology and learn how to easily add reporting and data visualizations to JSF web applications. You will find out about the capabilities of the BIRT designer and run-time engine and how to easily create tables, graphs, and charts using a drag-and-drop design paradigm.

You will then learn about the popular RichFaces JSF component library, the new integration available with BIRT, and see a demonstration on how to seamlessly add BIRT reports to JSF applications. Attendees will learn:

· About using the BIRT designer
· How to add rich data visualizations and reports based on BIRT into JSF applications
· How to wrap a BIRT report as a JSF component
· Techniques to pass parameters for more dynamic and filtered reports
· How to make page updates fast, using RichFaces’ AJAX capabilities

Register for the webinar here.

I’m presenting and teaching at the JSFdays 2010 conference in Vienna, Austria February 23-25th, 2010. The conference is being held for the 3rd year and is a great place to learn about JSF and everything that’s happening around JSF.

I’m presenting a session on RichFaces on Wednesday, February 23rd. The session will cover RichFaces 3.x as well as new RichFaces 4 based on JSF 2. On the last day (February 25th), I’m teaching a full day RichFaces workshop. If you are new to RichFaces, this would be a great opportunity to learn everything you need to know in just one day. We will cover all the core concepts, features and tags. If you are already using RichFaces, this workshop will fill in many gaps in your knowledge, and you will also be introduced to concepts and features you might never known existed. On Thursday, February 24th, I’m participating in a Rich Internet Applications forum.

Outline for RichFaces workshop

1. RichFaces core concepts
   1. Sending an Ajax request
   2. Partial view rendering
   3. Partial view processing
   4. View scope
   5. Using queues to control traffic
   6. More a4j:tags (a4j:repeat, a4j:status, a4j:actionparam, a4j:log and more)
2. rich: tags
   1. Inputs, in-place edit
   2. Selects
   3. Validation
   4. Data iteration
   5. Menus
   6. Other
   7. RichFaces functions
3. Skins
   1. Using out-of-the-box skins
   2. Creating custom skins
   3. Loading different skins in runtime
   4. Overwriting styles generated by skins
4. RichFaces 4.0 and JSF 2 integration

2009 was a good year. RichFaces is more popular than ever today. Exadel has participated in hundreds of RichFaces engagements this year. I don’t remember how many trainings I’ve done this year but just since September I had a RichFaces training every other week. The forum is very active. RichFaces now has two books, one is mine, Practical RichFaces (Apress). The other books is called JBoss RichFaces 3.3 (Packt). There is also RichFaces DZone RefCard available.

My blog traffic has been steadily growing this year. To make it easier for readers, I have tagged all my RichFaces howto’s, tips and tricks with richfaces-howto tag. Now you can find all the posts quickly. And of course I also started using Twitter (http://twitter.com/maxkatz) this year. My first tweet and my first follower @kito99 via http://firstfollower.com/

If you tried JSF 2 (and you should, it’s much better than JSF 1.2. Here is a great post by Andy Schwartz and here is my JSF 2 series), you will notice that core Ajax features in JSF 2 are very similar to what has been available in RichFaces for a very long time now. You will see that f:ajax tag in JSF 2 works very similar to the popular a4j:support tag (see this blog post and this for more info). The RichFaces team is already working on RichFaces 4 which will be based on JSF 2.

This year I attended and spoke at a number of conferences. I started with JSFdays in Vienna, Austria in early April. End of April I attended JAX in Maintz, Germany. In June, I spoke at JavaOne 2009 and beginning of September presented at JBoss World in Chicago. My final conference was JSFSummit in Orlando in December.

With trainings and conferences (and some personal travel), I flew over 150,000 on United this year which makes me 1K again. I’m looking forward to system wide upgrades (for international travel) and new unlimited upgrades United announced earlier this year. If you travel frequently, I definitely recommend trying to stick with one airline. Even if you just get entry level status, travel usually becomes more pleasant.

Next year already looks very interesting. I already have three trainings booked and two conferences. I will be presenting and teaching RichFaces workshop JSFdays 2010 in Vienna in February and presenting for the first time at TheServerSide Symposium in Las Vegas in March.

If you have been reading my blog, you will know that we have been doing some interesting stuff with JavaFX. Exadel has been working on JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse and Flamingo framework. We have also worked on JavaFX and JSF integration. Although we could wished for a stronger “acceptance” of JavaFX this year especially in the enterprise, nevertheless, the community has been growing very strong. I have approached Sun on two different occasions with an offer to work together on some of the enterprise features for JavaFX but never got a reply back. Now that Oracle-Sun deal is close to being final and once Oracle takes ownership of JavaFX, we hope it [Oracle] will start using more JavaFX in the enterprise.

2010 (how are you going to say 2010?) is looking to be very interesting year. We have RichFaces 4.0, our JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse is going to be open source and have been adding very interesting mobile feature to Flamingo such as connector for Android. JavaFX and JSF integration also sounds very interesting. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

I’m presenting at TheServerSide Java Symposium – TheClientSide conference in Las Vegas, NV on March 17-19th.

$200 Discount
Get $200 discount by using special FRIENDOFSPKR code. To redeem this special offer, register online with the code FRIENDOFSPKR and you’ll automatically save $200 (conference’s best rate)!

Ajax Applications with RichFaces and JSF 2
This session will demonstrate how to build Ajax applications with RichFaces and JSF 2. Read more >>.

Rich Enterprise Applications with JavaFX
This session will demonstrate how to build rich enterprise applications with JavaFX.
Read more >>.

I attended David Geary’s talk on Killer Web Apps with JSF 2 Ajax at JSF Summit where he demonstrated Ajax features in JSF 2. As you start with JSF 2, you will notice that many Ajax features in JSF 2 are very similar to what RichFaces has been providing for a number of years now.

RichFaces 4 will be based on JSF 2 and will provide some interesting advanced features on top of standard JSF 2 Ajax. Some features are advanced queues, advanced rendering features and tags such as a4j:poll, a4j:status and more. Here is a blog entry that demonstrates Ajax features in RichFaces 3.3.x, JSF 2 and RichFaces 4.

JSF Summit 2009 is starts tomorrow in Orlando, Florida. I’m doing a session on Ajax Applications with RichFaces and JSF2 on Wednesday, at 11:00am. Stop by and say hello.

If you are still interested to attend the conference, I can get you a 50% discount of the registration price.

JSF Summit is quickly approaching. There is still time to register and get special discount from Exadel. When you register, just enter exadel200jsf to get $200 off. Lastly, if you contact me directly I might be able to get you a discount of up to 50% off. I only have a few of these left so don’t wait!