Dienstag, 19. November 2002

Honesty: Ovidiu wonders: "One bad part about knowing people in person, is that you can't tell when people are just being polite or they really mean it when they say your talk was good.". That's true. However his talk was really good and he's a really nice guy as well :). It really is a shame that we are leaving later and not staying for another evening of "socializing". Next time Ovidiu!

Break: Break was interesting - presenting the debugger, talks on the upcoming new version of the portal, book signing and general geek talk. Now is the last presentation and Marc from Outerthought is presenting the (upcoming) Outerthought product XReporter. After that the book raffle (Carsten and I have sponsored two copies) and the evening reception where things will wind down. And then we hit the road to speed back to Paderborn. Hello Dominic :-) At least someone is reading..

Back on track: Torsten's presentation shows how much stuff is available in Cocoon - but it also shows some of the confusion new users encounter when looking at all this stuff. So a consolidation of technology is in order.

Laughter: Ovidiu and Sylvain are staring at the TiBook screen and laughing - they are working out whether to buy me one or two Segways :). Weblogs in action...

Buy my Xmas present: Anyone wanting to get me an Xmas present - here it is. And cheap!

Download the presentations: Here is a link where you can get the PDF versions of the presentations. As Steven says - perhaps you can make more sense of our weblogs if you read the slides in tandem. Next up: Next up is Torsten Curdt. "Building web applications with Cocoon.". First Torsten talks about the ways web applications are built. Now he is discussing what is in Cocoon that will help you build applications.

Ovidiu is in the house: Our favorite HP employee takes the mike to talk about the Cocoon control flow. Geek stuff for sure - but becoming more important as people look to Cocoon as a way of building complete web applications. I have found a power outlet so no more staring at the battery indicator. Ovidiu starts. "Control flow is MVC+ for Cocoon". "Script languages are just as powerful as 'normal' programming languages. So why make the difference?" In a flow script which is written in JavaScript you can use sendPage() to call a pipeline for view generation. While the user is reading the page you send back, the flow script is waiting - but not using a thread. All information is saved into a continuation object and the form's URIs are mapped to the stored continuation object. So you write the controller using a JavaScript script. The View layer is then an XSP page in your pipeline. The model is the data object you pass from the controller to the view pipeline (currently a JavaBean or JavaScript object). In the View layer (XSP) you can use JXPath to retrieve data from or about the continuation object. At the moment the view is only XSP - but a Cocoon transformer is being worked on as is Velocity support. JSTL is another option currently being investigated. Steven has a picture up from the talk here. Ovidiu is fielding the questions after the first part of his great talk. "I want to make sure everybody understands this far. It's pretty braindamaging stuff." Now into the advanced topics. Ovidiu explains variable scoping and how you can use the special cocoon object inside the script. Now he is onto the problems of using the "browser back button". How do you expire continuations? invalidate() function on the continuation object or time based (TBD). What's left? New ways of generating the view, Automatic expiration of continuations and documentation!!

Lunch break. Lots of nice Belgian sandwiches to eat and the discussions are flying. The next version of the Cocoon portal, when will then next Cocoon version be out, changes to interfaces, Transactions in Cocoon...and and and. Already there is talk of a repeat event next year. Attendee update: Steven tells me that 90 are here. Most of those who did not turn up are actually from Belgium..

Interesting: "Four of Microsoft's seven business divisions lost money in the most recent quarter, according to financial statements the company filed last week." [via Dave]

Hot Spots a comming: At last - T-Mobile starts with WLAN hotspots in Germany. Carsten has now moved on to the "more interesting" stuff - the portal. Unfortunately my battery is fast runnning down so I will need to do a blogging break and recharge over lunch.

Cocoon Portal: Carsten is next after a break. Lots of interesting talks and the Cocoon Debugger is popular. Carsten started (Applause even before he starts :-)). First Carsten hits off with the history of the portal and authentication frameworks. The authentication framework is next.

From a quick count it would seem as though there are at least 100 people here.

Sylvain has finished his "techie" presentation on running Cocoon on small devices and is now answering questions. Next up is a break (I think). Ovidiu is sitting behind me and looks as though he is writing his blog. He has a TIBook with him. <Envy>. Update: I really do wish I had bought my iBook with me - more battery life and easier WiFi setup!

It works! I now have the wireless up and am sitting in Sylvains presentation on micro-cocoon. Steven is next to me and blogging too. Steven kicked off the day with a short introduction and then I then presented Introducing Cocoon.

Arrived in Ghent early afternoon to find the hotel was full. So we had to move to a different hotel which meant driving round the city again. And Ghent is not meant for cars! Lots of one-way streets. At the hotel we met Sylvain Wallez at check-in and spent the afternoon looking at the city and chatting about Cocoon projects and training. The next person to meet was Ovidiu and then around 20 Cocooners for an evening of spare ribs and lots of Cocoon talk. Great stuff.

Good Morning Europe: Good morning from the heart of Belgium. Here in Ghent the Cocoon Getttogether is getting underway. I have my PC hooked up via cable - because I am too stupid to get it to connect to the wireless. It's a lot easier on my iBook!