Posts Tagged ‘Development’
[DevoxxPL2022] Java 17 & 18: What’s New and Noteworthy • Piotr Przybył
Piotr Przybył, a seasoned software gardener at AtomicJar, captivated the audience at Devoxx Poland 2022 with a comprehensive deep dive into the new features and enhancements introduced in Java 17 and 18. His presentation, rich with technical insights and practical demonstrations, explored key updates that empower developers to write more robust, maintainable, and efficient code. Piotr’s engaging style, peppered with humor and real-world examples, provided a clear roadmap for leveraging these advancements in modern Java development.
Sealed Classes for Controlled Inheritance
One of the standout features of Java 17 is sealed classes, introduced as JEP 409. Piotr explained how sealed classes allow developers to restrict which classes or interfaces can extend or implement a given type, offering fine-grained control over inheritance. This is particularly useful for library maintainers who want to prevent unintended code reuse while allowing specific extensions. By using the sealed keyword and a permits clause, developers can define a closed set of subclasses, with options to mark them as final, sealed, or non-sealed. Piotr’s demo illustrated this with a library type hierarchy, showing how sealed classes enhance code maintainability and prevent misuse through inheritance.
Enhanced Encapsulation and UTF-8 by Default
Java 17’s JEP 403 strengthens encapsulation by removing illegal reflective access, a change Piotr humorously likened to “closing the gates to reflection demons.” Previously, developers could bypass encapsulation using setAccessible(true), but Java 17 enforces stricter access controls, requiring code fixes or the use of --add-opens flags for legacy systems. Additionally, Java 18’s JEP 400 sets UTF-8 as the default charset for I/O operations, resolving discrepancies across platforms. Piotr demonstrated how to handle encoding issues, advising developers to explicitly specify charsets to ensure compatibility, especially for Windows users.
Deprecating Finalization and Introducing Simple Web Server
Java 18’s JEP 421 marks the deprecation of the finalize method for removal, signaling the end of a problematic mechanism for resource cleanup. Piotr’s demo highlighted the non-deterministic nature of finalization, advocating for try-with-resources as a modern alternative. He also showcased Java 18’s simple web server (JEP 408), a lightweight tool for serving static files during development or testing. Through a programmatic example, Piotr demonstrated how to start a server on port 9000 and dynamically modify CSS files, emphasizing its utility for quick prototyping.
Pattern Matching for Switch and Foreign Function API
Piotr explored Java 18’s pattern matching for switch (JEP 420), a preview feature that enhances switch statements and expressions. This feature supports null handling, guarded patterns, and type-based switching, eliminating the need for cumbersome if-else checks. His demo showed how to switch over objects, handle null cases, and use guards to refine conditions, making code more concise and readable. Additionally, Piotr introduced the Foreign Function and Memory API (JEP 419), an incubator module for safe, efficient interoperation with native code. He demonstrated allocating off-heap memory and calling C functions, highlighting the API’s thread-safety and scope-bound memory management.
Random Generators and Deserialization Filters
Java 17’s JEP 356 introduces enhanced pseudo-random number generators, offering a unified interface for various random number implementations. Piotr’s demo showcased switching between generators like Random, SecureRandom, and ThreadLocalRandom, simplifying random number generation for diverse use cases. Java 17 also improves deserialization filters (JEP 415), allowing per-stream customization to enhance security against malicious data. These updates, combined with other enhancements like macOS Metal rendering and larger G1 heap regions, underscore Java’s commitment to performance and security.
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[DevoxxPL2022] Integrate Hibernate with Your Elasticsearch Database • Bartosz de Boulange
At Devoxx Poland 2022, Bartosz de Boulange, a Java developer at BGŻ BNP Paribas, Poland’s national development bank, delivered an insightful presentation on Hibernate Search, a powerful tool that seamlessly integrates traditional Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) with NoSQL databases like Elasticsearch. Bartosz’s talk focused on enabling full-text search capabilities within SQL-based applications, offering a practical solution for developers seeking to enhance search functionality without migrating entirely to a NoSQL ecosystem. Through a blend of theoretical insights and hands-on coding demonstrations, he illustrated how Hibernate Search can address complex search requirements in modern applications.
The Power of Full-Text Search
Bartosz began by addressing the challenge of implementing robust search functionality in applications backed by SQL databases. For instance, in a bookstore application, users might need to search for specific phrases within thousands of reviews. Traditional SQL queries, such as LIKE statements, are often inadequate for such tasks due to their limited ability to handle complex text analysis. Hibernate Search solves this by enabling full-text search, which includes character filtering, tokenization, and normalization. These features allow developers to remove irrelevant characters, break text into searchable tokens, and standardize data for efficient querying. Unlike native SQL full-text search capabilities, Hibernate Search offers a more streamlined and scalable approach, making it ideal for applications requiring sophisticated search features.
Integrating Hibernate with Elasticsearch
The core of Bartosz’s presentation was a step-by-step guide to integrating Hibernate Search with Elasticsearch. He outlined five key steps: creating JPA entities, adding Hibernate Search dependencies, annotating entities for indexing, configuring fields for NoSQL storage, and performing initial indexing. By annotating entities with @Indexed, developers can create indexes in Elasticsearch at application startup. Fields are annotated as @FullTextField for tokenization and search, @KeywordField for sorting, or @GenericField for basic querying. Bartosz emphasized the importance of the @FullTextField, which enables advanced search capabilities like fuzzy matching and phrase queries. His live coding demo showcased how to set up a Docker Compose file with MySQL and Elasticsearch, configure the application, and index a bookstore’s data, demonstrating the ease of integrating these technologies.
Scalability and Synchronization Challenges
A significant advantage of using Elasticsearch with Hibernate Search is its scalability. Unlike Apache Lucene, which is limited to a single node and suited for smaller projects, Elasticsearch supports distributed data across multiple nodes, making it ideal for enterprise applications. However, Bartosz highlighted a key challenge: synchronization between SQL and NoSQL databases. Changes in the SQL database may not immediately reflect in Elasticsearch due to communication overhead. To address this, he introduced an experimental outbox polling coordination strategy, which uses additional SQL tables to maintain update order. While still in development, this feature promises to improve data consistency, a critical aspect for production environments.
Practical Applications and Benefits
Bartosz demonstrated practical applications of Hibernate Search through a bookstore example, where users could search for books by title, description, or reviews. His demo showed how to query Elasticsearch for terms like “Hibernate” or “programming,” retrieving relevant results ranked by relevance. Additionally, Hibernate Search supports advanced features like sorting by distance for geolocation-based queries and projections for retrieving partial documents, reducing reliance on the SQL database for certain operations. These capabilities make Hibernate Search a versatile tool for developers aiming to enhance search performance while maintaining their existing SQL infrastructure.
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[PHPForumParis2021] Trust Your Team’s Developers – Sofia Lescano
Sofia Lescano, a developer at Bedrock, delivered an inspiring talk at Forum PHP 2021, advocating for trust in development teams to drive innovation beyond mere feature delivery. With a background in embedded systems and mobile applications, Sofia emphasized the value of empowering developers to address technical debt and propose creative solutions. Her presentation, enriched by her commitment to diversity, resonated with the audience. This post explores four themes: empowering developers, tackling technical debt, fostering consensus, and promoting diversity.
Empowering Developers
Sofia Lescano began by highlighting the importance of trusting developers to take ownership of their work. At Bedrock, she encourages teams to propose improvements that enhance application quality. By giving developers autonomy, companies can unlock innovative solutions that align with technical and business goals. Sofia’s experience underscores how trust fosters a culture of accountability, enabling teams to deliver more than just functional requirements.
Tackling Technical Debt
A key focus of Sofia’s talk was addressing technical debt through continuous improvement. She shared examples from Bedrock, where developers proactively refactor code to maintain system health. By prioritizing small, incremental changes, teams can prevent debt from accumulating, ensuring long-term maintainability. Sofia’s approach emphasizes collaboration between developers and stakeholders to balance feature development with system sustainability, creating robust applications.
Fostering Consensus
Responding to an audience question about handling disagreements, Sofia explained Bedrock’s consensus-driven decision-making process. While the majority’s view often guides technical choices, she noted that transverse perspectives, such as those from engineering leads, help align decisions with broader company goals. This collaborative approach ensures that teams grow together, making informed choices that reflect collective expertise while respecting individual input.
Promoting Diversity
Sofia passionately advocated for diversity, noting the all-female speaker lineup during her session as a step toward inclusivity. She emphasized the role of visible role models in attracting more women to tech, drawing from her own experience as a speaker. By fostering an inclusive environment, Sofia believes teams can leverage diverse perspectives to drive innovation, encouraging companies like Bedrock to support underrepresented groups through mentorship and opportunity.