Code better - Code faster - Code smarter

Upcoming courses

* $2,990 NZ before the end of March
** $2,390 US before the end of March
*** £1,790 before the end of March
*** $2,690 AUS before the end of March

Outline

The course is an intensive 4-day workshop, with a mixture of teaching and lab exercises. You will learn how to implement modern Agile best practices for Java development within your own organisation. Each day starts with a discussion of Agile development practices and covers what tools and techniques you can use to support these practices. The basic course program is outlined here:

Day 1 - Agile Development Principles and Practices and Maven 2

• Agile Development principles and practices - how to improve your development process in the real world.
• Introduction to Maven 2 - what is it, how can it help you, is it suitable for your project?
• Creating a new project with Maven 2
• The Maven development lifecycle - compiling, testing and building your application
• Dependency management with Maven 2
• Using Maven dependency management in Ant
• Using Maven 2 in Eclipse
• Using plugins to customize the build process
• Setting up a local Maven Repository Manager with Nexus
• Integrating Ant and Maven

Day 2 - Unit and Integration testing with JUnit 4

• Principles of Test-driven development
• Writing clearer tests with the Hamcrest assertions
• Using annotations, parameterized tests and JUnit Theories to simplify your tests
• Refactoring principles and best practices
• Using test coverage metrics to improve your testing process
• Testing a web interface with Selenium

Day 3 - Code quality and documentation

• Agile best practices to improve code quality - pair programming, collective code reviews,...
• Enforcing coding standards with Checkstyle
• Enforcing best practices with PMD
• Detecting potential defects with FindBugs
• What is cyclometric complexity and how can it help you write better code?
• Generating useful reports with a Maven site
• Generate UML-based documentation with UMLGraph

Day 4 - SCM and Continuous Integration

• Working in iterations and time-boxed releases
• Modern SCM best practices
  • Introduction to Subversion
  • Using Subversion from day to day
  • Using Subversion with Eclipse
  • Branching, merging and tagging
• Automating your build process with Continuous Integration
  • An introduction to Continuous Integration principles
  • Setting up a CI server with Hudson
  • Continuous Integration build strategies and best practices
  • Automated testing
  • Automated code quality audits
  • Automated reporting on project status and statistics
  • Automated deployment

Course Objectives

Students will come away from this workshop with a solid understanding of how they can improve their development practices back in the real world, as well as an abundance of practical tips and tricks that they can use in their day-to-day work. Notably, after the course, students will:

• Have a practical understanding and experience of Maven 2, and be able to determine for themselves if it is suitable for their project or organisation.
• Understand the issues around dependency management in Java development, and be able to implement declarative dependency management in a corporate environment using both Maven and Ant.
• Know how to write effective unit tests, and understand how to use unit testing practices to write more reliable code faster.
• Be able to write automated database and web interface tests.
• Understand how to use code quality and test coverage metrics to improve your code, and understand what the various metrics can tell you, and also what they can't.
• Have a solid working knowledge of Subversion in the real world.
• Know how to set up a working Continuous Integration server, complete with automated builds, tests, code quality audits and reports, and automatic deployment to an integration server

General Information

Audience

This is a hands-on, practical course designed to teach specialised skills for real-world development situations. It is thus primarily aimed at a developer audience:

• Java developers of all levels
• Software architects
• Technical project managers

Approach

Assumptions

We assume participants have a reasonable understanding of Java development as well as a basic understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle.

Lab Work

The Java Power Tools Bootcamp is above all a practical, hands-on workshop. We believe that the best way to learn is by doing. So the course contains approximately 60% lab work. For scheduled public courses, we will provide a fully configured computer for your use during the labs.

Learning Resources

Each registrant will receive a copy of Java Power Tools by John Ferguson Smart. In addition, each registrant will receive a copy of the student notes and lab solutions, a certificate of completion, and a CD containing all the tools covered in the course.

Contact us

This course can also be provided on-site, and tailored to your particular requirements. If you would like our trainings delivered at your premises, or for any additional information please contact us.