Scott Davis, Author of "JBoss at Work"

Scott Davis is an internationally recognized author and speaker. He is passionate about open source solutions and agile development. He has worked on a variety of Java platforms, from J2EE to J2SE to J2ME (sometimes all on the same project).

Scott's books include Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java, GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, The Google Maps API, and JBoss At Work.

Scott is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com, a news and information website that tracks the latest developments in Groovy and Grails.

He also writes a regular column for IBM DeveloperWorks - Mastering Grails.

Scott is a frequent presenter at national conferences (such as No Fluff, Just Stuff) and local user groups. He was the president of the Denver Java Users Group in 2003 when it was voted one of the top-ten JUGs in North America. After a quick move north, he is currently active in the leadership of the Boulder Java Users Group. Keep up with him here.

Presentation: "A Tale of Two Slippy Maps (Comparing AJAX and Flex)"

Track: Browser as a Platform

Time: Monday 16:15 - 17:15

Location: Rytmisk Sal

Abstract:

"Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights." (Pauline R. Kezer)

HTML has been with us for nearly 15 years. Ajax is the clever, coordinated use of HTML with JavaScript and CSS that gives a dynamic tweak to a fundamentally static technology. Flex comes from a different evolutionary path -- its roots in Flash (an animation toolset) brings a whole new set of possibilities to business applications. Neither Ajax nor Flex are a golden hammer, but both have matured enough to take a serious at how each fits into the modern web developer's toolkit.

In this talk, we look at the AJAX APIs for Yahoo! and Google maps, and compare them with the new Flex APIs. There are strengths and weaknesses to each approach: Seeing them side by side will help you better evaluate the technology.