What we've been up to......

It's been a while since we had our first meetup in March. But as a community group, we have achieved so much over the past few weeks. We have formed an executive committee consisting of 12 individuals who have volunteered to take up the responsibility of taking JAVA Colombo forward. We have launched our blog and started working on the sponsorship program. Just last week we had a very successful second meetup (expect a separate post regarding this soon). The following slide deck was presented at our second meetup. It summarizes what we have done and achieved up to this point.

JAVA Colombo - What We've Been Up To

-Hiranya Jayathilaka-

Senior Technical Lead - WSO2

JAVA Colombo Executive Committee Member

The JAVA Colombo Launch

The first meetup of the Colombo Java User Group [JUG] was held on 15th March @ WSO2 #58 office...

It was a huge success - we were able to get more than 70 to attend the event while around 180 registered for the Colombo JUG just with a one month notice...

I was in a panel discussion which talked about secure coding with Java - with Hiranya, Srinath and Amila..

Some key areas I would like to highlight here from what we focused during the panel discussion..

• Security concerns in application development - authentication, authorization, integrity, no-repudiation, confidentiality - best practices to follow while designing a login method -  exception shielding pattern.
• How does Java security architecture address the above concerns -  JAAS, JGSS, Java Security Manager.
• What are the security concerns in a distributed environment? 
• What are the common types of attacks? and solutions - attacks like, Cross-site Scripting, Session Hijacking, SQL Injection, Log Injection were demonstrated during the session...
• What are the security testing best practices?  - OWASP

After the panel - the brain storming session on 'Future of Java - Would Oracle kill Java ?" started...

It was quite interesting and was nicely moderated by Senaka.

Some key points highlighted during this session...

• Oracle may not kill Java - but will look in to more commercial side of it by giving patches only for paying customers.
• Oracle's response time so far for critical Java security bugs is highly satisfactory.
• People were afraid when Oracle acquired MySQL and they had all reasons to kill MySQL but they did not. Further Oracle has contributed to improve the performance of MySQL.
• What will happen to the J2ME? Most probably Android will kill J2ME.
• Java7 adaptation is still slow.
• No room for Java on iPad [iOS].

All-in-all it was nice couple of hours with Java enthusiasts...

Need to Thank everyone who contributed to the success of this event - specially WSO2, Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, Harindu, Hiranya and all other colleagues at WSO2.

Looking forward for the next Colombo JUG event sometime around late April...



Prabath Siriwardena
Senior Software Architect & Chair,
Management Committee
Integration Technologies at WSO2

Introducing JAVA Colombo – The Sri Lankan JUG

Not many people know that Java technologies are insanely popular in Sri Lanka. Many Sri Lankan IT organizations are involved in developing cutting edge products and IT solutions using the Java programming language and Java-centric platforms like J2EE and J2ME. Java is also quite popular among Sri Lankan students and undergraduates who are pursuing educational goals in the field of IT. As a result we see many great research projects being carried out using Java and many students becoming certified professional Java developers year after year.

However the Sri Lankan Java community has always lacked one important thing. That is the notion of a strong local developer community. Most Sri Lankan IT organizations and developers engaged in Java programming, operate with no real sense of communication or collaboration. We believe that lack of a medium to discuss, share knowledge and work together can greatly hinder progress and innovation. In addition to that, by working in isolation, many developers and organizations may not get the attention and the appreciation their high-quality work thoroughly deserve.

Fortunately, those days are now behind us. On 15th of March 2012 we officially launched JAVA Colombo, a Java User Group (JUG) for Sri Lankan Java developers, IT professionals and students. If you are a fan of Java technologies and want to meet other techies who have similar interests, then JAVA Colombo is for you. The official website of the group went live somewhere around early February and within a matter of 3 months our membership has grown beyond 200. Already, our membership spans across nearly 50 IT organizations and all major IT institutes and Universities in Sri Lanka. 

We organize regular meetups where our members get to meet each other, have brainstorming sessions, listen to tech-talks and take part in panel discussions. We give our members opportunities to learn about new and upcoming trends in the technology, share their own experiences related to programming and boost their leadership and management skills by help organizing events. We give organizations opportunities to talk about their products, ideas and ongoing projects to a larger audience. Overall we intend to bring the Sri Lankan Java community together and work as one developer community so that our innovative ideas no longer go unheard and our creative works no longer go unnoticed. 

We warmly welcome all Sri Lankan Java developers to join and be a part of JAVA Colombo. The following slide deck was the introductory presentation that was conducted at the official JAVA Colombo launch on 15th March. That should give you a clear insight as to who we are and what we are planning to achieve.

Welcome to JAVA Colombo

We welcome your kind feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism to help make JAVA Colombo even better. Please send all your comments and questions to srilankanjug@gmail.com. Alternatively you can join our meetup group on-line and post your comments on our public mailing list – java-colombo-list@meetup.com. 

We also welcome offers from the industry to sponsor our meetups. Contact us via srilankanjug@gmail.com for more information.

-Hiranya Jayathilaka-

Senior Technical Lead – WSO2

JAVA Colombo Executive Committee Member