Camel in Kyiv

I had the pleasure of being invited to JEEConf in Kiev, Ukraine to give a talk about Apache Camel. The planning was a bit tight, as I had to be in Washington 2 days later for the CamelOne conference. But we managed to find a compromise, so I had a stop over in between, so I could get back to my family and sleep for one night before being on the road again.

The JEEConf is a newly organized conference, hosted by XP Injection. I must say they have done an excellent job. They sure made me fell very welcome and had everything planned. So they had me picked up at the airport to bring me to my hotel. Usually I have to find my own way when I give talks. Nice to have may name on a sign, when I arrive at the airport.

The hotel was Hotel Rus. Its was a state of the art Hotel when it was build about 20 years ago. And its still a very nice and clean hotel. It was located in downtown Kiev. My fellow colleague Dejan Bosnanak was also speaking (about ActiveMQ) and he was also stating at Rus. He had a room view a view in the opposite direction than me. From his room he could see the construction workers very busy working on the new football stadium they are building for the European Championship next year. He said they have to hurry up as there was only a skeleton frame currently.

The city of Kiev is divided into two by a major river. The next morning a driver picked up Dejan and I from Hotel Rus, and drove us across town. The event took place at an Exhibition hall. About 200 people or thereabout showed up, if I had to guess. At the exhibition hall there was several booth sponsors.

Claus talking at JEEConf, Kiev, May 2011

I had the honor of the first talk of the day (there was 3 parallel tracks). And I guess about half of the attendees showed up. I gave the talk, which I think vent very well. The live demo just worked. And there was good talks at the end.

Dejan's talk was late in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to talk to the booth vendors, listen to other talks etc. However as most talks was in Russia, it was hard to follow and understand. So Dejan and I decided to go for a walk and checkout the neighborhood. Down the road we found a coffee house, where we had .. yes coffee and cake. As neither of us had local currency, it was a challenge to pay. As they did not accept credit cards. In the end we solved this by paying using euro bills. Thank you Dejan for buying and paying for the coffee.

After Dejans talk we both felt a bit tired, so we went back to our hotel for a little power nap. Then at 8pm we meetup with the organizers and some of the other speaks for a dinner and drinks. The venue was a cellar restaurant which had a USSR and the 80 ties music theme. So it was a bit surreal. The food and beers was great. And I had a great time talking to some of the speakers.

I am sure this conference will go from strength to strength. The organizers did a fantastic job. The only negative was that the conference day was very long. It ended at about 8pm. But I guess that could be a culture thing. Maybe next year the conference is spanning two days and they will be able to end the 1st day earlier.

The slides from the conference is available at slideshare. After the conference Aleksey told me the attendees liked my talk and from initial feedback I was one of the best speakers. I am really glad they liked it in Kyiv as well. Oh and they video taped all the talks, and they will be available later.

I wish to thank Anna, Nicholas, and Aleksey for a great conference and inviting me to come. Hope to see you next year.

Faster unit testing Apache Camel source

Over the course of time, we have added many unit tests and components to Apache Camel. So as of today we have more than 7300 unit tests and 100+ artifacts to test.

As a consequence doing a full test on the Camel source code would therefore take time. On a standard developer laptop, it could take 3 hours or more to run all the tests.

Of course we have an arsenal of CI servers that run full tests overnight at Apache, and also FuseSource. So there are plenty of opportunities to check tests results. But nevertheless it would be better if testing was faster, so when we do development on the Camel source code, we can more quickly run unit tests to ensure the changes dont break stuff.

So in recent time I have looked into improving this. I managed to optimize the Camel core so it boot up faster. For example the core will now hard-load the necessary core type converters, instead of doing a classpath scanning. Likewise we have changed the Camel test kit, to by default lazy load additional type converters on-demand. That cut down the need for doing a classpath scan for those additional type converters. This change alone is a great improvement when you have a lot of unit tests, as it all adds up.

There were some other improvements here and there that all helped as well. For example cutting down on the needed dependencies using when testing components.

So all together we have made the testing roughly 20% faster. That is a good improvement. For example we cut down 34m on testing time on the Apache CI servers.

These changes will make it into the next Apache Camel 2.8 release.

CamelOne Conference And Free Community Event

FuseSource is sponsoring a free community event in line up for the CamelOne conference.

Community Event

Many of us are going to be in the Washington DC area the week of May 23rd for CamelOne. Meet other users, developers and committers on Apache Camel, ServiceMix, ActiveMQ and CXF at a free Community Meet and Greet sponsored by FuseSource on Monday, May 23rd from 6-8 pm in the Pinzimini Restaurant at the Westin Arlington Gateway. This event will have free food and drinks and FuseSource is hosting it so that we can get-together and catch up while many of us are in town for CamelOne. There is a great speaker line up for CamelOne, and many of those speakers can't turn down free beers and to socialize. So come and say hi to the fathers of the EIPs: Gregor Hophe (author of EIP book) and James Strachan (founder of Camel). Also Jonathan and I will be there as well. And we are all speaking at the CamelOne conference.

The free Community Meet and Greet is on Monday night, May 23rd, CamelOne runs all day on Tuesday, May 24th, followed by a reception, and we have 2 Day training classes running on Wed-Thursday.

CamelOne Conference

CamelOne is the premier Open Source Integration and Messaging Conference, and in one session-filled day you can learn about the advantages of open source software, how to successfully develop and deploy solutions, and what organizations like FAA and Sabre Holdings are building with open source.

Come to CamelOne 2011 and:

• Learn how IT organizations are saving money and gaining vendor-independence by using open source
• Meet industry experts and the founders and leaders of Apache's most popular integration and messaging projects
• Network with developers, architects, decision makers and vendors

CamelOne is the first ever community event created specifically for enterprise users of open source Apache Camel, ServiceMix, ActiveMQ and CXF. It includes technical and business sessions, and keynote presentations by Gregor Hohpe, co-author of Enterprise Integration Patterns, James Strachan, the creator of Groovy, Apache Camel, and many other widely known open source projects and David Linthicum, CTO and Founder of Blue Mountain Labs, and Author of Enterprise Application Integration. The event will also include technical sessions, networking venues and hands-on product training from FuseSource, the leading vendor of open source integration and messaging solutions.

Why Attend?

• Lessons from Enterprise Users of Open Source Integration and Messaging Solutions, including FAA, Sabre, and AT&T  that covering topics such as architectural implementation details, best practices, and how to justify using open source to internal stakeholders
• Many Sessions from Developers and Project Founders and Committers covering Apache Camel, ServiceMix, ActiveMQ, and CXF.  
• 2-Day Hands-On Training Classes on ServiceMix with Camel and ActiveMQ.
• One event to answer all questions about open source, and the resources to get started
• Meet peers that are being successful today
• Have your books signed by authors of the: EIP book, EAI book, Camel in Action, and ActiveMQ in Action

More details about speakers and agenda at the CamelOne web site.