(January 24, 2003) - What are the shortcomings of traditional developer training, and how can it be improved? For answers, JDJ editor-in-chief Alan Williamson recently spoke with Partha Nageswaran, lead technical architect and founder of Trans-World Resources, the New Jersey-based J2EE consulting and education services company. Partha is the author of "Conquer-IT! - J2EE Part 1: JSPs and Servlets," a powerful Computer Based Training tool.
Partha: Traditional instructor-led training continues to be one of the more effective ways of imparting J2EE knowledge. Yet this technique has inherent limitations including:
In many ways, the time away from work is unavoidable - One needs to invest time to learn newer technologies, particularly the fast-evolving ones. However, the amount of time spent is much more that needed, primarily because of the non-inclusion of powerful animations into an ILT curriculum.
The only other alternative to ILT is self-paced training, which can range from reading books and articles and sample code to learning from a computer, or Web-based training. Computer and Web-based training have an immense potential to explain complex concept through powerful animations. Yet, most C/WBTs in the industry today amount to "Slideware" with simple animations.
At TW Resources our philosophy is to provide a blended solution: one that combines the effectiveness of ILT conducted by well-experienced J2EE developers/architects with powerful animation intensive C/WBTs, to achieve a cost and time efficient solution. While blended solutions are not necessarily new, blended solutions for enterprise technology training are mostly unheard of, partly because visualization of concepts and clear understanding has always been given secondary priority over learning the mechanics of programming using a new technology.
The uniqueness of our training programs is that we successfully blend effective multimedia-based visualization techniques with our ILTs provided by experts. Every ILT session attendee receives a full-fledged C/WBT course as well, to use as preparatory and reference material.
Last but not the least, we strongly believe that companies do not have to spend a fortune to gain enterprise technology knowledge. To that end our offerings have significantly lower cost than most industrial offerings.
We strongly believe that you can never provide too much value to any client.
JDJ: Can you tell us a little more about Conquer-IT?
Partha: Conquer-IT! is our unrivaled strategy for providing training and consulting solutions to help conquer enterprise technologies, such as J2EE. The driving philosophy behind Conquer-IT! is based on these concepts:
Real world experience combined with thorough understanding of trends and evolution of Enterprise technology are critical for the success of any training and consulting practice.
Conquer-IT! has three components to it: Conquer-IT! C/WBT, Conquer-IT! ILT, and Conquer-IT! Consulting.
Our C/WBTs contain powerful animations that illustrate what happens inside an application server as it hosts an application. These powerful animations leave the user with an everlasting image of the concepts, tmaking further learning easier and meaningful. Our C/WBTs are full-fledged courses with interactive code analysis sections for learning how to write J2EE applications. The C/WBTs come with a read-along book that a user may use to follow along with the narrations. It also comes with Lab Solutions and deployment scripts and instructions for running the Labs on leading application servers, such as Oracle 9iAS, WebSphere, and WebLogic.
Conquer-IT! ILTs are cost and time effective blends of classroom training and the powers of the Conquer-IT! C/WBTs. We ensure that every attendee of an Instructor Led Training session gets a free license to an appropriate C/WBT, to complement what the ILT offers. ILT attendees may receive the C/WBT before the course and may be used as preparatory and reference materials. In addition, our ILT sessions are conducted by exceptional instructors whose experiences range from working on the internals of application servers, working on large enterprise applications world-wide, to training hundreds of developers and architects including IBM consultants on WebSphere and BEA's corporate clients on WebLogic.
Conquer-IT! Consulting is an approach where our consultants facilitate rapid knowledge transfer to clients, while implementing robust solutions for the clients. The difference in our offerings is that the transfer of knowledge is not limited to application knowledge, but infrastructure knowledge as well. Our consultants are trained to hold periodic knowledge transfer sessions where they leverage Conquer-IT! C/WBTs and Conquer-IT! ILT to achieve effective knowledge transfer to clients.
JDJ: Having designed, built and delivered training; what is the most commonly asked question from the J2EE new starts?
Partha: The most common thread of questions that I have encountered from J2EE new starts are along the lines of: "So how much of this elaborate technology is effectively used in the real-world?" More likely than not, these questions are triggered in reference to EJBs (specifically Stateful and Entity EJBs) or overall performance of J2EE applications.
Without a doubt, the vastness of the technology can be overwhelming to a newcomer who has limited or no exposure to multi-tier distributed computing and does not immediately see the appropriateness or benefits of some aspects of J2EE.
JDJ: J2EE covers a lot of ground; which aspect do your clients ask about the most?
Partha: Enterprise Java Beans.
Invariably, significant amounts of time are spent (in and out of class, or in consulting engagements) discussing the pros and cons of EJBs, to Entity or not to Entity, to CMP or not to CMP, the reason for existence of Stateful session EJBs, etc.
It is safe to say that in my experience, the number of questions and duration of sidebar discussions on EJBs dwarf the time spent on discussions of most other aspects of J2EE combined!
JDJ: Which area of J2EE do you think is presently being under used? What would you attribute this to?
Partha: It would have to be JMS.
In my opinion the reason for this is not J2EE related - it is fundamentally because at application design time, aside from obviously asynchronous aspects being modeled as such, little or no effort is placed to leverage asynchronous mechanisms for increased performance and scalability, where possible.
The good news is that due to its ease of use and rather straightforward API, JMS is causing architects and designers to start thinking about leveraging it for performance and scalability.
JDJ: How do you react to the comment that J2EE is too complex?
Partha: It is very easy to forget what the EE in J2EE stands for - Enterprise Edition. J2EE is a vast technology that covers several aspects of Enterprise computing. Inherently, Enterprise computing problems tend to be complex. And yet J2EE has done a good job in many areas of abstracting the complexities away from developers of solutions. Declarative qualities of services such as transactions and security are good examples. (Remember CosTransactions and the CORBA security model?)
There are other areas where the programming model is indeed complex, particularly for someone who is new to this technology.
Many applications may not need a lot of the J2EE features. For example, certain applications may only need JSPs, Servlets, and JDBC. While certain others may need JSPs, Servlets, JMS, JTA, and EJBs. The key is to understand when to use which aspect of J2EE. For that there are not enough hard and fast rules, only rules of thumb. If developers understand this much, to being with, they will not have to contend with all aspects of J2EE at once, which is bound to be overwhelming.
JDJ: How do you see the future of Java? Do you think Microsoft will make significant inroads to the server-side taking away business that may have otherwise been J2EE seats?
Partha: I do think Microsoft will continue to make inroads into the server-side. .NET is very much a reality and a viable alternative that J2EE has to contend with. In addition to the continued evolution of J2EE, efforts have to be made to reduce the overall cost of J2EE solutions. This is where the success of open-source efforts such as JBoss and Eclipse become critical. At the very least, these efforts help remove the cost parameter out of decision making, allowing for a proper technical and business comparison based upon which a company may choose a technology. Cost considerations aside there are compelling technical reasons to choose J2EE, including platform neutrality and ability to integrate to legacy systems using a standardized architecture (JCA).
JDJ: Finally, do you see you extending your training into other areas of Java?
Partha: Eventually, the goal of Conquer-IT! is to spread our blended solutions approach for consulting and training beyond Java and J2EE. In the Java space, there are numerous opportunities for leveraging the blended solutions approach in areas including J2ME.
For more about TW Resources, see www.twresources.com.
