Leaving Legacy: Strategies (and Justifications) in moving to Spring

Organizations and individuals considering the use of Spring may face a number of concerns which can impact their ability to execute: there may be an existing legacy codebase which needs to be migrated, a lack of familiarity with the new technology, or a need to justify the use of Spring instead of continued use of older technologies or use of other alternatives.

This session focuses on strategies and justifications when moving from legacy technologies such as full stack Java EE 1.4 or earlier (with or without EJB 2.x) to the Spring platform. This session will also be of use for those considering the use of Spring with or without full stack Java EE 5.

Topics covered in this session include:

• How Spring integrates with, and builds on Java EE, while offering a number of compelling benefits
• A look at Spring in comparison to EJB 2.5
• The impact of migrating a legacy, full-stack Java EE 1.4 or 1.3 application ((with or without EJB)) to the Spring platform including:     - When and why a migration makes sense     - Factors leading to greater or lesser complexity     - Strategies and techniques when migrating an existing legacy application to Spring, including the transition period as well as the final goal
• Case study: a discussion of one customer's experience in moving a full stack, traditional Java EE 1.4 application (including the use of EJBs and messaging), originally deployed on WebLogic, to a Spring-based architecture with deployment on Tomcat
• Appendix to presentation: Detailed Spring 2.5 & EJB 3.0 comparison

About Colin Sampaleanu

Colin is Director of R&D at SpringSource (now a division of VMware), which he co-founded in 2004. He is one of the original core committers on the Spring Framework, a published author, and public speaker. Since starting SpringSource he has served in a number of roles throughout various parts of the organization, including Engineering, Service Delivery, Support, and Sales. Colin is at his best when combining both technical as well as business and customer facing aspects.

Colin has had a long and varied career spanning 23 years in both the enterprise and shrinkwrap software space, including previous experience developing for and building out a retail software company.

Immediately prior to SpringSource, Colin spent 5 years as architect/chief architect at a leading software incubator and VC firm. Colin's role was split between one part hands on architecture, design, and coding, another part mentoring and teaching best practices at the code and process level, and a final part performing technical due diligence and consulting for the VC arm.

Throughout his career, Colin's experience, wide ranging interests and general knowledge in the technology space have led him to be a resource that others have been able to draw on for advice. In general, Colin's background has left him with a deep knowledge of all it takes to successfully release good software, at the code, process, and business level.

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