Hi everyone,
I'd like to add the following to Mark's comments on ApacheCon. It was pretty patent that chainsaw2 made a thorough impression on the audience. They were blown away when Mark showed off some of its capabilities. He also did an excellent job emphasizing the volunteering sprit of the log4j project.
Subsequent to the presentation, I decided to use chainsaw2 on a regular basis. By the way, I am currently sitting on a large commit on the selector stuff but that's another story.
After the presentation, few people observed that code examples would have helped to get a better understanding of the new features. Of course, but we only had 50 minutes and about 50 slides to present.
I had interesting conversations with some Geronimo folks regarding log4j. It seemed that David Jencks was finally convinced that domains could address the TRACE problem, or just maybe. :-)
Dain Sundstrom shared some great ideas on improving the performance of log4j decision making. While preparing the pet-shop tests on Geronimo, Jeremy Boynes reinforced Dain's observations.
Being totally jet-lagged, I woke up at 3:00 AM every morning during the conference which gave me the opportunity to have breakfast with Geir Magnusson Jr., who also woke up "early". I came to realize that the current perception was that the log4j folks did not want a TRACE level even if the users did. To dissipate that impression, I promised that we, the log4j committers, would vote on the topic.
I still think that the TRACE level might be unnecessary but if the majority thinks that it is needed, then so be it.
The conference in itself was both entertaining and highly informative. It was also a unique occasion to see old faces and meet new ones, especially Mark and Jim Moore.
At 12:56 AM 11/21/2003 -0800, Mark Womack wrote:
I am sorry that it has taken me this long to send a message about ApacheCon. I got back from Las Vegas Tuesday night and have been swamped at work ever since. Haven't seen a message from Ceki yet, so I am guessing that he is recovering from his jet lag...:-)
First, the session on log4j 1.3 was well received. Ceki and I had a lot of ground to cover, and we pretty much took the entire 50 minutes. In retrospect, maybe we could have cut some of the topics, but it is hard since they are all important. The most valid feedback I heard was that there could have been more code examples. It was kind of hard for folks to get a feeling for what we were talking about sometimes, I think.
Domains was of much interest. We will be fleshing that out in more detail (and examples:-) on this list in the coming days and weeks.
Chainsaw v2 was very well received. I don't think my quick demo did it any real justice, but Bruce (I can't remember his last name) from the Geronimo project said that Chainsaw put him over the top. He was going to push for using log4j at work just for that alone. I think those were his exact words (Geronimo already uses log4j).
We made sure to mention all the hard work and contributions everyone has put in to v1.3. We invited folks to join us on this list and in the sandbox.
I had a very productive talk with members of the Geronimo group about why they want/use a TRACE level and possible uses they might have for either domains or a context selector. They are a great bunch of guys. I plan to join the geronimo dev list so we can continue to talk about it and get some synergy going there.
Of course, I finally met Ceki, and that was great! We had a wonderful time hanging about the presentations and such. We even met Jim Moore! An unexpected and pleasant bonus! I am able to put faces to people now.
I have to say that ApacheCon was one of the most productive conventions I have been to in a long, long while. The caliber of the presenters (even those log4j guys) and the caliber of the attendees is incredibly high. Plus you get to talk to the major movers and shakers of the various projects.
Sun and the JCP was out in force around the con. Novell was a sponsor and showed off their current open source efforts.
The best presentation I saw was one by a consultant (not an Apache committer or member) where he reviewed his company's use of Apache software (Tomcat, Xalan, Xerces, Log4j, bunch of other stuff), mostly Xalan, to create a complete solution for integrating 3-4 different enterprise applications for a Fortune 100 company. They beat out other companies vying for the same contract that were trying to get various commercial vendors together to come up with a solution. His company, using almost all Apache software (I think they used a commercial business logic engine), had a platform up within a week and had started major developement with the customer within a month. They won the contract and deployed the solution, beating out all the other competition. If you ever wonder if Apache stuff is production-grade, don't. There is real proof out there.
Sam Ruby's presentation on SOAP/web services was really good. And I really dug the XML Beans presentation by David Bau. Tapestry looks very promising as well.
I wish more of the log4j folks could have been there. We'll have to plan for it next year!
If I think of something I have forgotten, I'll send another message. But it was a great time, and everyone should be very proud of their involvement and use of Apache software. It is a very exciting place to be.
-Mark
-- Ceki Gülcü
For log4j documentation consider "The complete log4j manual"
ISBN: 2970036908 http://www.qos.ch/shop/products/clm_t.jsp
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