The meeting was started at 6:30 PM by Tilak Kasturi. As always, thanks to Denise Carlucci and Sun Microsystems for hosting the meeting and providing pizza and beverages for the attendees.

Tilak started the meeting by welcoming everyone to the second Orlando JUG meeting. He noted the continued interest in Java, as evidenced by the strong turnout at the meeting. Tilak briefly discussed Java's impact on software development and the continued growth of Java.

At this point, the approximately 35 attendees were invited to introduce themselves and briefly describe their interest in Java. As at the last meeting, there was a good mix of interests in various Java technologies.

After the introductions, Kurt Kessel presented our speaker for the evening, Joel Dodd of BEA Systems. Joel gave a very interesting presentation on Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP). Joel described how these two technologies are used to provide powerful and flexible solutions for web-based development. See the links at the end of these meeting minutes for links related to Joel's talk.

After the presentation by Joel, Tilak formally introduced Kurt Kessel, who worked very hard in arranging for Joel as speaker for the meeting. Tilak also introduced John Parrish, who has done a great job of building and maintaining the Orlando JUG web site. John briefly described the current state of the web site, then opened the discussion by asking for suggestions on enhancements that could be made. The first enhancement discussed was whether a discussion forum should be included on the web site to allow members to exchange ideas, and to ask and answer Java-related questions. At this point, Phil Loeffel, from the Space Coast JUG, related the experience the SCJUG has had with discussion forums on their web site. Phil noted that with access to the Java Discussion Forums at java.sun.com (and forums at other web sites), and the expertise available at these sites, the Space Coast JUG found that it was difficult to maintain a lively discussion forum on their site. At this point, the discussion turned to whether Java-related jobs should be posted on the web site. Again, Phil was kind enough to share the SCJUG's experience with this issue. Phil said the SCJUG's web site does include job listings, as long as they are relevant to the interest of the JUG members.

Tilak and Phil agreed to coordinate the Orlando JUG and Space Coast JUG meetings so that they would alternate, allowing members of both groups to attend all meetings and to take advantage of the close relationship of the two user groups. It was also decided that meetings should continue to be held quarterly. As part of the discussion on upcoming meetings, Kurt Kessel asked everyone to be on the lookout for potential speakers for future Orlando JUG meetings.

The meeting concluded at approximately 8:00 PM

JSP/Servlets Presentation Files (Power Point):

Real World Servlet Hints
Servlets/JSP

Related Links:

Space Coast JUG http://www.riptidesoft.com/scjug
BEA Systems http://www.bea.com
Sun's Java Site http://java.sun.com
Java 2 Platform http://java.sun.com/j2ee Enterprise Edition
JavaServer Web http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/download.html Development Kit