Gather and network in an informal setting to discuss the latest issues!

Boost in Your Future
David Abrahams
Monday, Sept 26, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
The Boost C++ library collection continues to grow, and is increasingly becoming a standard element of the industrial programmer's toolbox because of the way they can improve design integrity and development efficiency. We expect to see major evolution of the Boost processes and library set during 2005, but to fully serve the needs of the C++ community, it will take your participation and input. This BoF is an opportunity to meet David Abrahams of Boost Consulting and to find out where we're headed, tell us what you need from Boost, discuss new library ideas, and learn how you can contribute.

Database Design in an Object-Oriented (OO) World
Paul Dorsey
Monday, Sept 26, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
The database community still wants to design databases the same way that they always have, taking months to create a barely adequate design that is difficult to change and is hostile to the more agile, OO development style. The OO community wants to ignore 20 years of database experience and create databases that are simply copies of the classes in the UML class diagrams that are not normalized, lack primary keys, referential integrity and are grossly sub-optimal from a performance perspective. Can we design a database that is both OO-developer friendly and makes a good DBA happy?

How have people built large OO systems that run on an RDBMS? Did the OO group revolt and "go rogue" ignoring the database community and build whatever they want, or did the database people "win," forcing a traditional database design on developers, resulting in a terrible design mismatch requiring complex EJBs to marry the OO and DB designs?

What is the "right" way to deal with the design and development of large OO systems designed to run on a relational DBMS?

End Well to Begin Well: Using Project Retrospectives for Refreshment and Renewal
Ellen Gottesdiener
Monday, Sept 26, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Project retrospectives have many names: postpartum, postmortem, team reviews, debriefs, lessons learned, after action reviews and more. It is when you end something – a project, an increment, or major milestone. It is the time to stop and self-reflect; the space in which the team and its’ stakeholders tap into their most profound insights. In a retrospective, the team gets out the project story, harvests the collective wisdom of the team, tells the truth without blame or judgment, identifies what to appreciate and improve, understands and forgives its’ failings, and relishes in its’ successes. The insights gained from retrospectives are the basis for starting again in new or different projects. Questions that we will discuss in this BoF include: Why do a retrospective? Who should attend? Who should facilitate? What kinds of things happen in a retrospective? How do you “sell” it to management? What is the role in management in a retrospective? How do you establish safety for them to happen? For more information about retrospectives, visit http://www.retrospectives.com ; http://www.ebgconsulting.com/publications.html#jad ; www.retrospectivefacilitatorgathering.org

Test Driven Development: Concepts, Techniques and Stories
Philip Nelson
Monday, Sept 26, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
There have been many ideas unique to agile approaches to software development, but Test Driven Development(TDD) remains one of the more difficult for developers unfamiliar with TDD to grasp and embrace. TDD twists conventional approaches by taking a process normally near the end of the development cycle, testing, and places it ahead of one of the normal first steps, design. The goal: better design. The good news is that real people have embraced the idea and have solved many of the barriers between concept and practice. Areas to discuss could be TDD of user interface code, testing with databases, mock objects, testing frameworks and another agile mantra, "You Aren't Going To Need It" or YAGNI. Those unfamiliar with TDD will also be able to just ask questions such as "Why?" or "I really write the tests before the code?". In true agile fashion, the actual topics will be driven by the people who join the conversation.

Scrum Gathering
Ken Schwaber
Monday, Sept 26, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Another gathering of people who are interested in the Scrum Agile process for managing software development projects ... both new and experienced hands.

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for the Java Enterprise
Matt Klassen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, CaliberRM, Borland
Tuesday, Sept 27, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Did you know that there is a new OMG notation for Business Process Modeling? Indeed, BPMN is a business process definition metamodel, which is platform independent with respect to specific languages. This enables analysts and architects to define an abstract model for specification of executable business processes that perform within an enterprise (with or without human involvement); and may collaborate between otherwise-independent business processes executing in different business units or enterprises. Perfect for understanding, defining, specifying the requirements for a SOA based deployment. Better still it is available today in the Together modeling family. Learn BPMN and how your organization can benefit today from the integration of BPMN into a complete UML Modeling platform targeting J2EE and WebServices.