The three part screencast that accompanies this article was recorded during the presentation by Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) information technology employees Kunal Bajaj, Mark Hanes, Chris Henson and Keith Naas, at JBoss World 2008.
One of the great things about working on software infrastructure is the
ubiquity and wide influnce one has due to the nature of the users of
infrastructure software. I drive past a Big Lots! store in Apoka, FL
regurlarly, so it was with great interest that I attended the JBoss
World 2008 case study titled, "Big Lots Store Inventory Management". I
wasn't exactly sure what I would learn during this presentation, but it
turns out I was to be delighted. Big Lots! has had enormous success
with Sun's JSF implementation, Mojarra, and other Java EE technologies
in delivering inventory management and other store essential software on
time and within budget.
My number one take-away from the presentation was a feeling of
satisfaction in seeing a line-item validation of many of the design
decisions within JSF. As you can see in the presentation, some of the
JSF features leveraged by Big Lots! included
custom components
leveraging the JSF lifecycle
separation of rendering from components
custom converters and validators
client device independence
They cited JBoss Seam and Facelets as two other absolutely key
technologies in their stack.
These files are huge and take long to load - Compressed files will be coming soon
