"Recently launched an online sales system for BMW": T-Systems on the role of Java and conferences in its activities
How to understand how actively an IT company uses Java? One of the signs: if a company sponsors a Java conference and sends a speaker there, then it is active. Therefore, on the eve of Joker 2016, we decided to ask our sponsors about Java and participation in the conference. The first post is about T-Systems .
We asked several employees of the company: some about their personal experience of Java development at T-Systems, others about the company as a whole. Our interlocutors are:
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- What gives you participation in Joker?
- We solve two problems. On the one hand, this is an exchange of experience between our employees and employees of other companies. Community for any specialist is a very important point in terms of new ideas and a fresh look. On the other hand, we advertise ourselves as an employer in the professional community, and for a large company with more than a hundred projects it is crucial for future success.
- What role does Java play in your company, and why is it preferred in these cases?
- It is the main development language for a large number of projects. The projects are mostly distributed, and part of the team is located in another division of T-Systems - for example, in Brazil, Slovakia or Germany. And Java has received preference, since it is a powerful tool for creating complex corporate multi-module systems.
- What are some interesting Java projects now?
- We have a lot of them. One of our flagship projects is for the Swiss Railways company. We are developing from scratch a unified sales management system for tickets for all types of transport in Switzerland, uniting more than 200 transport companies. A large number of projects are being done for our head company Deutsche Telekom - for example, the business portal GK-Portale, the portal for the company's customers.
We recently launched a project for BMW - an online sales system. This is a new project that we will be doing from scratch in the Russian office, in close cooperation with BMW Germany.
- You are interested in both Java EE and Spring - and with which of these do you more often have to work at T-Systems?
- We have a lot of projects on both platforms. I worked about the same time on both technologies. Specifically, now I work in a Java EE project, and I really like the standardization that this platform offers. The same code runs on several Java EE 7 servers without any additional configuration. In my opinion, this is one of the critical advantages of Java EE. Spring, for its part, is often the "incubator" of great ideas, which are subsequently standardized in Java EE.
“What do you think about the future of Java EE and the“ stagnation ”that Oracle now promises to fight? How much will the output of the promised EE 8 and EE 9 affect your work at T-Systems?
- Yes, lately there have been many discussions and even panic. I personally think that ITS in the near future will not die for sure, and, moreover, it will develop well. Too much business is tied to it. It should be borne in mind that, in addition to Oracle, there is a strong community around this technology, which is very active. At JavaOne, we were shown a new roadmap. I would like to not be late with the new deadlines. As for the impact of new versions of Java EE on our projects, I think it will only be positive. In my present project we have very actively implemented many innovations of EE 7, I am sure, it will be the same with EE 8 in new projects.
- You organize jPrime conference in Bulgaria. How does the experience of participating in someone else's conference and organizing your own relate?
- Yes, it turns out that I have the opportunity to see “what is a technology conference” both through the eyes of the speaker, and through the eyes of the organizer, and the eyes of the viewer. This is certainly great, because by doing so we can make our conference even better for all parties. The jPrime conference, although very young, was already able to become the largest in the region. In our group of organizers of 5 people are all programmers, we do not have professional event organizers. Therefore, we had to learn a lot from scratch, and participation in other conferences helped us a lot.
- In addition, you are also the leader of the Bulgarian Java User Group - can you tell us about the activities of the community?
- The task of our community is quite simple: we want to know Java as well as possible. We even set ourselves a more ambitious task - to directly participate in the development of this language and the entire platform. We are doing workshops on innovations that have either just appeared (for example, MVC 1.0), or are still under development and research (for example, Valhalla project). For this, in addition to communicating with each other, we always strive to invite to us the most important professionals in this field, including from abroad. Moreover, we try to do it regularly. Conferences and meetings are an excellent way to fulfill our ideas.
- What will you talk about on Joker?
- My report is called "JBatch, or not the biggest data . " I will talk about the relatively new JSR-352, whose task is to standardize and optimize approaches to batchevom (or batch) data processing in Java. This language has firmly established itself in the enterprise, where the tasks of batch processing are quite common, and, until recently, there were no standardized solutions.
- In T-Systems, you are a Java developer and team lead - and which team are you leading, what are you working on?
- Our project is called SBB , we are developing software for selling tickets for Swiss public transport. A team of about 40 people, and we conduct all development in Russia. The customer provides only the requirements. In fact, we are a product team.
- You had a report on working with various databases with Hibernate at Joker last year - and which databases do you work with in T-Systems?
- Very dependent on the project. There are many projects, they have their own requirements. The most common is, of course, Oracle. There is MySQL. Some projects use MariaDB, some NoSQL.
- The material “5 reasons to use JPA / Hibernate” recently appeared - and what, in your work experience, is the main reason for using them?
- I just read this article too, most of all I liked the point “increase in development productivity” there. Indeed, Hibernate allows you to quickly write the necessary code, without worrying about any routine queries.
- The opposite in spirit text “Hibernate ruined my career” about how it made the project worse and not better appeared - did you come across this in T-Systems?
- In those projects where I worked, there was no such thing; we had Hibernate useful. Yes, there were many problems, and their solution took some time, but in general, he brought relief. But I have no doubt that there are tasks in which it is not necessary. This is quite a serious framework that carries a lot of functionality, and somewhere it is not required.
- Do you have experience in teaching young people and on Joker University Day, and in the format of a Java school - and you yourself are also formed in the process of such training? Did you find out in the end of the report that you learned something yourself?
- Yes of course. In the process of preparing and searching for material, there were very interesting moments that were not to be found at work. Including those that can then be used in the work.
And in the "non-technical" plan, you also learn. In preparation for the Joker, the training from the JUG.ru Group was very useful: it helped to structure the knowledge on how to conduct the report, to rebuild it. This ultimately helped a lot, including in the Java school.
- The company uses different methods of communication - how is the conference different for you from others?
Remote communication implies a large amount of formalism — standard formulations about the company's benefits, achievements, and customers. Live communication at the event allows visitors to get much more interesting information. You can ask questions about specific projects in which teams are recruited and chat with their representatives about the details.
- Joker takes place in St. Petersburg - for T-Systems is it just one of the cities, or is the venue important?
The St. Petersburg office is the central office of our company in Russia, most of the team is located here. Java projects are mainly made here: in St. Petersburg, for example, we are developing internal systems for our parent company Deutsche Telekom or projects for customers from the automotive industry — a very large BMW Online Sales Master (OSM) project. This is the third project for BMW, which started in our software development center in 2016.
Therefore, as a rule, we take full-time participation at conferences that take place in St. Petersburg. But, of course, this does not limit our speakers - they speak at specialized conferences regardless of the city where they are held. And we invite employees from different cities to us, and are ready to help with the relocation.
- What response does the company usually receive after the reports of your speakers?
Usually after the speakers' speeches, the flow of visitors to the stand increases, wishing to learn more about our company and projects. And the point is rather not in the very topic of the report, but in the general positive impression that develops about the company thanks to the presentation. This is especially noticeable after the reports of the leaders of Java and Test-schools at events for those who are just starting their careers: they learn about learning opportunities "from the inside" rather than brochures, and this is of interest. On the other hand, the report of an experienced specialist allows you to discuss a complex project problem and share the solution found.
- Thanks for the answers, we will wait for the new report of Dmitry in October. In the meantime, you can recall the reports of T-Systems speakers from the previous Joker: Dmitry about Nashorn and Vyacheslav about Hibernate.
We asked several employees of the company: some about their personal experience of Java development at T-Systems, others about the company as a whole. Our interlocutors are:
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- Kirill Chernin - HR business partner
- Dmitry Alexandrov - leading software expert (Joker speaker)
- Vyacheslav Kruglov - Java-developer, team lead (Joker speaker)
- Maria Zernova - specialist in internal communications
Kirill Chernin
- What gives you participation in Joker?- We solve two problems. On the one hand, this is an exchange of experience between our employees and employees of other companies. Community for any specialist is a very important point in terms of new ideas and a fresh look. On the other hand, we advertise ourselves as an employer in the professional community, and for a large company with more than a hundred projects it is crucial for future success.
- What role does Java play in your company, and why is it preferred in these cases?
- It is the main development language for a large number of projects. The projects are mostly distributed, and part of the team is located in another division of T-Systems - for example, in Brazil, Slovakia or Germany. And Java has received preference, since it is a powerful tool for creating complex corporate multi-module systems.
- What are some interesting Java projects now?
- We have a lot of them. One of our flagship projects is for the Swiss Railways company. We are developing from scratch a unified sales management system for tickets for all types of transport in Switzerland, uniting more than 200 transport companies. A large number of projects are being done for our head company Deutsche Telekom - for example, the business portal GK-Portale, the portal for the company's customers.
We recently launched a project for BMW - an online sales system. This is a new project that we will be doing from scratch in the Russian office, in close cooperation with BMW Germany.
Dmitry Alexandrov
- You are interested in both Java EE and Spring - and with which of these do you more often have to work at T-Systems?- We have a lot of projects on both platforms. I worked about the same time on both technologies. Specifically, now I work in a Java EE project, and I really like the standardization that this platform offers. The same code runs on several Java EE 7 servers without any additional configuration. In my opinion, this is one of the critical advantages of Java EE. Spring, for its part, is often the "incubator" of great ideas, which are subsequently standardized in Java EE.
“What do you think about the future of Java EE and the“ stagnation ”that Oracle now promises to fight? How much will the output of the promised EE 8 and EE 9 affect your work at T-Systems?
- Yes, lately there have been many discussions and even panic. I personally think that ITS in the near future will not die for sure, and, moreover, it will develop well. Too much business is tied to it. It should be borne in mind that, in addition to Oracle, there is a strong community around this technology, which is very active. At JavaOne, we were shown a new roadmap. I would like to not be late with the new deadlines. As for the impact of new versions of Java EE on our projects, I think it will only be positive. In my present project we have very actively implemented many innovations of EE 7, I am sure, it will be the same with EE 8 in new projects.
- You organize jPrime conference in Bulgaria. How does the experience of participating in someone else's conference and organizing your own relate?
- Yes, it turns out that I have the opportunity to see “what is a technology conference” both through the eyes of the speaker, and through the eyes of the organizer, and the eyes of the viewer. This is certainly great, because by doing so we can make our conference even better for all parties. The jPrime conference, although very young, was already able to become the largest in the region. In our group of organizers of 5 people are all programmers, we do not have professional event organizers. Therefore, we had to learn a lot from scratch, and participation in other conferences helped us a lot.
- In addition, you are also the leader of the Bulgarian Java User Group - can you tell us about the activities of the community?
- The task of our community is quite simple: we want to know Java as well as possible. We even set ourselves a more ambitious task - to directly participate in the development of this language and the entire platform. We are doing workshops on innovations that have either just appeared (for example, MVC 1.0), or are still under development and research (for example, Valhalla project). For this, in addition to communicating with each other, we always strive to invite to us the most important professionals in this field, including from abroad. Moreover, we try to do it regularly. Conferences and meetings are an excellent way to fulfill our ideas.
- What will you talk about on Joker?
- My report is called "JBatch, or not the biggest data . " I will talk about the relatively new JSR-352, whose task is to standardize and optimize approaches to batchevom (or batch) data processing in Java. This language has firmly established itself in the enterprise, where the tasks of batch processing are quite common, and, until recently, there were no standardized solutions.
Vyacheslav Kruglov
- In T-Systems, you are a Java developer and team lead - and which team are you leading, what are you working on?- Our project is called SBB , we are developing software for selling tickets for Swiss public transport. A team of about 40 people, and we conduct all development in Russia. The customer provides only the requirements. In fact, we are a product team.
- You had a report on working with various databases with Hibernate at Joker last year - and which databases do you work with in T-Systems?
- Very dependent on the project. There are many projects, they have their own requirements. The most common is, of course, Oracle. There is MySQL. Some projects use MariaDB, some NoSQL.
- The material “5 reasons to use JPA / Hibernate” recently appeared - and what, in your work experience, is the main reason for using them?
- I just read this article too, most of all I liked the point “increase in development productivity” there. Indeed, Hibernate allows you to quickly write the necessary code, without worrying about any routine queries.
- The opposite in spirit text “Hibernate ruined my career” about how it made the project worse and not better appeared - did you come across this in T-Systems?
- In those projects where I worked, there was no such thing; we had Hibernate useful. Yes, there were many problems, and their solution took some time, but in general, he brought relief. But I have no doubt that there are tasks in which it is not necessary. This is quite a serious framework that carries a lot of functionality, and somewhere it is not required.
- Do you have experience in teaching young people and on Joker University Day, and in the format of a Java school - and you yourself are also formed in the process of such training? Did you find out in the end of the report that you learned something yourself?
- Yes of course. In the process of preparing and searching for material, there were very interesting moments that were not to be found at work. Including those that can then be used in the work.
And in the "non-technical" plan, you also learn. In preparation for the Joker, the training from the JUG.ru Group was very useful: it helped to structure the knowledge on how to conduct the report, to rebuild it. This ultimately helped a lot, including in the Java school.
Maria Zernova
- The company uses different methods of communication - how is the conference different for you from others?Remote communication implies a large amount of formalism — standard formulations about the company's benefits, achievements, and customers. Live communication at the event allows visitors to get much more interesting information. You can ask questions about specific projects in which teams are recruited and chat with their representatives about the details.
- Joker takes place in St. Petersburg - for T-Systems is it just one of the cities, or is the venue important?
The St. Petersburg office is the central office of our company in Russia, most of the team is located here. Java projects are mainly made here: in St. Petersburg, for example, we are developing internal systems for our parent company Deutsche Telekom or projects for customers from the automotive industry — a very large BMW Online Sales Master (OSM) project. This is the third project for BMW, which started in our software development center in 2016.
Therefore, as a rule, we take full-time participation at conferences that take place in St. Petersburg. But, of course, this does not limit our speakers - they speak at specialized conferences regardless of the city where they are held. And we invite employees from different cities to us, and are ready to help with the relocation.
- What response does the company usually receive after the reports of your speakers?
Usually after the speakers' speeches, the flow of visitors to the stand increases, wishing to learn more about our company and projects. And the point is rather not in the very topic of the report, but in the general positive impression that develops about the company thanks to the presentation. This is especially noticeable after the reports of the leaders of Java and Test-schools at events for those who are just starting their careers: they learn about learning opportunities "from the inside" rather than brochures, and this is of interest. On the other hand, the report of an experienced specialist allows you to discuss a complex project problem and share the solution found.
- Thanks for the answers, we will wait for the new report of Dmitry in October. In the meantime, you can recall the reports of T-Systems speakers from the previous Joker: Dmitry about Nashorn and Vyacheslav about Hibernate.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/311030/
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