This coming Monday, September 26th, Agile Denver returns with guest
speaker Mike Thomas. Mike most recently spoke in Denver at the Rocky
Mountain Software Symposium last fall. We will be back in our normal
location at the Qwest Auditorium in Downtown Denver. Doors open at 6:00
PM for refreshments and networking.

Hard as it may be to believe, Java has been around long enough for
legacy Java systems to exist. As practices have matured and better
frameworks have become available, it has become more attractive to
rewrite legacy Java systems, using new techniques and tools. Such
rewrites are done in order to improve the "-ilities" of an application
(maintainability, testability, scalability, etc.). However, rewrites
are expensive and risky, and it's just plain impractical for a
development team to "go dark" for any signficant amount of time during
redevelopment.

What is needed is a set of techniques and processes to replace parts of
a legacy system while keeping the old parts running smoothly alongside
the new. As an indication of an idea whose time has come, in the Summer
of '04, Martin Fowler published an entry to his "bliki" proposing an
approach called, vividly, "StranglerApplication".

The presenter's team had started piecewise-rewriting a legacy Java
application months before Fowler published the StranglerApplication
article. Since that time, the team has found the metaphor to be very
appropriate.

The presentation is a case study in strangling this production
application. Covered are: reasons to strangle, team philosophies,
methodology, strangling techniques, lessons learned, and success
indicators. In this presentation you'll learn pragmatic approaches to
strangling legacy code from a practitioner who's been there, is doing
that.

AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:30 PM Networking and refreshments
6:30 - 6:35 PM Announcements and door prize giveaways
6:35 - 7:50 PM Mike Thomas

SPEAKER

Mike Thomas has worked in IT since 1986, on a variety of computing
platforms, from mainframes to micros, for companies varying in size
from eleven to 60,000 employees, as both an employee and a consultant.
He has concentrated on building enterprise systems in Java since 1999.

SPONSORS

The September 2005 meeting sponsors are to be announced.

DIRECTIONS

The Qwest auditorium is in the Qwest building on the corner of 17th and
Curtis. The street address is 1005 17th Street. Take the exterior
escalators facing 17th from street level to Level 1. You can then access
the elevators via doors to the right of the escalator landing. Take an
elevator to Level A for the auditorium. If these doors are locked, go to
the main building lobby on Level 1 proceeding from the escalator landing.

In addition to street parking, there is an outside parking lot on the
East side of the Qwest building that costs a flat $6 after 4pm. Several
other lots are within a few blocks and covered parking can be found in
the Tabor Center for around $5.