Building without the Closed-World Assumption: Integrating Enterprise Build Artifacts using Scala
Christos KK Loverdos

Working with large-scale enterprise software, like the application and framework stack of a world-class J2EE Application Server, entails the high danger of locking the developer inside the Vendor's ecosystem of tools and processes. Any small deviation might prove painful and with costs the managers are not always willing to accept. Fortunately, a highly expressive, object-functional language like Scala, can hack the escape route; and it can do it so well as to make it the default route.
What I will present is how I managed to escape the Vendor-provided recipes for intergrating enterprise components at the build level and how this has helped a development team of mostly entry-level juniors not only set a common developer-friendly communication language but also absorb any technological leap from Java 1.4 to Java 1.5 and J2EE 1.4 to J2EE 1.5 specifications.