A Java geek

Oct 10, 2010 eclipse scala

My first Scala servlet (with Eclipse)

In this article, I will show you how to tweak Eclipse so that you will be able to code 'classical' webapps in Scala. Eclipse has a plugin that let you help develop with Scala. The plugin is by no mean perfect , but it gets the job done, letting you create Scala projects that automatically compile Scala code with scalac.

Oct 4, 2010 hibernate

Hibernate hard facts - Part 6

This is the 6th post in the Hibernate hard facts focus series. In this article, I will show you how to use the fetch profile feature introduced in Hibernate 3.5. Lazy loading is a core feature in Hibernate: it saves memory space. The reasoning behind it is, if you don’t use an association, you don’t need the object and thus, Hibernate does not load it into memory. Hibernate fills the lazy loaded attribute with a proxy that makes the SQL request when the getter is called.

Sep 27, 2010

The hunt for architectural solutions

At my customer’s site, I have the chance to work in a team of architects. This is rare enough to be mentioned, since most of the time, I’m alone. This is an opportunity to exchange thoughts. Earlier this year, we talked between us about similitudes that sometimes exist between searching for an architectural solution and hunting in 3 phases. At the beginning, it is simple enough: the requirements are clear, and the path to them is straight. You’re tasked with hunting for just

Sep 20, 2010 jbehave test

Automate your integration tests

Software testing traditionally has been separated between unit testing - testing classes in isolation - and integration testing - testing across all layers. Whereas unit testing is the domain of developers, integration testing is the domain of analysts. Moreover, most of the time, those tests are not automated and are painfully reexecuted by hand each time they are needed. This means that your build process has a safeguard harness on the unit level but nothing on the feature level (at least nothi

Sep 13, 2010 bean dozer

Automated beans conversion

This week’s post will be about beans conversion. In the past, I’ve ranted about DTO and their indiscriminate use in applications. I do concede, however, that DTO are sometimes necessary: this article points out some contexts where they might be. Moreover, DTO even may not be enough, bringing the need for View Objects. Such is the case for layered architectures in big projects.

Aug 9, 2010

Unselect all toggle buttons of a group

It’s summer and since I’m hearing more and more the sound of waves splashing instead of the sound of keyboards typing, I’m providing you with quick tricks instead of well-though deep articles. This time, it’s about Swing. I’m doing Swing for a pet project… a lot. And I’m more of a web guy. So, I’m always butting my head against the wall trying to overcome problem people more experienced in Swing wouldn’t find a problem at all. This is

Jul 26, 2010 maven

Managing POM versions

This article won’t be long but can be a lifesaver. If you use Maven, how many times did you need to manually update POM versions in an entire modules hierarchy? For me, the answer is: too many. When you project grows to include many Maven modules, releasing a new version can be a nightmare.

Jul 13, 2010 CDI

Further into CDI

In one of my latest articles on +Context and Dependency Injection, one of the lessons I learned was to use factory methods in order to reduce the number of classes. In this article, I will go into the detail since I think it is of some importance. During school, you were probably taught to create a class for each component. For example, if your application has 4 buttons, North, East, South and West, you’ll have 4 classes.

Jul 5, 2010

Safely give away your demo applications

Last month, I had to develop a Proof-of-Concept web application for a potential customer. Everything went fine, but at the end of the meeting, the customer asked 'Surely you will give us the demo so we can play with it further on our own'. I was pretty sure of my craft, so I had no problem about bugs and yet I gently refused anyway. Why so? Because I didn’t want to risk that my customer open the WAR and see how I made things happen.

Jun 27, 2010 Swing

Flamingo tutorial

In this article, I will provide you with the documentation to easily use the Flamingo framework and more precisely, its ribbon widget. Never say that Microsoft never innovates: in Office, it introduced an interesting concept, the ribbon band. The ribbon band is a toolbar of sort. But whereas toolbars are fixed, ribbons layout can change according to the width they display. If you have such an application, just play with it for a few seconds and you will see the magic happens