A Java geek

Mar 1, 2010 hibernate

Hibernate hard facts – Part 5

This is the 5th post in the Hibernate hard facts focus series. In this article, I will show you how to manage logical DELETE in Hibernate

Feb 23, 2010 cluster tomcat

Clustering Tomcat

In this article, I will show you how to use Apache/Tomcat in order to set up a load balancer. I know this has been done a zillion time before, but I will use this setup in my next article (teaser, teaser) so at least I will have it documented somewhere. Apache Tomcat is the reference JSP/container since its inception. Despite a lack of full JEE support, it certainly has its appeal. The reasons behind using a full-featured commercial JEE application server are not always technical ones. With lig

Feb 22, 2010 free projectlocker subversion

Free online SVN repositories

This week, I searched for free online SVN repositories for closed-source projects. Of course, there are plenty of sites offering services for OpenSource projects: Google Code, SourceForge, etc. It may seem amazing, but everybody does not necessarily want to expose its code to the world. From what I’ve found, there aren’t so many free SVN repositories around.

Feb 17, 2010 get hibernate jpa load proxy

Hibernate hard facts - Part 4

This is the 4th post in the Hibernate hard facts focus series. In this article, I will show the subtle differences between get() and load() methods.

Feb 15, 2010 configuration convention installation

Seamless installation: convention over configuration

Today, I will not take the role of the architect that knows how to deliver applications but instead I will play the end-user part. In a previous post, I was tasked to put a whole development infrastructure in place. A continuous integration server was indeed in order. I took a look at some, but I was really dumbfounded when I tried Hudson. Features are not what stroke me at that time (although Hudson’s features did serve me well) but only the ease of installation. Let’s look at a

Feb 9, 2010 middleware security

Securing middleware products

My work is IT architecture, meaning I focus on the early steps of a project. Once the application is in production, I usually leave it to systems and production engineers. For example, for JVM fine tuning, most of the clients I worked for have people that have the right skills to do that. Nevertheless, I need sometimes to sully my nails. This happens in two cases: when the client is too small to have such dedicated teams or when its production team are not experienced enough to handle the probl

Feb 3, 2010 book maven

Maven The complete reference

This review is about Sonatype’s Maven: The complete reference by Tim O’Brien, John Casey, Brian Fox, Jason Van Zyl, Eric Redmond and Larry Shatzer. Disclaimer: I learned Maven from Sonatype’s site 3 years ago. I found it was a great tool to learn Maven. Now that I have a little more experience in the tool, I tried to write this review in an objective manner. Facts 13 chapters, 267 pages, free (see below)This book is intended for both readers who wants to learn Maven from scratch

Feb 1, 2010 context root slash tweak webapp

Context root tweaking

JEE never ceases to amaze me. Even when I think I’m on top and I know all there’s to know about webapps, I’m in for a surprise. Good news is, whatever you think you know about a subject, there’s still room for one more fact. Bad news is, I’m deeply disturbed by what I learned.

Jan 22, 2010 rich client typology

Typology of Rich Client technologies

Chances are, if you are an software architect and you need to make applications available over the network, you are asking yourself what client technology to use. In this article, I will try to list the solutions used previously and then elaborate on the solutions available today.

Jan 21, 2010 flex flexmojos

My first try at Flex

Flex is now approaching its 4th version. Even since its start, it looked promising. Until some time ago, I didn’t look much into it for it was not Open enough. Two years ago, in order to use Flex application freely, you had to limit yourself to a little subset of Flex. This has changed. At the end of last year, though, my client gave me the opportunity to prototype a simple application and I dived into it. This development gave me an insight into BlazeDS, Spring BlazeDS and Flex itself. O