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

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

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

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

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