Author Archive

*nix commands I can’t do without

Unix/Linux/*nix survival 101
Let me start with the obvious: I’m definitely not a unix guru by any means. I do however use it on a daily basis for basic build/development oriented tasks, so I know enough to get by. Since my friend just installed his first ever linux distribution (CentOS, Huzzah!), I thought I’d write something [...]

Transforming XML into MS Excel XML

MS Excel understands XML?
If you need to export xml to a Microsoft Excel friendly format, you could stress over the HSSF (Horrible Spread Sheet Format, for the uninitiated) format with apache’s POI framework or you could transform your xml into an format Excel understands (YBDK4EUCFJ35). This approach will allow you to decorate your cells [...]

Integrating Spring MVC 3.0 with JSR 303 (aka javax.validation.*)

Annotated POJO validation comes to a JDK near you!
The new annotated validation spec (jsr 303) is pretty slick, especially when used along side Spring MVC 3.0, and when backed by ejb3 entities. I’m pretty impressed with how easily it integrates with Spring MVC’s framework, and with how seamlessly error messages are passed to the form [...]

Quartz Scheduled Jobs

Java, XML, and cron driven scheduling made easy.
Projects here and there often need some kind of mechanism to schedule jobs at odd hours, or intervals. Quartz is a robust, flexible tool you can use to accomplish simple to complex job scheduling. There are a number of ways to use/configure quartz, but I’ve grown accustomed to [...]

Ejb3 Basics: Deploying Message Driven Beans

Farewell to lazy auto queue generation in JBoss 5
MDB’s were never so easy to deploy and manage when ejb3 first came out. In Jboss 4, all you have to do was annotate a class with @MessageDriven, sprinkle some meta data here and there, stick it in the oven and wham! Instant “I cant believe I [...]

Ejb3 basics: Entities

Entity Beans? Better than 2.1, I promise.
Ejb3 Entity beans are a type of enterprise java bean construct used to model data used by the ejb framework. The basic idea is to manipulate simple java objects, which represent in concrete terms your database data, and then have the framework handle as much of the plumbing as [...]

XML, Xalan, Endorsed dirs and &..

So recently, we’ve been working on a project that makes use of OpenSAML. As it turns out OpenSAML required newer Xalan libraries (2.7.1 to be precise), the kind that don’t ship with the older incarnation of jboss we are using for the project – version 4.02. Some of you might be more familiar with the [...]

War deployment file structure

What’s a war deployment, do I need my own army?
When it comes to deploying an web based application we have a few options on the table. Well only one really if you stick to J2EE standards, not counting Ear deployments which also deploy web apps via wars. Outside the world of J2EE though, it becomes [...]

Java, XML and XStream

What’s an object/xml serializaing/deserializaing library?
If you’ve never worked with an object/xml serializer and are considering writing your own from scratch, you may want to consider using a library like XStream. XStream is very good at moving java into xml and back. It allows a high level of control over how the xml can be organized [...]

Using Jboss Datasource files

If you’re using jboss and you’re storing database connection info in a properties file, you might be doing something wrong. Specifically, you’re probably not using the data source files jboss ships with to configure all that plumbing.
What’s a Datasource file?
Simply put, its a file that contains all the connection properties an application needs in order [...]

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