ActiveJDBC Features - Birds View

August 12 update: it seems that some people link directly to this post and do not see in later posts that this project has been published on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/activejdbc/

Original post text follows:

This blog is not really a tutorial, but rather a high level overview of some important features this framework has. As I stated in a previous post, I really bent backwards when implementing it, only to make it easier for developers to access persistent data.

I will present various use cases in a list format:

How to run a simple query

//find by id:
Person p = Person.findById(0);

//find first:
Person p = Person.first("name = ?", "John");

//simple select of multiples:
List<Person> people = 
Person.where("department = ? and hire_date > ? ", "IT", hireDate);
//...iterate

How to build pageable resultsets

List<Employee> people = 
Employee.where("department = ? and hire_date > ? ", "IT", hireDate)
              .offset(21)
                 .limit(10)
                    .orderBy("hire_date asc");
...iterate

This query will ensure that the returned result set will start at the 21st record and will return only 10 records, according to the "orderBy". The ActiveJDBC has a built in facility for various database flavors and it will generate appropriate SQL statement that is specific for a DB (Oracle, MySQL, etc) and is efficient. It will not fetch all records, starting with 1.
I tried these queries on tables with millions of records on Oracle and performance is flat.
In fact, you can learn how to create queries like this if ActiveJDBC logging is enabled.

How to create new records

Person p = new Person();
p.set("name", "Marilyn");
p.set("last_name", "Monroe");
p.set("dob", "1935-12-06");
p.saveIt();

This code should be self explanatory. As you can see, ActiveJDBC does not require to have getters and setters. You can write them, if you like, but IMHO, they are nothing but code pollution.

The set(name, value) method returns reference to the same model object, which makes it possible to string method calls like this:

Person p = new Person();
p.set("name", "Marilyn").set("last_name", "Monroe").set("dob", "1935-12-06").saveIt();

There is even a third way to set values into a model:

String[] names = {"first_name", "last_name", "dob"};
Object[] values = {"John", "Doe", new Date(johnsDobTime)}

Person john = new Person();
john.set(names, values).saveIt();

...and yet another way to set values into a model is with a use of a map:

Map values = ... initialize map
Person p = new Person();
p.fromMap(values);
p.saveIt();

I hope this was entertaining. I will write more about features of ActiveJDBC in future posts. Specifically how it handles relationships.

Constructive feedback is much appreciated!

Have fun :)

ActiveRecord in Java == ActiveJDBC

As a Java developer, I spent a a couple of years working in a mixed environment where Java and Ruby intermixed. Working side by side with Ruby developers made me aware of things outside the Java world. To some extend, this was my own fault for ignoring the Ruby world. I clearly remember beng at the SD West conference in 2005 when the Ruby frenzy began. I looked at what RoR can do and was unimpressed by it mostly because the presentations at the conference focused on generating an application from scratch using scaffolding. Having to implement web app generators for Hibernate/Tiles/Struts-Layout two years prior, this looked boring and I put my interest to Ruby on the back burner. I was wrong. A couple of years later, working in a mixed environment (Java/Ruby) I learned a whole a lot more about Ruby and Rails, and was pleasantly surprised by the level of innovation. Over the years I have developed somewhat a disgust for big frameworks and "architectures" using them. The biggest offender IMHO is Spring. I really, really, REALLY do not understand what value it provides. The Spring context files multiply like rabbits, making it extremely difficult to debug the application. As you can imagine, in a mixed environment, there were many heated discussions on the merits of different languages, and I tended to protect Java, stating that the Java environment was poisoned by large useless frameworks as well as a large number of corporate developer-drones, and really there is nothing wrong with the language. The argument that the Ruby folks had was that Ruby is more elegant, dynamic and powerful and therefore attracts a more sophisticated crowd. My arguments that there are plenty examples of outstanding software created in whatever language (including Java) were just brushed aside.  On the flip side, when Ruby becomes as successful and as prominent as Java, it too will be flooded by corporate bonehead developers. I think that some of the Ruby folks behave as Ruby were a cult, not another tool at developers' disposal. So, to make the story short, the desire to prove that it is totally possible to create a lightweight persistence layer in Java similar to ActiveRecord, and make it even simpler to use in some regard, as well as desire to roll up my sleeves and just do some coding (I have done too much architecture and management over the past few years), drove me to create another ORM framework in Java, named ActiveJDBC.
The idea is to model the behavior and feel similar that of ActiveRecord, but make it for the Java developer. It is amazing how little Java developers know of Ruby. RoR has some great features, and despite the fact that there is no method_missing in Java, many ideas are possible to borrow and implement in Java.
The ActiveJDBC is already used on one commercial project, and according to developers who are used to Hibernate, they "do not even notice it, it just works".
My design goals were:

• Should infer all metadata from DB (like ActiveRecord)
• Should be very easy to work with
• Should reduce amount of code to a minimum
• No configuration, just conventions
• Some conventions are overridable in code by simply calling methods (this will be aided by IDEs)
• No need to learn another language
• No need to learn another QL - SQL is sufficient
• Code must be lightweight and intuitive, should read like English
• No sessions, no "attaching, re-attaching" 
• No persistence managers. 
• No classes outside your own models.
• Models are lightweight, no transient fields
• No proxying. What you write is what you get (WYWIWYG :))
• Should have the least possible resistance to startup a project
• No useless getters and setters (they just pollute code). You can still write them if you like.
• No DAOs and DTOs  - this mostly junk code anyway

Well, enough suspense, I can say that I started development on my free time around September, and at the end of October I had something I could use in a real system.
Let's look at code examples.
Here is an example of a model:

public class Person extends Model {}

Despite the fact that there is no code in it, it is fully functional and will map to a table called PEOPLE automatically. Here is how to use it:

List<Person> people = Person.find("name = 'John'");
Person aJohn =  people.get(0);
String johnsLastName = aJohn.get("last_name");

As you can see, the amount of code is reduced to a level when it is actually readable.
Finder methods can also be parametrized like this:

List<Person> teenagers = Person.find("age > ? and age < ?", 10, 20);

ActiveJDBC supports many features and is great for building web applications as well. It has a nice validation mechanism similar that of ActiveRecord, automatic support of many to one and many to many relationships, batch deletes and updates (conditional too), etc. Too many to list. I hope this wets your appetite. Any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

cheers!

Daily VIM commands

These are commands I found to be using frequently when on command line:

Window Operations:

• :split - horizontal split
• :vs - vertical split
• :vsplit - vertical split
• Ctrl + W, Ctrl + W - will tab between windows
• Ctrl + W, _ - will maximize current window
• Ctrl + W, = - will resize all windows equally
• 4 CTRL-W + - will increase height of window by 4 lines

File Explorer:

• :e - will tab through the files available in current directory
• :cd <..> - will change to directory, just like system command
• :Ex - open file explorer in current window
• :Sex - split current window and open explorer in one of windows
• Hit a file to open that file in current window
• Ctrl + 6 to go back to explorer from opened file

Search/Replace

• :s/OLD/NEW - find and replace a first occurrence on current line
• :s/OLD/NEW/g - find and replace all occurrences on current line
• :%s/OLD/NEW/g - find and replace all occurrences in entire file
  

Diffing files

• From within VI: :vertical diffsplit file
• From command shell: vimdiff file1, file2

Buffer Operations

• :ls - will list currently open buffers
• :bn - will open a buffer n, where n is a number as reported by ls
• :b - tab through open buffers, select one to open with Enter

Tabs

• :tabe - opens a new tab (tab in edit mode)
• gt - advance to the next
• gT - advance to the previous
• {count}gt - go to the {count} tab
• :tabe - path/to/file - to open a file
• :tabn - go to next tab

External Commands

• :pwd - print working directory
• :cd - as usual - move to directory
• :cd D - will iterate through directories starting with D

Visual Selection Mode

• v - to put in the visual selection mode
• y - yank/copy
• x - cut selection
• p - paste at cursoe location

Autosuggest
Ctrl + N or Ctrl + P - this will show choices when typing partial working


Expand tabs with spaces(put these onto the .vimrc file):
:set tabstop=4
:set expandtab
:%retab

Mouse Support (in the .vimrc file)
:set mouse=a


This is mostly a cheet sheet for myself, ..but enjoy
igor

Ubuntu 9.04 on MacBook Pro 5.4

A few days ago I purchased a new shiny MacBook Pro, and decided to install Ubuntu on it. Why? because Linux is my habitat, and also because some software packages I use are readily available on Linux, but not on Mac OS. In any case, this blog is not about Mac OS vs Linux (more on this maybe one day; I can write a book on how Mac OS sucks :)), but rather some steps I had to overcome to complete the installation.

Out of the box, Jaunty works on MBP, with some exceptions. The trackpad is too slow be useful, the Fn key in in the reverse.
After installation using the Boot Camp, I followed the instructions on the Ubuntu forums: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro5-1_5-2/Jaunty, additionally used information here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppleKeyboard
to adjust keyboard settings. All was fine, except the Trackpad refused to be configured. This has proven to be the biggest hurdle I spent the most time on... until I discovered this posting:
Configure ALPS (Synaptics) touchpad in Ubuntu 9.0.4 (Jaunty Jackalope)
Apparently, the fdi file must be mapped to the correct HAL device (kinda makes sense :)).
Using this command:

$lshal > hal.txt

, I was able to see that the name of my device was: "Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad".
Armed with this knowledge, I edited my FDI file to my liking, and HAL was able to load it, and apply my settings to the right device.
The trick is to find the parameter: "info.product" in the lshal output and use it in the fdi file.
Here is my complete fdi file after adjusting speed and sensitivity:

http://igorpolevoy.com/public/attach/Ubuntu9.04OnMacBookPro/x11-synaptics-bcm5974.fdi

cheers,
igor

Bending Outlook towards GMail

I use e-mail extensively, and usually for the most part working for clients whose infrastructures are based on MS Exchange. I have tried really hard to wean myself from Outlook, but unfortunately the alternatives bring about a host of other problems (tried Thunderbird and Evolution).

The two things I really like about GMail are:
* Nothing is deleted
* All is searchable

One really annoying problem is that the server administrator usually sets up cleaning of the "Deleted Items" folder and you loose all those "deleted" messages for future searches. I've been using GMail for personal use since 2004, and really like the idea that nothing needs to be deleted. Configuring Outlook 2003 to save all messages has proven to be a challenge. Here is how I did this.

First, I created a new folder under "Inbox" called "MyDeletedItems". I then wrote a VBA macro to move all messages from "Deleted Items" as well as all selected messages from any current view to "MyDeletedItems" folder.
Here is a code for the marco:

Sub MoveToMyDeletedFolder()

Dim x As Integer
Set myDeletedItemsFolder = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(6).Folders("MyDeletedItems")

'This will move all selected messages from current view to "MyDeletedItems" folder.
Set sectedItems = Outlook.Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
For x = 1 To sectedItems.Count
'MsgBox sectedItems.Item(x).SenderName & ":" & sectedItems.Item(x).Subject
sectedItems.Item(x).Move myDeletedItemsFolder
Next x

' this will move all items from standard DeletedItems folder to MyDeletedFolder
Set deletedItemsFolder = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(olFolderDeletedItems)
Set delItems = deletedItemsFolder.Items
For x = 1 To delItems.Count
'MsgBox delItems.Item(x).SenderName & ":" & delItems.Item(x).Subject
delItems.Item(x).Move myDeletedItemsFolder
Next x

End Sub

The next step was to create a button and wire it to the macro, which was fairly easy. The really awkward way of adding a shortcut to buttons in Outlook shocked me. This is done by changing a text associated with a button. You need to pre-pend the name with a '&' character, which will make pressing Alt+'next character' possible. For instance, if the label on the button is "&Delete Message", then this button is associated with a Alt+D keyboard shortcut. Editing the button text is equally unfriendly. Thanks to all the people whose links I cannot reproduce here (i googled extensively to get all this information), I learned that in order to edit a button text, you have to do: Tools-> Customize, then, when the Customize dialog is up, right - click on the button to edit it's text.


As you can see from screenshot, my configuration is 'Alt+X'.

Since there is much written about Outlook security on the web, I will not repeat it here, but getting to run the macros is not straight forward. Instead of changing the security levels, I chose to create s self - signed certificate and us it for the macros.
Here are the steps to dot this:

• Generate a self-signed certificate. This can be done with a variety of tools, but the simplest way to do this is to use MS - provided SelfCert.exe. On my machine, it is located here: c:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office11
• In VBA Editor, do: Tools-> Digital Signature -> Choose .. and choose a certificate you just generated.

After this step, I was able to run the macro by just selecting a message in my inbox and pressing 'Alt+X'.
I think that when I started poking around all these steps, Outlook prompted me if I want to enable macros for X number of days, I selected some value and completely forgot it. Sure enough, after a dye days :) this stopped working and Outlook presented me with a message saying that I need to "Enable macros" from the application (Outlook). This was very annoying, and I had to dig further.
After some poking around, I figured that the certificate I created is a type of a "personal certificate", which can be seen in Internet Explorer Tools-> internet Options-> Content -> Certificates -> Personal. I exported this certificate and imported it back in as "Trusted Root Certificate", which solved this problem. I can run my macros again (till further obstacle from MS :)).

Once you import the certificate as "trusted Root Certificate", start Outlook again and try to run the macro, you will be presented with this dialog:

At this point, mark "Always trust macros from this publisher" and press "Enable Macros" button.


The last thing to make Outlook to behave close to GMail is to have a good search. While I generally believe that the Google Desktop is a search engine superior search to Windows search, I have a few gripes about it. First, when an e-mail message is found, there is no way to see what folder a message belongs to. Additionally, there is a pretty annoying bug in Google Desktop and Outlook integration, which sometimes prevents a link "Open in Outlook" to work. This makes it impossible to reply to and forward messages found through a search engine. Windows search, on the other hand has a tight integration with Outlook (surprise !), and is working well albeit slower than Google.

I have an e-mail environment for corporate e-mail that is somewhat close to GMail - nothing is deleted, and all is searchable.

I hope this help someone.

As a Java developer I'm sometimes bitten by a bug when runtime loads a wrong class form a wrong library. Often times I'd loose a lot of time tracing the problem to multiple versions of the same library loaded. This quite often happens when you use Maven. For instance, if you put a dependency on two different libraries, and one of them pulls down one version of Log4J, while another loads a different version of it, you are going to end up with two versions of the same. Chances are that they not compatible with one another.

After stumbling into this situation a few times, I decided to write a simple Swing based app for tracing down all the jars in a specific directory. Thus, the JarExplorer was born.

JarExplorer is a simple tool which can be used to inspect large jar repositories. It will allow to locate classes, property files, images, and all other resources inside those libs.

It works very well for me, and I hope someone else will also find it useful.

It can be downloaded from the following location: http://code.google.com/p/jar-explorer/


Besides ability to open images, text and HTML, it also alloes to peek inside classes. It will show inheritance, all methods (even private) as well as all member variables. This is accomplished via use of a library called javad: http://www.bearcave.com/software/java/javad/index.html by Ian Kaplan.
Java reflection was too limiting for the purpose, but Ian's library worked quite well.

The JarExplorer is fully self-sufficient, and does not require anything else (besides Java :)).
When it starts up, point it to a directory with jar files and wait a bit until it indexes every jar in it (recursively of course). After that you can do very fast searches using this tool.


Good luck
igor

Exadel Flamingo Released

Although this blog is a bit late on the news, nonetheless, we finally released Exadel Flamingo 1.6. This is a bog milestone for the project.
For those who does not know what Flamingo is, can refer to the following articles: Integrating Flex with Seam and Flamingo.
Even though this article describes integration with JBoss Seam, Flamingo supports combination of Spring/Hibernate pretty much the same.

The new release, besides the previous features, contains vast improvements. It moved made a few steps in the direction to become an agile development framework for Flex on Java. The features of interest are:

• Code generation greatly improved with generation of ActionScript files from Java, added ability to create CRUD screens for entities with relations (e.g. one-to-many)
• 'CallSet' and 'Binding' Flex components added for Spring
• Added "search by relationship" and sorting for dynamic methods
• Spring Security integration added

The nice thing about Flamingo is now, you can develop applications on Flex blazingly fast. There is a wealth of simple scripts to generate most artifacts in the project, including a fully working scaffolding for entities - completely wired up. This is a great way to prototype a relationship model.

Another advanced feature is Dynamic Persistent Methods. This allows Flex developers to simply call methods on the remote object even though these methods are not declared anywhere!
Here is an example:
Let's say you have a Hibernate entity class declared like this:

@Entity
public class Person implements Serializable {
    private String name;
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }    
} 

On the client side, you can just execute this:

<mx:RemoteObject id="person" destination="Person" result="resultHandler(event)"/>
...
private function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void
{
    entities = event.result as ArrayCollection;
}
...
person.findAll();
person.findByNameLike("John%");
person.findByNameNotEqual("John Smith");

The simplicity and power are apparent. No need for extra configuration, no need to think about mapping of web services, the call just executes and returns what is expected.

Dynamic Persistent Methods also support relationships. If you have two entities in a relationship:

@Entity
public class Author implements Serializable {

private Set books;
@OneToMany(mappedBy = "author", fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
  public Set getBooks() {
     return books;
  }
}
@Entity
public class Book implements Serializable {
   private Author author;
  
   @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
   public Person getAuthor() {
     return person;
   }
}

On the Flex side, you can call dynamic methods on relationships like this:


<mx:RemoteObject id="book" destination="Book"/>
...
book.findByPerson(currentPerson)


How was this accomplished, since these methods were not declared on the class "Person" in Java? There is not magic here, just some clever programming. Flamingo on the server side parses the request from the call, and recognizes that a method is dynamic. Then, based on the syntax rules for method names, it generates a dynamic Hibernate SQL query, executes it and returns results back to the caller (on the client side!).

As you can see, this is some powerful stuff. Of course, Flamingo is not for everyone. If you develop business database driven applications, Flamingo is a perfect candidate for consideration, if you already have an application based on Seam or Spring/Hibernate and you want you make it mode dynamic, Flamingo will suit well.

Exadel Flamingo lives here: http://www.exadel.com/web/portal/flamingo

Good luck

Offshoring Pitfalls in the Trenches

If you are like me (corporate architect/software dev. manager working for a large company), then you probably could not avoid to be sucked into the "outsourcing black hole". Let me share my experiences on the subject.

In general, the higher level management of a corporation gets this "we need to be as efficient as X" bug, and then goes on to setup corporate policies for engagement with outsourcing partners. Normally (at least in my experience), the decisions come down to people like me to work with a team of developers in another country. This team would be pre-selected by management of the vendor itself, and often times, the qualifications of the offshore team members might not exactly match your projects needs. In addition to that, there could be a whole host of other impediments that you do not normally have when working with a local group:

• Pre-selected team
• Cultural barriers
• Language barriers (not the same as cultural)
• Time difference
• Lack of good communications (IM, screen sharing, phone, VPN, Wiki, etc.)
• Lack of a development ecosystem (VCS, bug tracking system, continuous build, integration env.)
• Wrong contracting agreement (time boxing)

My first account with outsourcing was around 2003, when I was asked to deliver an internal project, and was given a team of four developers and an on-shore liaison from an approved vendor in India. I bravely charged ahead without thinking too much that the project actually was not setup right. This first project went exactly according to the Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will..". The bullet list above is not a coincidence, as it came directly from my experience on this project. Every aspect of this project has gone wrong. To begin with, I probably should provide a technology overview of the project. The task was to build an internal database of UML models. This was a web-based J2EE application, which stored UML models in a native XML database. The architecture was not that complicated, but there was a lot of work with new technologies (native XML database, XPath, XQuery, EJBs, generated JavaScript, etc.).

Let's start describing every problem we faced. First off, we were assigned a pre-selected team for this project. Well, this is a strange world. When we hire full time employees, or even consultants to do the job, we go far and above in the interviewing process to ensure that the candidate is indeed qualified to do the job. On the other hand, when we work off-shoring vendors, somehow we are handed down teams that were put together without any input from the actual architecture and management of the project - just because they were provided by an "approved vendor". This, of course allows vendors abuse the situation and allocate junior team members to projects in order to cross-train them. When the project started, and I was able to interview some of the developers in the off-shore team, I was shocked to find out that they were all in their early twenties (nothing wrong with that, as long as there is experience) and only one team member had a cursory knowledge of UML(heard of it). None of the developers possessed any of the knowledge of technologies necessary to complete this project. In other words, there was a great mismatch between the experience of the team members and the project demands, so we started with the introduction to UML :).

Second, I quickly realized that there were cultural differences between our working style and that of the off-shore team. It came in a form of full agreements during the design and architecture discussions. When we started to receive deliverables, we realized that they had no resemblance to what was discussed and "agreed" upon.


Time difference. The time difference between Chicago and Bangalore (location of the off-shore team) is 11 hours, which pretty much prevents any live communications within the normal work ours. This translated into a lot of extra hours spent by US team members as well as the vendors'.

Lack of good communications. This is an area where our own management (either due to lack of understanding, or lack of attention) failed miserably. Software development is a highly social process, and requires people to be in constant communications. The only communication channels we had on this project were phone and e-mail. The following communication channels are a must for every project and especially
for an off-shoring one: instant messaging, screen sharing, phone, VPN, Wiki. Unfortunately, we had none of these, except for mail and phone. This resulted in extremely inefficient communications often delayed by days, with screen shots included. A simple e-mail "question - answer - confirmation" could take up to four days (did management factor this into the bottom line of off-shoring? ). We did not get IM, VPN, and shared Wiki because of our own managements' security concerns (which were superficial of course, as all code was sent back and fourth by e-mail!).

The off shore team used their local VSS as a source control system, while we used CVS. Each morning we would have an e-mail code dump, and quite often we had a very difficult time checking it in, merging, compiling, and running. Sometimes this activity alone would devour a good half a day.

The last but not the least, the contract agreement. I'm a firm believer that an agreement with any vendor must be based on a actual deliverables, and never just time - boxed, as it was on this project. The entire project was scheduled for nine months, but the off-shore contract (for reasons unknown to me) was only for fife. This meant that the off-shore team was not in any position to be responsible for just about anything they delivered. They would not be on the project long enough to see it go live.

All of the above resulted in the fact that about of 90% of code delivered by the off-shore team was discarded soon after the off-shore team rolled of the project, and the system was completed by a local team via a heroic effort. Of course, the management deemed it a successful use of the off-shore resources - how ironic!

Hey, you have been patient enough to read up until this point – my hat is off to you :). You might ask what is the moral of this story? The bottom line is that modern software development is a very hard process, and it should be approached very seriously. Working with off-shore vendors makes it much more difficult and sometimes creates problems you might not even think of when working with a local team. In addition to that, off-shoring work creates so many inefficiencies, which need to be factored in when deciding whether it is going to be good for your organization.
In other words, before an organization embarks on an off-shoring initiative, it needs to get it's ducks in a row, by providing a more productive environment, all possible better communication channels, better structured contracting agreement, etc - I think you get the point.

So, is the outlook so bleak? Not really, if it is approached properly. I will tell the success story in the next posting.
Any thoughts?

Good Day to Start a Blog

Well, finally a day has come for me too to get on a band wagon of blogging. Why blog, why me , why now? It is that as a Java professional working an living many of the ups and downs of the IT industry during the course of my professional career, I have many thoughts that I discuss with my fellow co-workers and other people in the industry that think alike. This blog is to continue the same, but for a wider audience. General topics that will be discussed here range from , to somewhat vague topics such as:

• Very technical HOW TOs
• Various architectural approaches - pros/cons
  
• Efficiency of a development process
• How to create a winning team
  
• What does it mean to create architecture
• Future directions of IT in the world of constantly changing technologies
• How to survive in constantly globalized economy
• anything else that comes to mind and has any relevancy to the topics above

The real reason that I'm starting this Blog, is that I'd like to discuss these topics, potentially get comments from other people who ask themselves the same questions, and generally exchange ideas.

You might ask: "Why another blog on the same? Isn't it enough out there that is printed in magazines, published on the Internet, etc". Well, maybe, but a lot this kind of information is scattered out there and sometimes too formal (especially the enterprise architecture stuff). What I want to discuss here are simple practical approaches for getting things done.

A couple of words about me. I came into the world of software from electrical engineering. Actually I enjoyed this profession, but somehow (unbeknownst to myself), gradually moved into the world of software in the early 90s. I started to work in Java when the JDK could fit on the floppy disk, and have gone through many phases in my professional career, from consulting to Enterprise Architecture, to software development management, back to architecture consulting. I have also been teaching various Java related topics at the DePaul IPD for the last eight - nine years.

So, please do not hesitate to comment on any of my postings.

Have fun :)