One of the ways of scaling a heavy-traffic LAMP web application is to transform the server into a cluster of servers. Some may opt to walk on the easy path by using an overpriced appliance load balancer, but the most daring [and budget-restrained] will go for free software solutions such ...
Using HTTPUnit ‘out of the box’
Recently, HTTPUnit project reached version 1.6. While this nifty API is mainly targeted at unit testing webapps, I have also succesfully used it for other purposes such as :
HTTPUnit as a benchmarking tool There is a plethora of web benchmarking tools out there, both freeware and commercial. However, my ...Sybase woes – and Jython saves the day
Until now, I’ve always had a certain respect for Sybase database.
Based on their history, I thought that the product is a sort of MS SQL
without the glitzy features – think Las Vegas without the lights, the cowboy boots and Eiffel Tower. Which gives: huge crowds of fat tourists ...
If programming is like gardening …
… then a software team is like an aquarium.
“Programming is Gardening, not Engineering” says Andy Hunt (of Pragmatic Programmer fame) in one of his well-known Artima conversations. Inspired by such an interesting ‘organical’ comparison, it’s my metaphor of a software team which behaves quite like an aquarium. I assume ...Agressive IT Antipattern : You’re Not Gonna Need It (when you’ll file for Chapter 11)
Nice excerpt from an Inc. article :
Future Beef’s real albatross, says Darrell Wilkes, was an expensive computer system that ran enormously complex software from J.D. Edwards. “We were pouring all this data in, but we could never get the data out,” says Wilkes, whose job, as the company ...Lost in Bind-land ? Dnsmasq comes to rescue
Short sample from the rants of a software engineer temporarily converted into a lazy network administrator…
Should you ever need to install a forwarding DNS proxy on Debian, which also acts as DNS for the local network, don’t even think about using Bind. This is a very powerful tool ...Figure of the day : 350
Recently, an Indian poster on a Slashdot thread (‘India Outsourcers Find Back Door in Canada’) mentioned that:
Software Developers in India (including me) are paid 350 times the prevailing minimum wage in India. I thought it would be interesting to make a comparison with the same data in Europe: - in ...(Undocumented?) HTTP-based REST API in Jira
While the REST API is mentioned in the Top 10 Reasons to use Jira, I can hardly see any reference to such an external API in the documentation (I mean, besides XML-RPC and upcoming SOAP support) and even Google can’t clear the issue. But I can confirm you ...
Examples of RCP-based apps
This is the summary of a nice thread spotted on eclipse.platform.rcp. The initial question was I am constantly having to deal with resistance from my developers, which mostly boils down to resistance to SWT, and hesitance from peers in the company. There are compelling arguments to counter nearly ...
Junit : it’s not [only] about the API
Being extremely busy lately, I arrive a bit late at the Junit destruction feast. While it is probably true that some guys with a certain gift for writing blog articles may “come up with something far more useful in a couple of days”, I think the discussion is missing an ...