A little while back I needed to create a simple server to supply some information to some local machines, and cache that information. I realised that it was probably a project I could use Spring Roo to great effect, and that it was simple enough to provide the basis for a tutorial. Here is that Tutorial

This article is kind of like "Meta Research". I'm not going to tell you how to process XML in Java, I'm just going to point you at some other cool tutorials which do. These are all by Lars Vogel. I strongly recommend his training material for its clarity.

Since the dawn of time (well since I started to process XML) there have been two styles of loading XML, and one main style of writing it. You either loaded up the whole file into memory (through "DOM" - the Document Object Model), or if you were fancy, or worried about running out of memory, you used SAX - the amusingly named "Simple API for XML".

Well I was interested to read Lars Vogel say "Both DOM and Sax are older API's and I recommend not to use them anymore.". He is of course saying that a number of techniques introduced in JDK 1.5 and 1.6 are now better than the old ways.

Spring Roo Add Ons: Typical Security

The idea behind Spring Roo is that you tell it what you want, and it gives you a Java and Spring framework for developing such a tool. Typically the app you are building is a website (though it doesn't have to be).

One of the most common features of a web application framework is some kind of role based permissioning mechanism. As well as the ability to store users details, we also want to store jobs (or "Roles") that users might do, and record which users are authorised for which roles.

Here is a review of a book I bought while still in "Early Adopters get the incomplete ebook" phase. Spring Roo Cookbook from Packt Publishing.

OpenGamma released a public version of their Risk Management software at the end of April[0] and I've had a few weeks to read the docs, look at the code, run the tests, and basically play around with it. What I haven't done yet is generate a risk report.

Here are my first thoughts.

You may remember my article some time ago written about Spring Roo. Well I've been playing with it some more and am thinking that the pros outweigh the cons.

There is one company I'd like to learn a lot more about and that is OpenGamma. I'd like to work with them or their clients (or possibly for them) except that they are in partial stealth mode. I seem to be unable to get any more information than you can from their website and twitter feed.

This article is prompted by the news that OpenGamma has obtained significant funding.

There is an interesting and enjoyable programme available to UK people through the BBC iPlayer. Its subject is Statistics. Yep - The Joy of Stats: Professor Hans Rosling presents a documentary about statistics, exploring their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used to see the world as it really is.

I recently launched several Drupal based websites where people could register - but not get access until someone authorised them. Sadly this resulted in several spam users a day

[EDIT: This blog entry is out of date: It looks like reCaptcha might have been cracked so I will be using different CAPTCHA technologies rather than reCaptcha. eg
http://www.governmentsecurity.org/latest-security-news/forums-flooded-wi...
]