What was reported on this blog almost a year ago, is now making the national headlines.

Keep your blog reader pointed here for up to date information on the things that matter!

If there is one feeling that I left the recent No Fluff, Just Stuff conference in St. Louis this past weekend, it was that there a lot of people very interested in Groovy and Grails. I’ll have to admit that I am one of those people. For the last few years there have been a lot of web frameworks vying to be next Struts. I think Grails is in the best position to grab that market share. Market share isn’t the only important thing here. I think Ruby on Rails is a very well thought out web framework and rails is very similar and has many of the same qualities.

Matt Raible has a couple of  excellent posts on his experiences with Rails and Grail on his blog. These posts are very timely, considering that the Grails gurus just made their way through St. Louis. Its really cool when someone opens up about the inner workings of their job. Thanks Matt.

http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/grails_vs_rails_my_thought
http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/the_linkedin_journey_continues

A couple of months I accepted a new position as at a small, alternative energy company, Innovative Energy Inc. We’re currently in a quiet period, so I can’t much about what we are doing. Hopefully in the next month or two, I’ll be able to say more.

If you are really interested in finding out more about us, IEI has multiple job openings. One of the openings is for a senior Java developer. Visit our web site to find out more about IEI and check out the careers link if you like to come in for an interview.

Innovative Energy Inc.

Very good news for Java developers and and also good news for iPhone and iTouch users.

Sun to build virtual machine for iPhone

Useless or not. You decide. The phrase “all rights reserved” is no longer required as of August, 2000. At least that’s what Wikipedia says. A lot of web sites have this in their footer, but many don’t. I think its a good piece of information to have (albeit, not so important), since its one more thing I don’t have to worry about finding a place for in the footer.

Over the last couple of weeks I installed and began using the Hudson continuous integration server. I’ll admit that my search for a CI server was not very exhaustive nor very thorough. I checked out the web sites of the latest and greatest open source CI servers and chose Hudson based on a “gut” feeling. (Actually, Hudson made my original short list based on a tip from Alex. Thanks!) My only criteria was that it be easy to install, use and modify. It turns out that Hudson is a joy to use. Hudson can be installed as a standard Java web application and can be completely configured through its web interface. There is no need to modify configuration files. And adding plugins for additional build steps like PMD and Cobertura is a breeze. Since Hudson was so easy to use and ran flawlessly once installed and configured, I had no reason to try one of the other popular CI servers. So, I can’t say if the other ones are better than Hudson or not. However, I can say that Hudson is worth a serious look if you are thinking about installing a new CI server.

http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/WhyWeNeedARealWebProfile

I discovered a new project this week, LiquiBase. Instead of trying to describe it to you, I’ll simply quote the LiquiBase web site…

“With LiquiBase, developers store database changes in XML-based files on their local development machines and apply them to their local databases. As those changes get committed to the source control system and are distributed to other developers, changes are applied to those local developer databases, to the integration databases, staging databases, and even to live production databases. Changes may be applied through several methods, either via an Ant or Maven task, a command line program, or automatically during application or application server startup.” Full text

I’m surprised it has taken this long for a project like this to surface that addresses database changes. I think too often the database is treated differently that the rest of the code base. Depending on team organization and dependencies (or lack of) to other applications, I don’t think this always has to be the case. I think a tool like LiquiBase, might be a very valuable tool to have. Especially for agile development teams. I somehow have a feeling that DBA’s might like this tool, however. It will be interesting to see if this project gains any traction. Any out there using this that would care to comment?

I’ll be at the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference this weekend in St. Louis. Its been a couple of years since I attended one of these for the first time, so I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the new presentations. Let me know if you are going to be there.