I've decided to move my blog to a new location. You can now find me at http://davidvancouvering.blogspot.com.
Why am I making the move? Well, this was a hard decision. I really like the java.net community, and I like how the editor takes care to call out cool and interesting stuff.
But the problem is, sometimes I want to talk about more than Java, and more than my work. And java.net really...
Open source continues to amaze me. For so many years, I have worked on projects where customers would clamor for features, and we just didn't have enough time in the day or people to get them all built. We would say "yeah, that sounds cool" but with all the other things on our plate, when would we ever get to it?
Well, in open source, it's a whole different ball game. The latest example is...
Derby 10.3 beta
is available for testing. If you are using Derby/Java DB, you should try your local tests with this beta and make sure everything's working for you.
This page describes what's in this release. Of note are security improvements, performance improvements, and the ability to drop or rename a column using ALTER TABLE. And, as usual, a slew of bugfixes.
One thing to be aware of...
I noticed today that I had 754 messages in my Spam folder in Gmail.
I decided to open the folder, and GMail had decided to place the following sponsored link at the top of the folder:
"Spam Vegetable Strudel - Bake 20 minutes or until golden, serve with soy sauce"
I just did a refresh, and now it says "Spam Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches - To serve, cut each roll in half"
Yum, yum. Another...
I am a techie, and generally am not interested in the legal world. That changed a bit when I got into open source, where just to be able to contribute code you have to have some pretty solid understanding of open source licenses.
I wasn't sure what to think when I heard Sun's general counsel, Mike Dillon, had started a blog. What the heck, I thought, I'll subscribe
He doesn't blog very often...
The default behavior of Java DB is that you have two level of access control: full access and read-only. Again, this is I believe due to the legacy of Cloudscape being originally an embedded-only database. In this environment, the embedding application is responsible for controlling access to the database, and always only logs in as one user, so there is no real need for finer-grained access...
As I mentioned in my previous blog, Java DB's legacy is in the embedded world, where there is no such thing as sending the password over the wire.
But when you introduce the network client, this becomes an issue. And sending users and passwords in the clear is just not acceptable. So this blog tells you how to stop that from happening.
Java DB allows you to configure how credentials are sent...
The original Cloudscape was built as an embedded-only database -- that is, it could only run inside the VM of another application. It did not have a client/server mode. That was added later.
In some areas, Java DB continues to carry have this embedded "legacy" with it. One particular area you should be aware of is authentication and authorization.
By default when you start up the Java DB...
A common complaint about learning Derby is "I can't figure out where in the manuals it talks about how you do 'X'". As much as I whine about Google's desire for all our data, they do have an excellent search engine, and you can apply it to help you here.
Someone recently asked on the mailing list how to do this, and Oystein Grovlen gave this very helpful response:
I agree that the...
I think we all know this: Google Loves Data. They want all of our data, every last bit of it. They live for data. They want to touch it, caress it, sift it, search it, organize it, categorize it, and monetize it. They are building data center after data center to store and serve it all.
Let's just assume I'm right here. And let's assume some of us don't really want all our data on Google,...
