Digital Sanctum

In a prior post, I provided and introduction to GAE for Java including getting your local development environment setup and uploading your application to Google’s servers.

For this post, I will outline how to do simple CRUD operations using GAE for Java and the latest version of Spring MVC (which is 3.0.0.M3). Combining GAE for Java and the Spring MVC framework makes for a powerful way of making your application both flexible and scalable.

Datastore Options with Google App Engine for Java

The basis for just about any web application generally includes a data store for storing information. Instead of a relational database like MySQL or Oracle, Google uses something called BigTable. For an explanation about how BigTable differs from a traditional relational database, you should check out “The Softer Side of Schemas” video from the Google I/O 2009 conference. With respect to GAE for java, you have essentially three different ways to interact with BigTable:

1. JPA – Java Peristence API
2. JDO – Java Data Objects
3. Low level API – provided by Google for doing stuff that you can’t otherwise do with JPA or JDO. Note that both JPA and JDO use this low-level API under the covers.

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If you want to start playing with the latest features of Ruby on Rails (2.0 due out very soon), you can install from source with something like the following:

sudo gem install rails --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org -y

To verify your install,

rails --version

Background

What do I mean by externalizing? I really mean addressing separation of concerns and making an application more portable. If you think about it, a configuration is a module that other modules in the application depend on. By separating the concerns or behaviors of an application that varies between development, test, and production environments, you can more easily manage and possibly reuse the configuration and not repeat yourself (DRY).
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I’ve been working with Apache Tomcat for years and always seem to stumble upon new information related to the proper setup and configuration for a production environment. I’ve decided to put the instructions and tips I’ve collected together in one place.

So here are some helpful hints for running Tomcat in a production environment:

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OK, so this is a slightly off the path most traveled but still technical nonetheless. It’s time for me to purchase another pair of running shoes and it occurred to me that I don’t precisely know what size my feet are! Like a lot of people I generally go to a store and try on shoes that I know are in my “range” of sizes. I’ve found that depending on the manufacturer of the shoe, the type of shoe (running, casual, dress, etc.) and other variables like if I was pressed for time while shopping, the actual size of the shoe would always vary a bit.

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