In this post I talk about setting up and securely operating development tools like Jenkins and Gitlab on a server connected to the internet. All applications run behind a firewall and a reverse HTTP proxy which allows only HTTP requests from selected users through who authenticate themselves with client certificates. Putting web-facing software on the … Continue reading Securing a development server
Category: architecture
Defensive software architecture
In this, hopefully, last post on this blog of the year I will try to gather my scattered thoughts on software architecture and specifically the need for defensive software architecture, and substantiate it with anecdotal evidence from my own project work. I will first talk about my definition of architecture and that of an architect … Continue reading Defensive software architecture
On URL accuracy, versioning and the immutable-redirect pattern
So you have this requirements: serve content (might be a static file or a dynamic page) under a URL make it cacheable by defining appropriate HTTP expiration headers yet, the content might change - serve it under a new URL the old URLs should still be valid but show the new content In my current … Continue reading On URL accuracy, versioning and the immutable-redirect pattern
Speeding up development by splitting a webapp into parts
I love tagfiles: they feature a well known syntax (EL from JSP), they allow for reusable UI components, they are well supported by my favourite IDE and, most importantly, modifications are instantly visible because the servlet container does not have to restart. At least in theory, because reality often looks different: after a few edits … Continue reading Speeding up development by splitting a webapp into parts
New open source project: Product Catalogue Engine
Together with some colleagues from Technopolis we recently started PCE, an open source project for managing products and business rules. Why PCE? The need for a framework like PCE stems from the recurring task of having to manage, persist, retrieve and display products (or for that matter entities that can be viewed as products) of … Continue reading New open source project: Product Catalogue Engine


