On coarse- vs. fine-grained synchronization

Performance related topics seem to constantly attract attention and everyone seems to have strong opinions on the matter. Writing code that can be proved [1] to perform according to a certain pattern is probably not the worst place to start with, although the web is full of counterintuitive [2] examples [3] where hardware details weigh … Continue reading On coarse- vs. fine-grained synchronization →

Tomcat, Spring and memory leaks when undeploying or redeploying an web application

In this post I'll talk about a new kind of memory leak in Spring applications involving transaction management and initializing beans. About memory leaks when undeploying a web application While developing a web application with Spring and Tomcat I frequently run out of heap space. The web is full of stories about this. There is … Continue reading Tomcat, Spring and memory leaks when undeploying or redeploying an web application →

Spring @Value and resolving property names with dots

I'm moving a legacy application (I seem to be doing that a lot recently) to Spring and injecting properties with @Value into Spring managed beans all over the place. And it doesn't work: public class SomeService{ @Value("#{the.org.namespace.someProperty}") private String someProperty; } Dots have apparently a special meaning, so this fails with a message that 'the' … Continue reading Spring @Value and resolving property names with dots →

logging container-managed datasource jdbc with log4jdbc

In my new 'old' project which I just inherited there is - once more - Hibernate and plain JDBC access to a database, happily mixed. Hibernate logs SQL nicely, but that leaves out whatever datbase access the rest of the application is performing. I found log4jdbc very convenient which allows fain-grained logging over every interaction … Continue reading logging container-managed datasource jdbc with log4jdbc →

Reddit as an OAuth provider for a Java backend

OAuth (2) and Java work well together, there are plenty of libraries available which handle the general case and the more specific peculiarities of the various OAuth providers. Despite solid implementations like my favourite Spring Social [1] framework the state of OAuth is at best fragmented. Not only because Spring Social is not as well … Continue reading Reddit as an OAuth provider for a Java backend →