Custom indexing (using Java threads) with Hibernate Search

The post is based on latest development on a project:  the requirement is to implement a custom incremental update of the Lucene index. The update takes place at pre-defined (configurable) intervals and indexes all entities created or modified since the last run (i.e. full text search index is aligned with the DB changes every 60 min while the users are accessing the application)

The technology stack is Hibernate 3.6, Hibernate Search 3.3, Lucene 3.0.1, Spring 2.5.6, Java 5.

Why and How

Poor/Slow Unit Testing Performance with Maven

Our development struggled for some time as the application was getting bigger and bigger, the performance of unit testing got really bad becoming at some point (especially after migrating to latest Hibernate 3.6) unusable (aka stop of quality development)

We investigated the environment (jdk, hw specs, ram), the frameworks being used (Hibernate, Spring), even the underlying DB (I am actually here talking of integration tests)… but the answer was to be found in the Maven settings.

The Maven Surefire Plugin instantiates a new JVM for running the test classes, but it appears that the JVM settings of Maven (typically what you set in the bin/mvn.bat) are not propagated to the newly created JVM, hence running the tests with some (inadequate) default values…

Check this out to see how the JVM memory settings can be configured. It did the trick

 

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Test Driven Development (TDD) Masterclass – Amsterdam

On Sep 15/16/17 I had the great opportunity to attend a Test-Driven Development (TDD) Masterclass together with Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) of Object Mentor.

The event was arranged by Zilverline, a young Amsterdam-based company specialising in Agile consultancy and training. The folks of Zilverline did a great job: training location was superb as they were the facilities and their support though out the event.

I think it hardly gets more interesting that digging into the deep secrets of TDD, especially with one of its greatest preachers. The 3 days were just enough to go through the approach of TDD, when/how to do it, obstacles and enemies during the implementation  and what you really want to achieve.

The audience was pretty advanced, everybody bringing real hands-on experience mostly with TDD or at least with development and testing enterprise software. Great chance to discuss/compare/challenge different ways of working with experienced developers/techies… which is (based on my experience at least) very rare in most trainings.

RSS Feed with Basic Authentication in Apache Tomcat

This is just a summary of a small project I got lately involved in: creation of a RSS feed which authenticates the user upon access.

This has a variety of applications:  most RSS feeds on the Internet are public stream of information (news, blogs) but in an enterprise environment that’s not really an option, information is confidential and must be delivered to users according to well established privileges and security rules.