Web sites and other distributed, multi-user systems present unique challenges for concurrent access to shared state. In this post we'll take a look at a simple strategy (with one big gotcha) for achieving distributed resource synchronization in the Spring JPA environment. Case Study: Volunteer Signup Let us imagine we have built a web portal that enables organizers to create jobs for which… READ MORE ›

Aka: Old-REST - Shootout at the 200 OK Canal Open-source software (OSS) is free and, for the larger projects, well supported by the developer community. These traits are often reason enough for a developer to find an OSS project that fits their needs, drop it into their POM file, and essentially forget about it. A less obvious benefit of OSS is the ability to investigate the source code when… READ MORE ›

Until my arrival at SourceClear, the Java Persistence API (JPA) is one technology (along with the Spring Framework) I inadvertently avoided using with in my career, despite working for 15 years on consumer websites with large relational data models. I consider this a blessing and a curse. The delay has served me well - gone are the dark days of verbose XML configurations that for so long gave… READ MORE ›

Compared to the splashy, paradigm-shifting introduction of Lambda expressions and streams, default interface methods entered the picture with decidedly less fanfare when Java 8 launched last spring. Indeed, the language feature barely registers in Google trends (in fact I had to artificially expand the time frame of the search to get it to appear on the chart at all). Furthermore, it is simply… READ MORE ›