New Spincloud feature: heat map overlay

It took a while since the previous feature update to Spincloud. I have done a number of upgrades to the underlying tech and some intensive code refactoring but nothing visible. The time has come for another eye candy: heat maps. It is a map overlay that shows a color-translated temperature layer based on interpolated values… Continue reading New Spincloud feature: heat map overlay

Process Journalism really is Agile Journalism

There’s an interesting story rippling the news stream these days: The New York Times is questioning the ways Techcrunch reports on news. The crux of the issue is product journalism v. process journalism, the act of producing news only after all facts have been verified versus just writing the story based on what the author… Continue reading Process Journalism really is Agile Journalism

Reviewing Google AppEngine for Java (Part 2)

In the first part I’ve left-off with some good news: successful deployment in the local GAE container. In this second part I’ll talk about the following: – Loading data and browsing – Table indexing – Limitations of datastore queries – More datastore limitations and JPA issues – Deployment – Performance – Production monitoring – Usage… Continue reading Reviewing Google AppEngine for Java (Part 2)

Upgrading to Spring 3.0.0.M3 and Spring Security 3.0.0.M1

A short two months back I posted an article describing how to upgrade to Spring 3.0 M2. Spring folks are releasing at breakneck speed and so I got busy again upgrading spincloud.com to Spring 3.0 M3 released at the beginning of May. Just yesterday (June 3rd) the team released Spring Security 3.0 M1 and I… Continue reading Upgrading to Spring 3.0.0.M3 and Spring Security 3.0.0.M1

Proposal to standardize the Level 2 query cache configuration in JPA 2.0

Level 2 cache is one of the most powerful features of the JPA spec. It’s a transparent layer that manages out-of-session data access and cranks-up the performance of the data access tier. To my knowledge it has been first seen in Hibernate and was later adopted by the then-emerging JPA spec (driven mostly by the… Continue reading Proposal to standardize the Level 2 query cache configuration in JPA 2.0

Reviewing Google AppEngine for Java (Part 1)

When Google announced that Java is the second language that the Appengine will support I almost didn’t believe it given the surge of the new languages and the perception that Java entered legacy but the JVM is a powerful tried-and-true environment and Google saw the potential of using it for what it is bound to… Continue reading Reviewing Google AppEngine for Java (Part 1)

“Thinking in” what?

“Thinking in…” anything has been a marketing quirk for a while now, being used and abused from the field of language learning to computer science. Thinking in Java is the title of a well known book written by Bruce Eckel. I am passing a “Think in Spanish” course flyer ad every time I stroll on… Continue reading “Thinking in” what?

Selecting location data from a spatial database

I have been thinking to write about this subject a while back when project Spincloud was still under development. I was even thinking about making this the first post on my blog. The idea is simple: you have location-based data (POIs for instance) stored in some database (preferably a spatial DB) and now you want… Continue reading Selecting location data from a spatial database