Adaptive Software Solutions

Recently there was a post on PuneTech on mom's re-entering the IT work force after a break. Two of the biggest concerns mentioned were : Coping with vast advances (changes) in the IT landscape Balancing work and family responsibilities Since I have been running a one person company for a good amount of time, I suggested that as an option. In this post I will discuss various aspects of running a one person company. Advantages: You have full control of your time. You can choose to spend as much or as little time as you would like. There is also a good chance that you will be able to decide when you want to spend that time. You get to work on something that you enjoy doing. Tremendous work satisfaction. You have the option of working from home. Disadvantages: It can take a little while for the work to get set, so you may not be able to see revenues for some time. It takes a huge amount of discipline to work without a boss, and without deadlines. You will not get the benefits (insuranc...

This is a simple story of my need to inspect the schema of an HSQLDB database for a participar FOREIGN KEY, and the interesting things I had to do to actually inspect it. I am using an HSQLDB 1.8 database in one of my web applications. The application has been developed using the Play framework , which by default uses JPA and Hibernate . A few days back, I wanted to inspect the schema which Hibernate had created for one of my model objects. I started the HSQLDB database on my local machine, and then started the database manager with the following command java -cp ./hsqldb-1.8.0.7.jar org.hsqldb.util.DatabaseManagerSwing When I tried the view the schema of my table, it showed me the columns and column types on that table, but it did not show me columns were FOREIGN KEYs. Image 1: Table schema as shown by HSQLDB's database manager I decided to search on StackOverflow and find out how I could view the full schema of the table in question. I got a few hints, and they all pointed to ...

I read this article by Bill Pugh on why the double checked locking idiom does not guarantee thread safety in Java Singletons. That article taught me a lot of new things, and to be honest, I had to re-read that article at least a couple of times to partially understand it :-) I recently created a presentation to make at DevCamp on this topic. What follows are my slides and an explanation of each slide. I hope you enjoy this presentation and find it useful. Double checkedlockingjavasingletons View more presentations from parag . slide 1: In this presentation I will discuss the double checked locking idiom, and explain why it does not work to provide thread safety to Java Singletons. I will also talk about how using volatile fields will fix the problem in JDK 1.5 onwards. slide 2 (Singleton): Many of you might already have used the Singleton design pattern . In case you have not, here is a brief description of what Singletons are. The Singleton pattern is used when we want to ensure...

Since my formal education, a lot of advances have taken place in software development. I have been able to keep up with a few with regular reading and practice. But a lot of this learning has been a bit random, and as a result a bit dissipated as well. I feel like I want to engage in continuous learning, in a more organized manner. Over the years there are several core concepts which I have forgotten because I have not been able to use them in my regular work. I feel like relearning those concepts. I think the volume and content of both these can constitute a masters course in Computer Science. But I do not want to go back to school. Not because there is anything wrong with school - I had a great time in grad school. But here's why... I don't want to go back to school because I want to define the courses I want to learn, and not pick up from what's offered. I don't want to go back to school because I want to be able to learn at my own pace, which at times may be slower ...

This is the seventh in a series of videos published by Google on Android programming. In this video the speaker starts an app to track photos his buddy publishes on Flickr. He can keep this application running in the background, so while he is browsing or checking his email, this application will constantly track the photos and notify him if a new photo has been uploaded.

This is the sixth in a series of videos provided by Google on Android programming. Index: 00:00 Introduction 00:32 Zebra crossing application 01:35 Library app 02:14 A GeoSocial app which combines user GPS, user created photos, and Compass My Takeaway: Android applications do not have any borders. They can use data from other applicatiosns, they can use hardware available on the device such as camera, compass, GPS, accelerometer, etc, and they can also use content from the web API's. The first application called Zebra Crossing is an application which can pull information from bar codes and QR codes. So if you photograph a product's bar code and give it to the application, it will pull up information about the book from the web. If on the other hand you give it a QR code from the back of a business card, it can extract contact information about that person which you can use to call or send email. The Zebra Crossing app also publishes intents, to allow other applications to commu...

This is the fifth in a series of videos provided by Google on Android programming. This video shows how we can use the WebView to create applications that render HTML pages. Along with being able to embed HTML and Javascript web pages in apps, the most exciting thing I found in this view was the fact that the Javascript in a webpage can communicate with Java code and Java code can communicate with javascript. This is really cool.