In every Java project where I need to do strong cryptography, I run into these dreaded unreadable stacktraces which send you into the woods. After a long search I usually discover that the Unlimited Strength Java Cryptography Extensions are not installed. To prevent frustration of users of your software, you can simply …

If you are using JAXB in a maven/java project to unmarshal an XML document and you get: javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:"urn:iso:std:somestuff:xsd:somestuff", local:"Document"). Expected elements are (none) Or if you are using JAXB to marshal an XML document and you get: …

When doing integration testing or fixing a bug in a piece of Java code that uses Oracle as a database, being able to do quick exports and imports of your schema can be a big help. Sometimes just calling Oracle's imp/exp commandline tools from your code can be of help, but I was looking for something a bit more portable …

The new firewall in Mavericks is great. For the common user. For a developer, not so much. If you are a Java developer like me, and you just need to open one port (say, 8080) so that the web application you’re working on is accessable from another computer, you can’t. I disabled the Firewall altogether for a few days, …

After reading my last blogpost on Anonimatron, you must have asked yourself "Great, but how do I actually use Anonimatron to de-personalize my database"? I tried my best to make basic Anonimatron configuration as self-explanatory as possible, just start it without any command line arguments and it will tell …

In every software project, there comes a time where a bug pops up, nobody knows how to reproduce it, and somebody says "I know, let's test this against a copy of the production database". Even with the best intentions, once production data leaves the production machine with all its safeguards it becomes …

Suppose you have a Java Server application, and some of the runtime binaries in that application are external to your application. Generated image files, compiled Silverlight components in your pages, or resource files which are managed by an external team. Much like the jar files used by your application, these …

In the project I am working on right now we use apache XCF and Spring to provide a SOAP service to our customers. As part of the messages, there is a userid/password combo telling the application which user sent the request. I struggled with that today because I think that userid/password info should actually be in the …

This week I created a jMeter test setup for distributed testing. I thought it would be straight forward but I ran into some interesting things you might want to know if you are considering distributed testing using jMeter. In my case, I had to test an application which was inside our corporate network, while working …

This year's Dutch Java Nerd event called J-Fall was held in Nijkerk, in a beautiful location called "Hart van Holland" . With plenty of sessions by speakers from all over the world it promised to be a great day for Java enthusiasts, at a great location for meeting friends and colleagues. I took a day off from …