Spring Security, ObjC joys…More fun than one programmer should have

This has been an interesting week. Here’s a quick recap:

• Val and Charis have been gone all week, so I’ve had a lot of heads down coding time
• Started in earnest on a new super secret project that has me pulling my hair out
• Really darn close to finishing up and submitting an iPhone app for a client
• Reviewing PushToTest and WebDriver for front end testing
• Finished up some really nifty caching with Ehcache and Terracotta

With Val and Charis gone, it’s just been me and the dog. If it wasn’t for the dog, I’m not sure that I would have ever left my office. She has reminded me on a number of occasions that it was time to get up and stretch and more importantly, go to bed. That’s a good thing.

I’m currently working on the laying the foundation for a new super secret project, known only by the code name NoCodeName. Ok, we haven’t gotten far enough to give it a code name yet, but soon. The biggest issue I’m running into is getting over the hump with Spring Security. I guess I’m considered an old timer since I started working with Spring 1.x and Acegi. Recently I worked with a client to upgrade to 2.5.4. That was fairly painless, but we left all the XML configs as they were. Since I’m starting this project, I’m trying to place nice and use all the coolness of Spring 2.5.x. Making changes to my thought processes to use annotations and the like are really starting to bug me. I’m not ready to drop back to the old school style yet. . .but it’s getting pretty darn close. I’ve seen a few semi-helpful Spring Security tutorials, but not enough to get me over the hump. I’ll give it a little more time, but I may scrap Spring Security all together and just roll my own since the datastore is going to be MySQL. I’m not real excited about that, but if I can’t figure it out quick, I’ll go with what I know. If anyone has any suggestions on easily implementing JdbcUserDetailsManager for logins and registration, please send them my way. I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice, that is, as long as it’s within the budget. 🙂

I’ve been working on an iPhone app (free and paid versions) for a client for a couple of months and we are in the final testing stages and hope to submit it to the App Store this weekend. Once it is available in the store and I get permission, I’ll post a link to the app.

If you or someone you know is wanting to learn how to develop for the iPhone, I’m going to be working on some posts and videos over the next few months.

Also, if you or your company is looking for an iPhone consultant, I would be glad to talk with you.

I’ve also been reviewing PushToTest and WebDriver for testing on a couple of projects. I haven’t gotten as far as I wanted, but both look promising. I’m really intrigued by the ability to load up PTT instances on Amazon EC2 and then hammer the sites I want to test. I’ve worked with Gomez in the past and they have a very good product, but being able to do roughly the same thing without having to get into a contract is a good thing IMHO.

Finally, Ehcache + Terracotta is like apple pie and vanilla ice cream. That is, as long as you actually cooked the apples and the ice cream hasn’t melted. In theory, you enable the Ehcache module with Terracotta and everything just works. You know, that statement is completely true. However, YMMV. In my client’s case, we had a number of issues with the depth of our object structure and the (lack of) size of our client heaps. We are still doing some refactoring, but it works nicely now, but I still want to squeeze some more performance out of it. When I do another Terracotta+Ehcache project, I’ll know the gotchas to avoid.

For those of us that live in the United States, this weekend is really important. I read a post from Jeff Herring today that is titled “Celebrating Freedom From and Freedom To…” I’ve been very fortunate over the past few years to have great clients that have allowed me freedom to see my daughter grow up on a daily basis.

No matter whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a faith person or an atheist and the list of comparisons goes on, the United States is still one of the greatest places to live on this planet.  Be thankful this weekend. Eat some hamburgers and hot dogs (or tofu dogs for my vegan friends). Hang out with friends and family. At the end of the day, stepping away from the computer is a good thing. Now, I just have to remind the dog to remind me to step away.