While searching through quotes to include in our company newsletter, I came across this: “Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure” Read that again… “Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it,...

I recently had to implement a common feature across multiple applications and app servers, all of which point to the same Oracle database. For reasons unrelated, I chose to implement this feature using PL/SQL. You can all stop laughing now. I ended up with something resembling: create or replace package...

If you’re a nerd like most of us here at Source Allies, you probably think robots are cool. One of the most important part of robotics is teaching the robot to find its location on a geographic map - a process known as “localization.” One such algorithm for solving this...

Who am I to argue? She is proud of her dad!

Everyone, especially project managers, is in love with Agile Development. And why wouldn’t they be? Under the old school system, you’d end up with developers either sitting around uselessly, or drafting up prototypes that will only be thrown away. Agile allows for parallel design and development, wasting less time and...

Need to sort a list of custom objects? Instead of coding up a custom implementation of your favorite sorting algorithm, you can simply use the tools provided in the Collections class (Collections framework) paired with the BeanComparator class (Apache project). Simple example: you have a List of Person objects and...

After several weeks of performing support duties at a larger company I have begun to wonder about support practices and what could make the process better. The process in which I currently work goes as follows: Field employees call the marketing team and describe the problem. Marketing team calls the...

Today is already becoming “one of those days” ;) A loosely written specification provided me with an ambiguity I did not account for:  the partner wanted expiration dates and ordering dates to be based upon business days, whereas the specification said “days” only.  So, I found myself scrambling to figure...

There are no doubts that PHP made a huge impact on Web development industry. Because of it’s flexibility, PHP finds it’s usage in many areas, starting from simple Web sites and ending with complex Web applications (i.e. frameworks, shopping carts, etc…). So, today I’d like to share with you how...

I am looking for a new firewall solution for my home and an open source system to provide to current or prospective customers. Whenever I ask tech minded people what open source solution they favor, I get the same answer again and again. So I started digging into the documentation...