The Purpose

So, this is my developer's blog. It's the "in vogue" thing for developers to do. I see them all over the place, so why shouldn't I have one, too?

I've recently changed jobs and am working on a project now that is starting from the ground. I'm also the lone developer on the project. That kind of makes it my show, to a certain degree. I'm responsible to the Customer (who shall remain nameless) and to the Company (who shall also remain nameless) I work for.

Being in on a project from the ground up is a pretty cool thing. You get to make a lot of decisions that will have a huge impact on the project months, if not years, down the line. Some of the decisions I've already made have been which language I will use: Java; what type of application it will be: a web app.

A few decisions were made for me, including which database I'll be using, which is Microsoft SQL Server. That suits me fine, as I'm going to try to take a database agnostic approach by using Hibernate. We'll see how true to that desire I can stay later on down the road.

It does have the up-side, or so I've heard, in that SQL Server is supposedly easy to administer. It certainly seems easier to administer than Oracle, the only other database I've worked with. The tools seem to be a lot more developed and "user-friendly". That's good in my book, as I don't want to spend all my time adminstering the database.

The big decision I'm working on right now is what application server I'm going to be using. I've basically narrowed it down to three choices. The first is to use Tomcat augmented with the Metro web stack that is available from the GlassFish project. The second is to use the actual GlassFish server itself (or whatever lame name Sun gives it once it's released officially). The third is to use JBoss.

I'm researching all three right now and I plan on posting here what I find and my ultimate decision.

So, back to the purpose of this blog. I'd like to document the steps that I take as I build this application. I'd like to make note of the pitfalls I fall into and how I got out of them. I'd like for this to be part history, part road-map to how to do it better in the future.

We'll see how it goes from here.