Practical Programming

Using Spring Boot Actuator integrations with Pivotal Cloud Foundry 1.11

I recently wrote a tutorial demonstrating how to leverage the integrations between Spring Boot Actuator and Pivotal Cloud Foundry 1.11, posted here in the Pivotal content library.   Here is a quick summary of the articles content: Adding Actuator to your Spring Boot application deployed on Pivotal Cloud Foundry gets you the following production-ready features: Health Check column & expanded…

Building a Portable, Self-powering, Cloud-Connected IoT demo

Or “How to build a portable self-powered, self-licking ice cream cone.”  :D     Several years ago, I started building what I referred to affectionately as a self-licking ice cream cone: a Renewable Energy (RE) system that powered the same IoT system that monitored it. I’ve given several talks about this system, both its hardware and its software stack, and there are so many useful (and scalable)…

Quick Tip: Exposing Query Methods in Spring Data REST

Spring Data REST takes an opinionated approach to exposing Spring Data repositories via REST endpoints, covering the 80-90% use case with a minimum of code and fuss. But did you know that it provides a no-lifting-required mechanism for exposing query methods you define on those repositories as well?   Let’s say you create a method like this:  …

Random Route in Cloud Foundry

I’ve only been working with Pivotal Cloud Foundry since September 2015, but I’ve learned a great deal about it since then. I also realize there is much (much much) more to learn! The world doesn’t stand still, after all, and there are many stones I’ve yet to turn.   Sometimes I revisit something small-but-useful that I discovered long ago that I didn’t take the time to share at the time. I…

At Jfokus this week, I was honored to be interviewed by Stephen Chin of Nighthacking.com. We discussed the Renewable Energy system I built and developed using industrial Internet of Things (IoT) concepts and Domain Driven Design principles. The core of the system is Java SE Embedded on the IoT Gateway device, Spring Boot + Cloud Foundry (CF) for the backend services, and an HTML5/JavaScript…

Freedom Toaster: An Open Source Vending Machine

I recently ran across a neat concept that I’d really like to see spring up in more places. I’m not sure how to accomplish that exactly, but it does have me thinking. The Seneca College Linux Club created a kiosk where folks can walk up, select a Free/Open Source Software package, and burn it to a CD or DVD that they bring with them. Based upon the FreedomToaster project in South Africa, this…

Spring Boot for IoT Developers: Getting Started

If often surprises other devs when I suggest that Spring Boot is a perfect addition to the IoT developer’s toolbox. If you’re deep into IoT and have the luxury of another group providing all of your back-end and/or cloud platform code, that’s perfectly understandable. However, if you’re a full-stack developer, by choice or necessity, you need to know this! Grab a chair and a cup of coffee; I…

At JavaOne last week, several people asked me how my work at Pivotal was going, and it occurred to me: I had been so busy diving into all the new toys that I hadn’t written anything about it! This is a first step toward remedying that.  :)   At the risk of this post sounding like a short commercial, I’m deeply impressed with the consistency of vision and the depth and breadth of capabilities…

pivotal: Of, relating to, or serving as a pivot. Being of vital or central importance; crucial. As has been widely reported, last week I was among those at Oracle who were “let go” – a sanitized expression that is meant to diminish the indescribable impact of being fired due to circumstances far outside one’s knowledge or ability to influence. Details aren’t important, but suffice it to say that…

Join Us at JavaOne 2014!

There are some absolutely SUPERB conferences dedicated to Java (the language, the platform, the ecosystem) around the world, and I’ve been privileged to speak at some of them. No two are alike, and that is a good thing! JavaOne San Francisco holds a very special place in that lineup, bringing together a phenomenal mixture of vision, direction, community leadership, and grassroots innovation that…

We’ve recently added the capability to send/receive secure, signed and/or encrypted emails.

Why?

Simply put, we have nothing to hide. To paraphrase a movie line, we aren’t even very exciting. But just as we don’t put pictures of our underwear & sock…