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Roles in Software Development

There are many terms used within the software industry to describe roles that people perform.  All of these roles contribute in some shape or form to produce and deliver software to a target audience.

Many of the terms used, are arbitrarily assigned by organisations as they suit, and do not necessarily conform to any agreed to and understood definition.  In fact, if you were to look these terms up in an attempt to define each term you will find a varying array of explanations. Continue reading “Roles in Software Development”

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Configure your application using a properties file

When I first started out in programming, I made the same mistake I now see countless people make when starting.  I wrote code for me and that worked, and that was good enough for me.  As time passed and the code I produced expanded and became more ambitious so my bad habits became more ingrained.  I think it is something we all do; we all go through.  It is not until we encounter an issue, a reason to change, that we appreciate the error of our ways.  If we are fortunate we get an opportunity to work with other more worldly wise programmers who can help us adopt good habits; if not then we need hard lessons to alter our behaviour.

Continue reading “Configure your application using a properties file”

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Wrap Java into an executable with Launch4J-Part 2

Previously I had written a blog called “Wrap Java into an executable with Launch4J”. The title for the article I now realise was perhaps misleading in that it only covered how to download the tool and install. I understand that some readers may actually want an example of how to convert their Java code into an actual executable. This aims to address that short coming.

Continue reading “Wrap Java into an executable with Launch4J-Part 2”
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Java with SQLite embedded database

If your java desktop application needs to store data in a database between sessions then a good solution is to embed a database into your solution.  What this gives you is an application which installs the database as part of the application, builds the database tables and populates it with any initial data.  This approach avoids the need for the user to install a database separately from the application.

Let’s takes a look at how to you might go about this.

Continue reading “Java with SQLite embedded database”

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Create Math formula image

The other day I came across an example where a formula written in a Java program could be represented as a standard equation on the screen.  I thought this was brilliant.  I recall back in my Uni days using the formula editor in Microsoft Word to present formulas.   Now I don’t have a use for this in Java yet but, you never know.  However, in case anyone out there does have a requirement to produce a formula from within their Java program then maybe this will help. 

The challenge is to produce an output that looks like this:

Representation of a Math formula

Continue reading “Create Math formula image”

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ANT – A worked example

Imagine we have a small JavaFX application.  We are building this application in Eclipse, although this should not make any material difference, you could build it in using any IDE or simple command line tools.

This application has some java files under the “src” folder.  There is also a “resources” folder which contains some none java files which the application will reference.  Added to this we are using some 3rd party JAR libraries.  Finally, we have a text-based properties file for our application.

Our project structure looks like this:

The sample Ant project structure

We are going to use ANT to produce a Windows executable application.  The steps we need to take to do this are: – Continue reading “ANT – A worked example”