Thoughts on Java Report – June 2017


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I had a lot of plans for the last month. But it came differently. Instead of improving the overall user experience of this site and introducing new offers to work with me, I had to migrate this site to a new technical platform.

After a few stressful weeks, it looks like everything is working fine. I even had some time to create the new Work With Me page and I’m almost ready to open the registration for a new online training class at the end of this month. But more about that later.

New hosting with a new platform

So far, I’ve been using a proprietary, WordPress-based platform to host this blog, the free Thoughts on Java Library and all courses. There were a lot of things I liked about it but it also had some issues. I wanted to stay for another year before I made a decision about the migration.

But as so often, it came differently. The hosting company announced a strategic change for their platform. And while I think that was a great move for that company, I don’t think it’s a good fit for this site. I had just paid my annual hosting fee and I had to decide if I:

  • Stay with that platform for another year even so I expect it to move in the wrong direction or
  • use the remaining 2.5 weeks of my refund period to find a new hosting company, build a new platform and migrate everything.

As you might guess, I took the second option and I think it was the right choice. It took a while but there were no huge issues during the migration, and everything should be fine.

Which means that I’m not aware of any issue. If you find something, please let me know.

New ways to work with me

OK, it’s time to tell you about something new. Since I quit my day job, I got several questions about long- and short-term consulting.

I don’t want to join any development teams on-site to implement a project. That’s most often not very efficient. You already have a great team that’s familiar with all the challenges, and that’s capable of solving them.

But I understand that you might need some help with certain problems. That’s why I offer to help your team as a coach to overcome current obstacles by providing additional expertise and discussing different solutions.

If that sounds like something your team would benefit from, you should have a look at the 2 new offers I present on the Work With Me page. You can hire me for a consulting call in which we work on your current problem. Or I can join your team as a coach and help you on an ongoing basis.

Whatever fits your needs, I’m looking forward to work with you.

Posts & Videos

OK, back to one of the regular topics of the Thoughts on Java Report. The content published during the last month.

At the end of April, I was happy that I was finally back on a regular schedule. As you might guess, that changed in the middle of last month. I had to focus on the migration and didn’t work on any new posts or videos.

Luckily, I had a few things prepared so that you got 7 new videos and 6 new posts. But as you’ve probably recognized in the last 2 weeks, the migration required a lot of work at the beginning of June, and I didn’t publish anything. Sorry for that.

Videos

Before we have a look at last months videos, I’ve something to celebrate: The Thoughts on Java YouTube channel surpassed the 1000 subscriber milestone. Thanks to everyone who subscribed to it!

And to everyone else, what are you waiting for? 😉

Hibernate Tips

I uploaded 4 Hibernate Tip videos in which I showed how to map an Enum to a database column, call user-defined functions in a CriteriaQuery, automatically add Metamodel classes to your classpath and map a java.util.Date

Tutorials

As in the previous months, I also published a few tutorial videos which get into more details than the shorter, problem-solution oriented Hibernate Tip videos. This time, I explained how to automatically validate entity attributes, showed 5 interesting features in Hibernate 5 and discussed if JPA and Hibernate are a good fit for your project.

Posts

In last month’s tutorials and tips, I tried to cover a mix of beginners and advanced topics. I hope you like this approach.

And if there is any topic you want to learn more about and that you think would be a good fit for this blog, please post a comment below and tell me about it.

Tutorials

Most tutorials were for intermediate or advanced Hibernate users. If you’re a beginner, you should have a look at the association mappings guide.

And if you’re using Hibernate with a PostgreSQL database, I recommend you have a look at the Hibernate with PostgreSQL post.

Hibernate Tips

I only wrote a beginners and an advanced Hibernate Tip in the last month:

What is planned for June

It’s already mid of June. So, it’s a little bit late to talk about my plans for this month. But I want to share the 3 main topics, anyways.

The first one is finishing the migration and improving a few parts of the site. The first part is almost done but I expect to work a few more months on changing and improving the site. So, stay tuned …

The second big task for this month is to open the registration for a new class of the Advanced Hibernate Online Training and the Hibernate Performance Tuning Online Training. If you want to easily implement complex business requirements with Hibernate and avoid performance issues, you should join the waiting lists.

The last task is the announcement of the new Consulting Call and Project Coaching offers. If you’re looking for a coach that helps you to avoid problems and to fulfill your customer’s expectations more easily, I’m looking forward to working with you.

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