I Choose [Not] To Blog

Two adjacent bumper stickers:

Poisson for Delegate

Mark Herring for State Senate

OK, yes I’m easily amused.

Neither candidate has endorsed this blog entry. ;-P

Back in August, I posted a simple Java utility for sorting out the definitive property value when a property is defined multiple times in a properties file. Here’s a simple Ruby script that does the same thing, but with far fewer bytes:

#Get filename
puts "Enter Properties File Name:"
fname = gets.strip
puts

# Create a unique collection of keys,
# skipping comments
propHash=Hash.new
File.readlines(fname).each do |line|
  if line =~ /^([^#.]+)[=,:](.+)/
    propHash[$1.rstrip] = $2.lstrip
  end
end

#output the results
propHash.keys.each do |k|
  puts "#{k}=" + propHash[k]
end

Oracle has released Project Raptor to Early Adopters.

I typically use TOAD when I need to do Oracle-specific DB tasks, like editing PL/SQL, running explain plans, etc. TOAD is a nice tool and has been around forever. But the full version of TOAD is far from being free, and the “free” version that they do offer is limited and annoying to download every couple months.

Raptor seems pretty feature-rich, with lots of built in “reports”, export options, and access to physical storage operations. Performance isn’t bad for a Swing app, either ;-P.

All-in-all, Raptor is pretty appealing, especially now that Oracle has released a free “Express” edition for smaller applications (an obvious attempt to lure in those projects that would otherwise be using MySQL or PostgreSQL).

BTW: Squirrel-SQL is a great tool for multiple database access (using JDBC drivers).

1. Download SymbolicTools PocketConsole here.
2. Download SymbolicTools PocketCMD here.
3. Install PocketConsole and PocketCMD. Cradle the iPAQ. When install is complete, reboot/reset the device.
4. Confirm that you have an operational command prompt by clicking the PocketCMD program icon:

   

5. Download Ruby for wince binary here.
6. Extract the ruby-mswince archive to a directory on your desktop PC.
7. Create a root-level directory named ‘\ruby’ on the iPAQ.
8. Copy the contents of the arm-ppc-wince directory (from the extracted archive) to the \ruby directory on the iPAQ.
9. in PocketCMD, set the PATH environment variable to include \ruby\bin:

   

10. Verify that Ruby works:

    

11. Try to take over the world!