Joseph Ottinger

This article was originally published in print on December 3, 2003"Eclipse represents the worst of Java" Lately, there's been a lot of guff spouted about how Sun isn't joining Eclipse. While I understand the bitterness aimed at Sun somewhat, I think that this particular brand of talk is counterproductive and, dare I say it, wrong. The talk tends to center around the concept of NetBeans and Eclipse using common technology, and I think this is misguided, and here's why. I really dislike Netbeans. I think it blows goats from here to Sussex, and considering that I live in the middle of the US, that's a lot of goats. Given the choice between NetBeans and... Notepad, I usually spend a minute pondering whether I can keep remembering to check extensions on filenames before reali... (more)

Project Rave - First Thoughts

Yesterday, Sun made an early access version of Studio Creator (i.e., "Project Rave") available. I downloaded it for both of my normal development platforms (the SPARCle, running Solaris, and Windows) and gave it a go. On first impressions, Creator is meant to be a Web application development tool, from the looks of it. There's no mention of distributed APIs outside of the servlet environme... (more)

How Can I Escape Quotes in SQL Queries?

It depends on the SQL backend you're using, and how sincere you are. Basically, you'd want to convert every single quote to be double-single-quotes (i.e., O'Donnell becomes O''Donnell), which means writing a custom function. That's ugly, and unnecessary. (Aren't you glad?) If you use PreparedStatements, the JDBC driver will escape all data for you, for the specific database you're using. ... (more)

For the Coming Year...

It's that time of year, when the air is crisp and cool, and lights fill the air with the glint of good cheer and renewal. It's when wishes are fulfilled; when revitalization is just around the corner. I'd like to take some time to share some of the things I'd like to see for the next year, and about the people for whom I'd like to see them. For Sun: I'd love for them to come up with a uni... (more)

Let's Do Better

There's a J2EE tie-in. I promise. A fellow user mentioned something the other day about using libraries in Java. He said, and I paraphrase, that he simply didn't feel comfortable using a library if it couldn't be explained in one page. For the sake of argument, I'll assume he didn't mean one 400K page. I'm not sure I wholly agree with his statement, but his point is well taken. When I lo... (more)