Learning Java

One of the things I notice when reading the Java/NetBeans documentation on database "applications" is that they all envisage an "application" which just scrolls through a recordset displaying records. This so dull. Why would anyone want to create another "application" like this, when there are so many out there which do exactly that. Why write something from scratch when you can buy a product off the shelf like MS Access which does exactly that, and does it jolly well? Why does everyone just copy everyone else? I want my app to connect to a database, read stuff from it, and write stuff to it, but without my users even knowing it is there. My users are students doing a math activity. My database is of no interest to them, and they as individuals are of no interest to my database. What is of interest is the way they interact with items stored in the database, and I want to use this interaction to refine parameters associated with the items. If I sel...

I don't like Windows 7. Perhaps I am a Luddite. Perhaps I just resist change, because I prefer the familiar look and feel of XP. For whatever reason, having tried the beta, I was inclined to ignore the release candidate. It gobbles up my download limit, and it is time wasting. Two things changed my mind. The first was comment in the press, by which I really mean APC magazine. The second was the inevitability of the role out, and the need for me to become familiar with it in order to service my customers. On the first, I have a fairly low opinion of the press, and I have developed an especially low opinion of APC mag. I don't know why I read the editorials, because I find the editor intensely irritating. He strikes me as a man of little brain, and he seems to write not what he believes (if indeed he has beliefs) but what he has heard, or what he thinks will make him seem trendy or with it. He raved over Windows Vista, when he thought it was exciting, but as...

I said in my last blog that in the previous blog I had been a bit harsh on the Java community. That may be true, but I was not harsh on the Java Tutorial trail JDBC(TM) Database Access , which is possibly the worst piece of writing in the history of mankind. The trail dedicates an entire branch to material which could reasonably be assumed to be known by anyone venturing into the realms of JDBC, and then falls into a heap in the branch which purports to teach the technical mechanics. The Getting Started lesson follows the pattern of the rest of the trail - full of redundant material and totally inadequate in areas of interest. It begins by describing three steps. The first step includes: "Install the latest version of the Java™ platform on your machine". Now surely a Java novice is not going to make JDBC his or her first lesson. So surely it is reasonable to assume that anyone interested in this lesson already has the Java™ platform installed and run...

On re-reading my last blog I think I was a little harsh on the Java community, because when I started posting questions about connecting a Java app to an Access database, a single post in the Java Forum produced an informative thread with two participants besides myself, while two posts in the MS Community Forum produced no response at all. So while the Java community might not be hugely interested in problems connecting to a Microsoft database, the Microsoft community seems totally uninterested in a Java related problem. Further digging revealed that while MS have grudgingly produced a JDBC driver for SQL Server, they have never produced one for MS Access. The Sun Website provides a list of 3rd party vendors producing JDBC drivers for MS Access but paying for a driver seems to defeat the object of using an open source IDE. I had a look at some of them to crib tips on connection syntax, but nothing I tried worked on my installation of NetBeans on two different comp...

I now have a mini-applet sitting here . The applet embodies Rasch analysis to the extent that items are grouped by difficulty and offered to students according to revealed ability. But the data used to estimate item difficulty is both static and old. If my applet is to be apply Rasch theory in real time, the estimate of item difficulty must be modified and updated while students are using the applet. Currently items are dished up from an array, which is shuffled each time the applet is used. If my applet is to be apply Rasch theory in real time, it needs to serve items from a database, which both includes historical data on each item, and updates it according to current usage. This will require quite a sophisticated database application. As the front end sits on the web, and may be used by many students at the same time, there must be carefully thought out locking protocols, to avoid either loss or corruption of data. It's not really my area of expertise. I have attached m...