Why prioritize regression testing? A doctor-patient analogy.

You go to the doctor for your annual checkup, and she asks, “so, what changes have you noticed in the past week?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” you reply, “in the past week, not much, really.”

“I bet a couple of things changed,” says the doctor, “such as your hair and nails probably grew a little. I bet you ate some food too.”

“Uh, I suppose,” you reply.

“Well, if that’s it, then I’ll just run a quick test to make sure your new hair and cuticles are in order, and I’ll send you on your way,” she says.

“Huh?,” you ask, “is that it? Shouldn’t you measure my weight or check my blood pressure or run some other basic tests like that, since this is my annual checkup and all?”

“But essentially only your hair and nails have changed recently,” she responds, “so that’s all I’m going to look at. Or if you like, I can trigger your gag reflex and take a look at your last meal as well.”

“Um, no thank you.”

“There, all done. Your hair and nails appear in order. See, that was easy. Since you have no insurance, that will be $250. I’ll see you again next year.”

“But, but,” you protest…

iPod Touch or iPhone forgetting your network? Here's a solution

If you are using a hidden network with your iPod Touch (and presumably iPhone), you may run into an issue where your device won't remember the network.  That might be acceptable if you didn't also have to select the security and type the username and password every time.  But unfortunately you have to do all those things.  Well, until now.  There is a simple work-around.

First, there's no need to turn off asking to join networks.
Make sure you can connect to the network by joining it as Other...
Go ahead and enter the network name, select security type, and enter username and password.
Make sure it connects.
Now lock your device until the network connection is severed.
Go back into your network settings.
If it is a hidden network, it won't appear in your list.
Fine, that's expected.
This time, just click Other... and then type the network name.
Skip changing the security type.
Just hit Join right away.
It will tell you it could not connect.
But nonetheless it will connect!
You should be okay to use it now.

To review, you will still have to type the network name each time, but nothing else.  This seems reasonable for a hidden network SSID.

Hopefully that will save some folks time and headaches.

WebLogic error explained: "DescriptorException... Unmarshaller failed... MarshallerFactory... BeanAlreadyExistsException"

If you get the following error when trying to deploy an EAR to WebLogic (11g version 10.3.2):

Unable to load descriptor... The error is weblogic.descriptor.DescriptorException: Unmarshaller failed
at weblogic.descriptor.internal.MarshallerFactory$1.createDescriptor(MarshallerFactory.java:161)
...
Caused by: com.bea.xml.XmlException: weblogic.descriptor.BeanAlreadyExistsException: Bean already exists: "weblogic.j2ee.descriptor.ModuleBeanImpl...

...it indicates that you are trying to deploy multiple WARs (e.g. 2 WARs) with the same context-root. That is not allowed. Either consolidate the WARs or give one a different context-root.

Term for "non-cloud" software application

And the winner is...

One month ago, it looked like "dedicated" was the best choice.

Today, I might go with "on-premise" instead.

Both appear popular. Bottom line, things are still evolving. But the terms seem to be coalescing.