Mongoid batch inserts
In SQL land, all databases support batch inserts. Batch inserts are an effective and efficient mechanism to insert a lot of similar data. That is, instead of issuing x insert statements, you execute 1 insert with x records. This is...
MoDevEast 2012 panel discussion
Last fall, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at MoDevEast entitled ” What Developers Love and Hate about iOS, Android, Windows and HTML5 ” with five super star mobile app developers.
2013 Open Analytics Summit
On March 25, 2013, I’ll be speaking at the Open Analytics Summit in Washington DC ; specifically, I’ll be discussing how the App47 team has used MongoDB as the backend of
Node.js in 3 commands
A few short years ago when I started to explore Node.js , I remember the installation on my MacBook Pro required downloading the source, compiling and installing it, and then updating paths. And then you had to install NPM .
The bull's eye on mobility: Mobile for the masses
Since joining App47 , I’ve been lazer focused on mobility; consquently, I’m pleased to announce that a new mobile development series has debuted on IBM developerWorks !
It's a question of wow
Let me ask you a question: do you want to build a mobile website or a mobile app? If your answer is mobile website, then HTML5 is good enough . But if your answer is mobile app then you had better think about user experience . You...
Everything you need to know about MongoDB
Are you new to MongoDB ? Curious to see what’s interesting about it? Document-oriented databases like MongoDB are vastly different from relational databases in that they don’t store data in tables; instead, they store it in the form...
Testing Rails migrations
I recently found myself searching Stackoverflow and Google for various techniques for automatically testing Rails migrations . I was surprised not to have found too much information though. While testing a migration is fairly...
Circumventing mobile UX expectations
Recently, a buddy of mine pointed me to an interesting tweet: New tool converts your Apple #iOS apps to #HTML5 http://dld.bz/cejxz #appdev
Savvy Mongo query selector: exists
MongoDB supports a rich query language ; in fact, its support of dynamic queries is one of its more distinguishing features compared to other datastores in the NoSQL world.
Scalable searching with ElasticSearch
Search is no longer an optional feature: it’s expected of most any application that consumes, produces, or stores data. And not everyone wants to be a search technology specialist, especially given the range of sophisticated...
Pushing Mongo GridFS files with Sinatra
We recently implemented a new feature that required two interesting aspects: storing a file in MongoDB using GridFS (think traditional Blob ) and then pushing that file down to a browser.
Running individual tests in Rails
Every now and again, I find myself struggling to remember how to execute a single test in Rails . While I have Guard running the entire test suite anytime a change is detected, there are times when I want to focus solely on one test....
The cloud files are out!
The good folks over at IBM developerWorks have recently published season 5 of the Java technical podcast series . This season focuses on the technologies, companies, and people influencing cloud computing.
Sinatra, CoffeeScript, and Haml: swinging in 4 steps
I recently decided to ditch plain old JavaScript in a Sinatra based application in favor of CoffeeScript . The existing JavaScript wasn’t terribly complex; however, I was looking at having to add some AJAX based long polling and I...
Comprehending the mobile development landscape
There’s no shortage of mobile growth statistics, but here’s a few specific ones paint an overall picture of mobility:
The essence of mobile app performance
Are you pumped that you just published an app? Yep, me too. But guess what? Once you’ve built, tested, and deployed a mobile app, you’ll find yourself concerned with two factors:
JVM fork modes and metaclass wizardry
Over the past decade of finding myself staring at innumerable Ant build files containing a JUnit task , I’ve come to realize a subtle, yet powerful flag, that when not set properly, almost always leads to random and confusing test...
MoDevTablet 2012 video: Mobile Web Realities
Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking at MoDevTablet where I gave a presentation entitled “Mobile Web Realities” and the good folks who put on the conference recorded it.
A tale of three browsers
I recently spent time evaluating various mobile browsers’ HTML5 compatibility in an effort to understand the state of the mobile web. Along the way, I discovered that the good folks at Facebook, who happen to have quite a lot of...
