Retrieving logs from your deployed Google App Engine Java application

If you need to see your application logs from your deployed Google App Engine (GAE) Java application, you can use the GAE appcfg.sh tool to do so. Issue the following command from your GAE app directory:

appcfg.sh --num_days=0 --severity=0 request_logs ./web ./logs/gae.log

where:

--num_days=0 will retrieve all of the logs available,
--severity=0 will retrieve DEBUG and above log levels,
./web is where the ./WEB-INF/appengine-web.xml descriptor file can be found, and
./logs/gae.log is the local log file to write records to.

There are other options available for this command. Execute appcfg.sh help request_logs to see more information on the options available for request logs command. This will dump all of your logs and they will not be truncated like they are in the Logs view of the GAE administration application.

DevJam course offerings for February-March 2010

David Hussman recently posted the new DevJam course offerings for February and March 2010. I'll be leading the Introduction to Groovy, Introduction to Grails and Test Driven courses. The Test Driven course is open to Java and .NET developers (.NET examples in C#). Detailed information can be found at http://www.devjam.com/courses-and-training/index.php. Seating is limited to about 12 participants per course.

Tomcat Expert Series here in Minneapolis

Attended the SpringSource Tomcat Expert Series seminar here in Minneapolis this morning at the Hyatt Regency. Filip Hanik of SpringSource presented. Filip is a major committer to the Apache Tomcat project. Excellent technical presentations on Tomcat and JVM performance tuning tips and debugging JVM memory and thread issues. Lots of good information around Sun's generational heap and garbage collecting the heap, If you get a chance to take this presentation in, you won't regret it. $75 USD for 3.5 hours and a nice lunch. Seemed like a nice turn out, probably 120 or so attendees. SpringSource seems to be picking up momentum in the JVM space with recent acquisitions of G2One (Groovy and Grails consulting and development) and Hyperic (web application monitoring and management tooling). Could be well positioned when the economy comes out of this funk it's currently in.

Using ArgumentMatcher to capture indirect output arguments

Yesterday, I posted a blog entry about performing assertions directly in your ArgumentMatcher implementations.  I wanted to close the loop on my previous usage of the ArgumentMatcher.  After some discussion with the main committer to mockito, Szczepan Faber, it seems that ArgumentMatcher should only be used to capture the indirect output argument, making it accessible to the test code. Once the test code has the indirect output argument available to it, you can then assert on it to your heart's delight. Szczepan recommended not embedding the assertions directly in the ArgumentMatcher implementation.  More information can be found here.  Seems like a good approach. 

Finished my contract at Thomson West

Well, yesterday was my last day at Thomson West in Eagan. Good 6 month gig. Went in, built some new functionality for a new product that Thomson West is coming out with, and got out. The middle part of the summer was a bit hairy (I worked a couple of 45-52 hour weeks), but for the most part, it was a very straightforward project.

I think the big take away for me on this project was how well Spring Framework worked We had one, I said one, EJB...a message-driven bean. The rest of the system was built using normal Java objects configured in Spring application context files. This allowed us to concentrate on building business logic and not worry about EJB/J2EE issues. We also did all of our testing outside the J2EE container (in this case, the J2EE container was IBM WebSphere Application Server 5.1.2). A nice side effect of all this was that myself and another senior developer could use our Java IDE of choice--JetBrains' most excellent IntelliJ IDEA.

Spring was a big differentiator for that project--it allowed us to build value and deliver value to the client, thus building confidence in the client with regard to our abilities and skill levels. The group that I consulted with are super happy with how well Spring worked on this project and will be integrating Spring into more of their applications and ridding themselves of EJB cruftiness over time. I don't get the sense that they're interested in any of the EJB 3.0 stuff coming out and will stick with Spring and best of breed tools and frameworks in the future. The way it should be. Thoroughly enjoyable!

Next up is UnitedHealth Group's Ovations division. Big change here--.NET Framework, ASP.NET, AJAX. Looking forward to the challenges this new opportunity will present.