I write a lot of small java applications and need a good command line interpreter. Apache Common CLI helps me keep track of options and arguments. Apache have a lot of great tools in their tool chain and even if some of them are common they have a great track record of usability.

We write a simple example in java to run a validation using Schematron. The framework Schematron is a way to do easy validation of XML documents and create output that is easily readable by someone working with these documents.

In this video, I get back to the basics and show you how to use the code from my series Java By Example to read data from an excel spreadsheet in order to populate your invoice PDF.

I try to create a herddb using zookeeper and bookkeeper. I talk about the challenges I found and what the current state of the project is in my opinion.