Tomcat installation changed, problems launching Tomcat in Eclipse

• Install location of Tomcat has changed.  Get message "The archive: [...]/apache-tomcat-6.0.20/bin/bootstrap.jar which is referenced by the classpath, does not exist." when attempting to launch Tomcat in Eclipse
• Fix: 
1. In Servers view, double-click on Tomcat server.  Overview of Tomcat settings appears.  
2. Click on "Open launch configuration"
3. Go to Classpath tab
4. Edit User Entries as appropriate
• If you haven't already, specify your Tomcat installation under Preferences > Server > Runtime Environments

Compiling PL/SQL and using TOAD to write stored procedures

• PL/SQL compiler (version?) is quite stupid:  Missing a semi-colon flags a line several lines below where the actual semi-colon is missing.  Likewise for a missing single quote character
• To escape the single quote character, double it.  Therefore four consecutive single quotes is a string consisting of a single quote
• When the compiler reports a compiler error at a certain line, that line # is relative to the start of the Body of stored procedure (assuming you are editing the Body and not the Spec)
• To compile and "save" your stored procedure to the Oracle server in TOAD, be sure to use the "Execute As Script" button () in the Editor.  Do NOT use the "Execute/compile statement at caret" button.
• In order to see debug output (i.e. from DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE function):  Where does DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE() output go (in Toad) ?

Getting TOAD running without tnsnames.ora, etc.

1. Download/install TOAD
2. Download/install Oracle Instant Client
3. Know your database server's Host IP, Port number, and SID for desired database
4. When you attempt to connect using TOAD, fill in the "Direct" tab with the information from previous step and select to connect using Instant Client (may already be the default)

Additional note:  Although I am using 64-bit Windows 7, the 64-bit version of the Instant Client did not appear to work (an error about "unable to load oci.dll" within TOAD).  However, the 32-bit version worked fine.

Jersey, JAX-RS notes on Jersey 1.3 User Guide

• Jersey 1.3 User Guide
• a more detailed document than the "RESTful Web Services Developer's Guide", especially regarding JSON support and the Jersey client API 
• example of "Builder" pattern utilized by Jersey client API, rather than the JavaBean get/set pattern:
  
  

  8   JAXBBean bean = r.
  9     type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE)
  10    .accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE)
  11    .post(JAXBBean.class, f);
  

Jersey, JAX-RS notes for RESTful Web Services Developer's Guide

• RESTful Web Services Developer's Guide
• can embed variables in the URIs. URI path templates are URIs with variables embedded within the URI syntax
• "A fundamental part of REST is that the next set of valid operations is encoded in the response from the last. This means that as long as you only use actions from the last operation you will always perform a valid operation according to the application protocol." - does this feature exist in Jersey?
• "If a character in the value of a variable would conflict with the reserved characters of a URI, the conflicting character should be substituted with percent encoding." - use case?
• If the application needs to supply additional metadata, such as HTTP headers or a different status code, a method can return a Response that wraps the entity, and which can be built using Response.ResponseBuilder.
• By default, a resource class can respond to and produce all MIME media types of representations specified in the HTTP request and response headers
  
  
  

Free TOAD versus SQuirreL SQL Client

One of the things that require me to use Windows is the lack of availability of TOAD on Linux.  I am evaluating the Java tool Squirrel SQL Client to see how it stacks up for Oracle development:

	Free TOAD	SQuirreL SQL Client
DDL	The Script tab shows referential integrity constraints, comments on columns, in addition to the usual CREATE TABLE DDL	Evaluating ...
Auto-completion of SQL	Doesn't work with usual Ctrl+space keyboard short-cut	Works well
"Bookmark favorite" tables	Evaluating ...	Evaluating ...
DDL	The Script tab shows referential integrity constraints, comments on columns, in addition to the usual CREATE TABLE DDL	Evaluating ...
<placeholder>	<placeholder>	<placeholder>

Getting comments on Oracle tables

If your Oracle tool doesn't support pulling the comments for tables you are accessing, try this SQL:

select COLUMN_NAME, COMMENTS
from ALL_COL_COMMENTS
where TABLE_NAME =