HTTPS connections need to make sure the server 'at the other end' is actually the server it claims to be. This is done using public key certificates. For testing purposes or to save the costs of a commercially issued certificate, it is possible to use a self-issued certificate. This blog post shows how to connect to this kind of servers in IntelliJ IDEA or other Java programs.

I'm pleased to announce that the JODReports project has received two brand new mailing lists, one for user and one for developer discussion each. They are hosted by Google Groups and can be posted to by anyone with a valid Google account.

To help in a discussion on the TestNG mailing list, I created a quick sketch of what I'd like to do regarding the ordering of subelements of a TestNG <suite> XML element.

The Java programming language does not support the notion of "self types", that is "type of this". When implementing fluent APIs, this lack of support can lead to significant duplication of boilerplate code. Taking FEST Assertions as an example, this article shows how "self types" can be emulated in Java using Generics.

Using time-dependent data

I stumbled across a piece of code the other day, allowing some versioned entity from our domain model to find out whether it's valid from a certain point in time. The corresponding test failed sporadically, so I went and looked into it.