Java Web Weekly, Issue 167

We rely on other people’s code in our own work. Every day.

It might be the language you’re writing in, the framework you’re building on, or some esoteric piece of software that does one thing so well you never found the need to implement it yourself.

The problem is, of course, when things fall apart in production - debugging the implementation of a 3rd party library you have no intimate knowledge of is, to say the least, tricky.

Lightrun is a new kind of debugger.

It's one geared specifically towards real-life production environments. Using Lightrun, you can drill down into running applications, including 3rd party dependencies, with real-time logs, snapshots, and metrics.

>> Learn more in this quick, 5-minute Lightrun tutorial

The AI Assistant to boost Boost your productivity writing unit tests - Machinet AI.

AI is all the rage these days, but for very good reason. The highly practical coding companion, you'll get the power of AI-assisted coding and automated unit test generation.
Machinet's Unit Test AI Agent utilizes your own project context to create meaningful unit tests that intelligently aligns with the behavior of the code.
And, the AI Chat crafts code and fixes errors with ease, like a helpful sidekick.

Simplify Your Coding Journey with Machinet AI:

>> Install Machinet AI in your IntelliJ

Looking for the ideal Linux distro for running modern Spring apps in the cloud?

Meet Alpaquita Linux: lightweight, secure, and powerful enough to handle heavy workloads.

This distro is specifically designed for running Java apps. It builds upon Alpine and features significant enhancements to excel in high-density container environments while meeting enterprise-grade security standards.

Specifically, the container image size is ~30% smaller than standard options, and it consumes up to 30% less RAM:

>> Try Alpaquita Containers now.

Slow MySQL query performance is all too common. Of course it is. A good way to go is, naturally, a dedicated profiler that actually understands the ins and outs of MySQL.

The Jet Profiler was built for MySQL only, so it can do things like real-time query performance, focus on most used tables or most frequent queries, quickly identify performance issues and basically help you optimize your queries.

Critically, it has very minimal impact on your server's performance, with most of the profiling work done separately - so it needs no server changes, agents or separate services.

Basically, you install the desktop application, connect to your MySQL server, hit the record button, and you'll have results within minutes:

>> Try out the Profiler

DbSchema is a super-flexible database designer, which can take you from designing the DB with your team all the way to safely deploying the schema.

The way it does all of that is by using a design model, a database-independent image of the schema, which can be shared in a team using GIT and compared or deployed on to any database.

And, of course, it can be heavily visual, allowing you to interact with the database using diagrams, visually compose queries, explore the data, generate random data, import data or build HTML5 database reports.

>> Take a look at DBSchema

Lots of interesting writeups on Spring stuff going on this week.

Let’s jump right in…

1. Spring and Java

>> Spring Boot – Configure Log Level in Runtime Using Actuator Endpoint [codeleak.pl]

Starting with Spring Boot 1.5, we can configure log levels at runtime by performing simple POST requests.

>> 7 Tips and Tricks We Learned From the Java Community [takipi.com]

Community is a great source of knowledge 🙂

>> A use-case for Spring component scan [frankel.ch]

A quick refresher of how @ComponentScan works followed by a practical example.

>> Deep Dive into Java 9’s Stack-Walking API [sitepoint.com]

Java 9 includes a brand new Stack-Walking API that provides an access to the execution stack. Hopefully, we’ll no longer need to hack our way through frames.