Stinky Dawgs

Being a single male I of course have a dog. And since one is never enough I actually have two. More responsibility than I can imagine and tonight more pain than I want. You would think having two well trained hunting dogs is a good thing, but not when the thing they decide to chase after is a skunk. Tonights walk was painful - and that smell doesn't disappear with a single bath. Here is to them spending a few nights in the backyard. The skunk definitely won.

Database SCM

Why is it that every SCM article and every tool written is great for managing code but forgets how to manage DB assets. I have all my code in a repository, be it Subversion, CVS, or Perforce and I can automate my app deploys with CruiseControl or Anthill but what about my DB Objects and data. The systems I build are usually much more than simple java and config files and having half an automated process is almost no process at all. Install tools are the same, great at updating my app server deployment but almost all the stuff to run my DB upgrade scripts has to be written by hand. Now I am not dumb enough to do all this by hand so I used Red Gates libraries to automate a DB build, and though the tool works great, I hate having a disconnected process. I want one harness that will get me all the way there, with all the assets in the same repository. This world always seems to leave toolsets just a couple steps short. Power and promise but not true fulfillment.

Log Viewer

Either I am without google skills or what seem like common problems rarely have a packaged answer. So I am running a cluster of servers all using log4j to write to a number of machine specific logs. Why is there no way for me to aggregate those logs and view in some secure fashion. I know I can use a JMSappender and write it to a DB, but even then I am forced to write the front-end and any security. I just want a little web page that can authenticate me and show me this info. Isn't there a cheap utility I can buy to do this for me. In my old age I have become lazy and hate writing this kinda stuff. Maybe that means I am no longer a true programmer.