Promising Java Installers
I was digging around for some good Java installers; that is, programs that can bundle up my Java program and allow them to be installed by end users easily, optionally bundling (or jit downloading+installing) the JRE. I found a few that look promising:
Ye Olde Key-Value Store: BerkeleyDB
This weekend I explored the possibility of implementing something resembling Redis but on top of an existing, mature database engine. It's a key-value store, it has transactions, it supports locks and concurrent writes, replication, etc. While it ultimately didn't end up panning out (trying to get sets to work efficiently just wasn't working out), it was an interesting learning experience for me familiarizing myself with the Java DPL (Direct Persistence Layer) in BerkeleyDB. (Let that be your warning that there's Java in this post!)