Another RTFM moment – I was working on retrofitting an old application that used my own persistence framework to use iBATIS SQL Maps with the Spring DAO framework and running into a bizarre error. I kept getting the error: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/ibatis/db/sqlmap/XmlSqlMapBuilder and it turned out that my DAO implementations were extending SqlMapFactoryBean instead of SqlMapClientFactoryBean. The documentation clearly states that I should use SqlMapClientFactoryBean, but I wasn’t. Thanks to Nilesh for the clarification

By the way, if you haven’t looked at Spring or just it’s DAO framework, you should explore it as it simplifies the development process and minimizes the amount of code you write. I just rewrote some of my POC applications using Spring’s DAO framework that used iBATIS and Hibernate under the covers. By using the template classes provided by Spring, I wrote about 30-40% of the code I would have normally written using iBATIS or Hibernate by themselves.

Programming in C (3rd Edition) by Stephen Kochan
Paperback: 576 pages
Publisher: Sams; 3 edition (July 8, 2004)
ISBN: 0672326663

I know this is a little off-topic here but I had to put a plug in for the 3rd edition of the Programming in C book by Stephen Kochan. I am a huge fan of Steve’s writings and own every single copy of his books. In fact, I learned programming in C in the early 90’s using the first edition of this book. Back in the day, I used to manage a list called ‘LEARN C/C++ TODAY‘ that started off as a mailing list in 1992 and led into a website in 1994 running on my little 386 Linux box running NCSA’s httpd. I remember I had just moved from SLS to Slackware Linux just days before I launched the site. Those were the days!!

Back to the book – Steve sent me an email a few weeks ago to let me know that the 3rd edition of the book had shipped. He ended up mailing me a signed copy of the book and I was pleasantly surprised to have my name endorsing the book on the back cover. I haven’t written any C code in the last 8 years but it was still a lot of fun to read through the book and take a trip down memory lane. Just like the other editions of this book, this book does not disappoint. I love the clear, concise writing style that uses examples to teach new concepts. I still believe that this is the best tutorial for anyone that is starting out programming in C. I wish Steve would get into Java, as I would love to see a Java book of the same caliber. Great job Steve and I think everyone programming in C should own this must-read book.