A co-worker, Chris Smith, created a very elegant Perl program to parse a Microsoft Excel XLS file for me some time ago. I recently modified that program to convert what was essentially a "glossary" in an Access database.

I first saved the Access database table as an Excel file. Then I used the following Perl program to extract the contents of the second and third columns from that file, and write them out to another file. The output file was in a Wiki (technically TWiki) format.

Ant web build script FAQ: Can you share an example Ant build script for a web application?

Sure, here's a sample Ant build script for a Java web application. I've included other example Ant scripts for Java Swing/JFC/GUI applications on this website, but this one demonstrates how to use Ant to build a web app instead.

Ant Java build scripts: Can you share an example of an Ant build script for a standalone Java application?

This is a sample Ant build script for a Java application I wrote. It is a GUI/Swing application named "AlwaysOnTop". I include it here because I'm a big believer in learning by example, and maybe this Ant script can help you create an Ant script for your own applications.

Java String array FAQ: Can you share an example of how to determine the largest String in a Java String array?

Sure, in this tutorial I'll share the source code for a complete Java class with a method (getLengthLongestString) that demonstrates how to determine the longest String in a Java String array.

Here's a quick example of how to set a default value for an HSQLDB TIMESTAMP field:

create cached table directories (
  dir_id identity NOT NULL,
  directory varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  time timestamp default 'now'
);

There are other ways to do this, but the important line that sets the default timestamp in the above SQL is this:

time timestamp default 'now'

This is where I'm creating a timestamp field named "time" that automatically defaults to the current date/time when a record is created.