"What did you call me??"

Git is a free, open source fully distributed version control system originally written for the Maintenance of the linux kernel by None other than Mr *nix himself

Linus Torvalds (the original developer behind the linux kernel)

Whats Distributed Version Control?? You Ask..

In software development version control is the management of source code in a project,

Traditional version control systems use a 'Client - Server' based method of storing files, where a developer may "check out" a source file to work on it which will then make all other developers unable to modify that file to prevent conflicts.

Obviously for the linux kernel this would not be an option as a huge hoarde of developers would need to be able to work on the same files.

So the developers resorted to the distributed method of source control where instead of their being one "Central Repository" with a locking system each developer has a copy of the source in their own repository and then changes are vetted before merging to the master repo..

Well.. Kinda.. Its a little more complicated than that with massive open source projects but thats it in its simplest form.

My personal favourite advanatge of this??

It's Fast.

As most things are done locally theirs no network latency apart from at the end of the day when you push to your master repo(s)

To that end We've started the move of all our source to git.

The Learning curve is a little steep if you've never used the terminal on a Mac or Linux based computer..

But once you learn good source management you wont regret it!

How to's coming soon!

Recently We've been working a lot with a product called "Thinkmap" which provides incredible data visualisation using a collection of entities which they call "Nodes" and "Edges"..

Nice Jargon but what does it mean?

Well in short it means with a little configuration you can point thinkmap at a collection of XML, flatfiles or even a full blown SQL Database at it'll create a mind map (or thinkmap!) diagram of all your data.

We really like it!

It's great for presenting products, services and more in an "easy on the eye", logical way..

We're MS SQL Buffs So heres how we Moved from XML to SQL.

I'm assuming you have the following components:

Eclipse (A Great Java IDE),

The Thinkmap Developer Package (Demo Server, Eclipse Plugins Etc),

An Instance MS SQL 2005 or 2008.

An already working thinkmap project (Reading from XML or a Flat File)

I'm also assuming your working with windows, im not sure about the directories on linux and osx but im assuming its fairly simmilar..

Step 1: Download the driver

The good people over at Thinkmap suggest you dont use the standard microsoft one but instead use an open source implementation..

You can download it here

And see the documentation here

Step 2: Put it in your app..

It goes in: yourapp/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/

Step 3: Configure your Server.Tas File

Thinkmap provide an example for you to tweak for your own devices which can be found in C://Program Files/Thinkmap.../Examples/server_sql/

Make yourself a copy (on the desktop or somewhere) and change where it says:

    <datasource>
                <jndi dataSourceName="java:/comp/env/jdbc/moviedb" />                 
    </datasource>

to:

    <datasource>
              <jdbc driver="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver"
              url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://yourserver:yourport/yourdatabase;Trusted_Connection=True;"
              user="yourusername"
              password="yourpassword" />             
     </datasource>   

Now go tweak the nodes and edges in server.tas to your requirements/tables/columns etc

And Replace the Server file in your project with the new one..

Enjoy!