Excellent posting on anti-patterns.

SOA Anti-Patterns

Rails Performance Improvement suggestions

Interesting info. about major websites and they're experiences with databases:

Database War Stories

Very slick:

Ruby Syntax for Java Maps

Map options = new HashMap() {{
 put("key", "value");
 put("option", "foo");
 put("flag", "bar");
}};

Interesting article on XML gateways, authentication / authorization and XML encrypting, signing, etc. The author points out some good guidelines in regard to XML document signing and encrypting and whether simply HTTPS is sufficient.

Are XML Gateways really the answer?

Of course they should! If you become so detacted from the code how can you possibly make well informed decisions about the design and technologies to use for a system. Reading alone is no substitute for real experience.

Should Architects Code?

I really like these articles and fully agree, too much time is wasted in traditional methodologies focusing on formal project plans, Gantt charts, MS Project plans and then reviewing, and updating those plans. Agile retains the planning, but cuts out all the non-sense, since it rightly assumes things will change.

Planning 101 for Agile Teams

this includes the 5 steps from:
The Five Levels of Planning

Good read about continuations and how they can be applied to websites.

Continuations on the web

XFire 1.1 was released today

I'll be testing this version for the next few days and will post any thoughts or results when I have finished.

Wanted: An SOA Methodology

The Complete Guide to plugins for rails