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?