Java Web Development (JSP/Servlets) Services

The Cookie That Never Came Back

The first call authenticated the user. The second failed.

I was integrating with a customer-provided SOAP service exposed through a single WSDL, with JAX-WS client classes generated by IBM Rational Application Developer from the WSDL and its XSDs. The first call authenticated the user and came back with a Set-Cookie header. Every call after it needed that cookie. The generated client sent none of it. Each invocation behaved as an independent conversation, and the workflow broke on its second step. No exception, no warning. Just a server that had forgotten who you are.

Every app that accepts photo uploads meets HEIC sooner or later. iPhones save in it by default. Neither Java nor Rust can read it out of the box, and the usual answer, libheif, is a C library: native packages in every container image, a C toolchain in the build, and a parser written in C reading files that strangers upload.

I had the problem twice, in a Java product and in a Rust one. So I went the other way: decoders written in the language itself, built and improved by AI coding agents, with me steering. Here is how it went.

When JDK 27 was released on 15 September 2026, most of the attention went to compact object headers and post-quantum TLS. JEP 523 received less coverage, partly because its description sounds like housekeeping: G1 becomes the default garbage collector in all environments.

For most applications, that changes nothing. For a specific class of container, it changes the collector silently, with no warning in the logs and no failure at startup.

GitHub's contribution calendar gives you an already iconic overview of your activity over the year. Each day has a square, and its color changes with the contribution level. And of course, those days and contributions can also be arranged into buildings, with a week becoming a small part of a city and busier weeks adding height to the skyline.

I had some spare minutes and built Quarkus Contribution City around this idea, using Java and Quarkus to generate an SVG from GitHub's contribution data. The visual inspiration came from Pink Pixel's skyline, and you can see a version with my real data on my GitHub profile. A scheduled GitHub Action updates the image at night.

If you have worked on a mature Java backend application, your src/main/resources/db/migration folder probably looks like a chaotic history ledger:

V1__init_schema.sql
V2__add_users_table.sql
...
V142__add_status_column.sql
V143__fix_status_typo.sql
V144__drop_old_status.sql
V145__add_missing_index.sql