I am working on a project where they use IBM tools at the client site: Websphere 5.1.8, DB2 and Eclipse. I already have a MySQL instance running, an Oracle 9 RDMBS and some version of SQL Server that came with Windows XP so I did not install DB2 on my laptop.

Of course it's a bad idea to develop an application on a different platform than the production platform, so inevitably, we ran into trouble. Specifically with datatypes. Some code would run fine on WAS with MySQL but as soon as we deployed it to the (AS400) DB2 environment the JDBC exceptions started flooding.

I decided to take the plunge (I am more an Oracle type of person) and install DB2 Personal Edition for Windows on my machine. This would make my machine more compatible with the production database, although there are differences between DB2 for Windows and DB2 for AS400. I anticipated a long download (I aborted the Websphere download after two hours), but after ten minutes the entire DB2 Personal Edition was downloaded to my machine. Next I unpacked the zipfile. Still everything went smoothly: if only it had stayed that way...

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I guess most of you will be familiar with Sudoku. These puzzles appear in my newspaper every day and I have to say, when every such a semi mathematical puzzle comes by it intrigues me and I tend to get addicted. And when I get addicted, I start to think of a computer program to solve the puzzles. This feeling is strongest when my human incapabilities (carelessness, eagerness) infallibly mislead me in messing up one of the puzzles.

Last week one evening when I messed up another one, I couldn't resist and started up the computer. It took me most of the night (It was about 6 when I finally got to bed), but the puzzles that my newspaper brings me will haunt me no longer: I implemented a Java program that solves Sudokus.

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