Efficiently sorting an array that is already mostly sorted

I've been investigating how to improve the performance of sorting an array that is already mostly sorted.  Turns out java is replacing the mergesort with timsort in Java 7's Arrays.sort.  You can find the code here.  I'm seeing a factor of 3-4 improvement!

Accessing JMX from Nagios

Jmx4Perl – ConSol* Labs

BigTable Model with Cassandra and HBase | Javalobby

BigTable Model with Cassandra and HBase | Javalobby gives a good overview and detail on NOSQL/column-orientated dbs.

JUnit Kung Fu: Getting More Out of Your Unit Tests

Some nice info in the slides at JUnit Kung Fu: Getting More Out of Your Unit Tests | Java.net