Mindpsill - Technology

Congratulations Jo on finishing your paper. Hope you'll spend some quality time for yourself now that you can.

Today I wrote our intranet technology document hoping that we keep using Java Technology in favour of Microsoft. I'm including this text for future reusablility purposes. This information is mainly pilfered from J2EE FAQ

The development architecture for the intranet web server is based on the J2EE specification model. The J2EE model is a generic Enterprise Development model for the implementation of distributed applications. Some advantages of this environment are the following:-

• Scalable development for applications
• Cross-Platform support (Java)
• High reliability ensuring maximum availability for users
• Fast application prototyping and development
• Simplified Connectivity Solutions to DBs, ERP systems and CRM
• Excellent security model for e-commerce solutions
• Complete Web Service Support
• Implementations of J2EE technology are provided from high profile, well established vendors such as IBM, BEA, Oracle etc.

The main technologies in the J2EE Platform are the following.

• JavaServer Pages
• Java Servlets
• Enterprise JavaBeans components (EJB)
• J2EE Connector Architecture
• J2EE Management Model
• J2EE Deployment API
• Java API for XML-Based RPC for Web Services (JAX-RPC)
• Java Management Extensions (JMX)
• J2EE Authorization Contract for Containers
• Java API for XML Registries (JAXR)
• Java Message Service (JMS)
• Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI)
• Java Transaction API (JTA)
• CORBA
• JDBC data access API

The main disadvantage of this platform is the learning curve to overcome in the initial stages of development. Also, the technology is aimed mainly at an enterprise level and especially suited to complex applications making its wide appeal to the general public less attractive. However this is not an issue in industry.

Word: extol

Meaning:

1. To elevate by praise; to eulogize; to praise; to magnify; as, to extol virtue; to extol an act or a person.

Synonyms: praise, applaud, commend, magnify, celebrate, laud, glorify

Usage: Reusable extol on J2EE

Our manager was sick today so in theory we had to postpone the website links meeting. Obviously my boss couldn’t wait till tomorrow so she confronted me on the issue. For the uninitiated, the issue was whether it is (quoting her words) "professional practice" to include links to other applications in a telephone directory application. She is insinuating that it is unprofessional to include these links because they are totally unrelated.

Throughout the discussion I realised that she doesn’t have a clue what user requirements and usability mean. Once she decided that the links must not be included no matter that they might be useful for users she wants them removed because they do not make technical sense. To this argument I counteracted by stating that the user must decide what makes or doesn’t make sense. This concept is totally beyond her comprehension. I sincerely cannot understand what is so unprofessional and wrong in adding 3 links to interoperate easily between applications. In the mean time the telephone directory application is suspended after last Friday’s release.

I was highly demotivated to work today so instead I busied myself learning about XML-RPC. Like most of my initial experiments I choose Java as the implementation platform but I think I made the wrong choice. From the links throughout it seems that the Apache XML-RPC implementation is the most popular and in the vein of other similar projects the document is disasterous. I managed to run methods from an O'Reilly site but wasn’t successful with other services.

Word: linchpin (lynch pin)

Meaning:

1. A locking pin inserted in the end of a shaft, as in an axle, to prevent a wheel from slipping off.
2. A central cohesive source of support and stability.

Synonyms: anchor, mainstay, backbone

Usage: Mike is the lynch pin on the matter

Comments: I never say no to a compliment.

We made some fun with Rasputin’s private parts today at work

The following abstract is taken from the w3.org consortium CSS specification

Selectors

"Note that the A:hover must be placed after the A:link and A:visited rules since otherwise the cascading rules will hide the color property of the A:hover rule." A similar concept applies to A:active and A:hover.

My work PC was offended by the rejuvenation of my home PC personally. I was working for most of the day with only 20MB free physical RAM and using 81% of a 700MB swap file. You can imagine the work rate. I knew from an old article that Microsoft have a monitoring tool to monitor performance but I never remembered the name of the tool. I want to prove that I need an upgrade to 1GB of RAM. The solution lay in Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I found a great article on The Elder Geek on Windows XP website to refresh my memory. There is also a good article on the virtual memory paging file.

Here is a brief summary of what I did:-

1. Opened the performance monitor pre-defined MMC console (Start - Run perfmon.msc)
2. Created a new system monitor with the following counters
   • Memory - Available Mbytes
   • Memory - Page Reads/sec
   • Memory - Page Writes/sec
   • Paging File - % Usage
   • Paging File - % Usage Peak
   This left me with a graphical monitor of my Memory Settings. You can set the update frequency and some other display options from the (Right Click – Properties) menu.
3. I needed to output the data in excel so that I can manipulate it better so I created a counter log from the Performance Logs and Alerts snap-in with the same information and redirected the output to a csv file.

Since I’m on the subject of monitoring tools yesterday we had website problems once again, so I decided to monitor the number of apache processes on the machine. I wrote the following script to generate a file that can be easily imported in Excel.

ps -ef | grep httpd | echo `wc` `date` >> /home/ituser/httpdprocesses.log

And then I added a cronjob to run every minute (obviously care must be taken to remove the job once monitoring is finished)

* * * * * /home/ituser/httpdlogscript

The result is something similar to this. The first line contains the number of running httpd processes.

14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:18:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:19:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:20:01 CEST 2004
14 139 1112 Tue Apr 20 11:21:01 CEST 2004

A new CD gave me the courage to get out of bed early, even though I knew that the pleasure would be short lived. I only managed to listen to two 4 minutes songs till I arrived to work (and that's including traffic). Today I had an Asset Management product presentation for Microsoft’s SMS. They could have at least bothered to change the name.

There are 4 key tasks that this product can perform:-

• Inventory Management
• Software Distribution
• Software Metering
• Remote Administration

All the features are very useful to us especially considering the fact that we haven’t got any solution whatsoever in any one of these areas. Throughout the whole presentation the emphasis was that the system needs very careful planning and design. In line with the usual Microsoft culture the whole presentation was demonstrated using Microsoft Examples. I wonder how the system will perform when we try to push or audit our Java and non-MS products. When I asked the question the lecturer gave me that strange ‘you shouldn’t have said that’ look.

Life with a PC at home is returning to normal. After work the first thing I did, after checking messages on my cell phone left at home, was turn on the PC. I made a conscious effort not to spend all evening installing stuff so I went to read on the roof with the best companion available at the moment - my cat.

I got some news from Zurich and I’m getting the impression that fish are extremely abundant. Apparently there is a fishy smell in the town center and most of the dishes are fish plates. This isn't the best of news since my dearest loathes fish.

Surprisingly enough I have been thinking about my blog far more than I thought I would on my first post. Initially I thought this was going a one of thing but I think I'm starting to like it - at least for how much one can like something after 3 days. I cannot deny that the comment made by Joycelyn was rather encouraging as it didn't ever occur to me that anyone was going to bother reading anything I write. It never happens at work so why should it happen at all.

Today I was trying out some new RSS software - NewsGator - and I came across a couple of articles about google (link2) and blogging. Apparently Google has been highly influenced by the blogging culture and some searches are eturning 'funny' results. For instance the search 'miserable failure' returns 'Biography of President George W. Bush' as a first result.

I'm amused by the reputation and culture Google has been making for itself on the web. Recently a new free e-mail service, Gmail, has been launched by the search engine giant giving 1GB of free storage for e-mails. Astounding!! Most probably, the best result of my morning Google quest however has been the explanation of the Page Rank Algorithm used by google to index web pages. I'll leave it as a bed time story however.

I've just arrived from a local sports pub and I'm not amused at all. Monaco have just thrashed Real Madrid (3-1), to the dismay of my better half. I'm infuriated with the stubborness of not wanting to get a decent central defender. Soon enough even Helguera and Carlos will be replaced by the likes of Van Nistelrooy of Shevchenko. Take a look at where Guti is playing!