My Ramblings

JAX WS 2.1 based Web Service on Tomcat 5.5.*

Vivek — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:20:07 +0000

I have implemented JAX WS 2.1 based Web Service on Tomcat 5.5.27. This has been done in Eclipse using Apache Ivy for dependency management. I am only publishing the ivy.xml here because dependency resolution was a big headache for me, as artifacts in maven repository are out of sync.

Ivy Descriptor:

Ivy Settings:

Almost clocked 25k on my bike

Vivek — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:33:45 +0000

I reached home and I was hoping that u would have completed silver jubilee riding my bike. That was not the case. Here is the reading.

Google Video and Chat on iphone treats iphone as Power PC Mac

Vivek — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:12:19 +0000

Gmail Video & Chat treated my Iphone as Power PC. For once I am happy. I really want to own a Mac.

Junit ignore test cases, classes using @ignore

Vivek — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:11:25 +0000

I am a huge fan of Junit 4.5. It is very simple in its approach and test cases are simpler than ever before. I liek the idea of embedding unit test cases within the same class. With junit 4.5 there needs to be a single @Test annotation before the method and thats what is required to run it as a junit test case. I use ant’s junit task to execute my tests.

Recently i ran into a small issue which was related to interfaces, abstract classes and classes with no junit tests present in the source directory. I had an option to include only test classes in a fileset but i preferred using batchtest, both are ant resource collections.

Ant will always return an error in these cases. I found a way around by using @ignore for all classes which ant junit should ignore. Anyone having a better way ?


package com.vivek.design.patterns;

import org.junit.Ignore;

@Ignore("interface")

public interface FlyBehaviour {

void fly();

}

Class above is from Head First Design Patterns

Accessing Oracle without Oracle Client Setup using Instant Client (Windows)

Vivek — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:47:44 +0000

Oracle Client Installation is required on machines from which access to Oracle Server is required. My work machine has only 1Gb of RAM and i run few more memory intensive applications on it. Currently i am using Oracle Instant Client instead of Oracle Client to access Oracle Database. Setup is minimal and if done in order works fine.

Read more on Instant Client from Oracle’s Website.

Now coming to setup.

Download Instant Client (10.2.0.4) from the link on website above. You will need to register for download if not already registered which i did not like. After download unzip folder in say C:\ and create a folder named oracle. Inside C:\oracle create a folder bin. Move all unzipped files inside bin folder.

Create a folder name network in C:\oracle. Inside C:\oracle\network create a folder named admin.

Create a new file called tnsnames.ora inside C:\oracle\network\admin.

Now there are 3 environment variables which need to be set:

Path=C:\oracle\bin (Add anywhere in Path)
SQL_PATH=C:\oracle
TNS_ADMIN=C:\oracle\network\admin

Fire up TOAD or Oracle SQL Developer and you should be able to connect to all schemas mentioned in tnsnames.ora

Instant Client is avalible for lot of platforms. I have written this post when using InstantClient on Windows XP.

Windows Command Prompt Replacement

Vivek — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:35:28 +0000

MS Command Prompt is perhaps the most ignored application that comes with Windows. Well they launched Powershell but it is more targeted towards Administrators. I was searching for a Windows based command prompt replacement. Tried Console Beta from sourceforge but it turned out to be a memory hog.

These days i am using PowerCmd which is much neater and uses less memory. It did crash when i was using it and that did not kill the prcoess running in console. So i had to use Alt-Ctrl-Del to kill the process. PowerCmd comes with a tabbed interface and allows me to change fonts easily. User Interface is simple and self explaining. I can arrange console in predefined layouts. Copying and Pasting text is much easier. For long console message there is also option to turn Wordwrap on or off. I think default windows console should learn something from its unix counterpart.

Download Here

Java Search Class in Jar. Update – moved to Google Code

Vivek — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:28:45 +0000

Working as a Java Developer and working across multiple projects there is one frequent error which i have encounterd is “Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFound Error:". The reason for this error is missing class file from the CLASSPATH.

This sometimes becomes very frustrating when you have to search for missing class in a set of JAR files. To make it bit easier i have written a small java utility which searches for class file in all jar files present in a particular directory.

I am making it available for download below and also a sample of what it can do.

C:UtilsJar Search>java -jar jarSearch.jar C:WorkJar WSDL2Java

Found WSDL2Java as org/apache/axis/wsdl/WSDL2Java.class in C:WorkJaraxis.jar

Time taken 0s

Download Here.

Update: I have moved this project to Google Code. Any new downloads will be available from here. I have also updated utility to work with swt based gui. Please locate platform specific swt.jar from here and put it in same folder as JarSearch.jar. Execute using “java -jar JarSearch.jar”

3 minutes in Google Chrome, Feel already at home

Vivek — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:37:56 +0000

3 minutes before i downloaded Google Chrome and i am already at home. Built on top of webkit and mozilla components this is extremly light and simple. It imported all my bookmarks from Firefox immediately on startup. Since all tabs are individual processes, i opened few tabs and noticed the number of processes running. There is one extra process running in background as 3 tabs = 3 process + 1 more parent process.

Chrome

Infact i am using Google Chrome to write this post. One good thing is the ability to import Firefox bookmarks again and again. Youtube plays well and there is absolutely no issue. I have not been able to crash this browser till now. I changes the default downloads location to Desktop instead of My Documents. Chrome also allows us to restore tabs from previous browsing sessions. Memeory footprint is not high, considering this is a beta release.

Best Feature is the ability to search from within the address bar. Though chrome allows adding a new search provider almost everyone will stick to the default one. Chrome website is offering only the installer which then uses Google Update to download core components.

Good Browser and friendly too.

Only one surprise : Comes with Vista Buttons

How svn helped me fill my timesheets?

Vivek — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:31:39 +0000

As a software developer who work in services industry i have to regularly fill timesheets. These are used by management to understand and plot how much time one particular phase of project takes and also if some one is being really lazy. Recently i was so busy in my project delivery that i was unable to file timesheets for one complete month. Here comes my Manager on the last working day and asks for my complete timesheets for full month. 1hr to go for deadline. I had not written down what i have been doing all this month and had no idea how to fill timesheets. Rather than fill timesheets for Ctrl-C, V i decided i will fill what i had actually done.

Using TortoriseSVN i checked history for trunk and then filtered the logs using my user name and dates. After that i looked at the files i had checked in between those dates. I had added well formed comments during checkin. So noting modules in which files were checked-in and dates i was able to pin-point what exactly i had been doing on a particular date.

Well it wont work if you dont checkin any file on a day. One more simple way to maintain time logs personally is using a .txt and adding .LOG in first line. Opening txt file with Notepad or Textpad will add a timestamp of current opening time against which comments can be added like Completed module ABC.

WinPwn or Ziphone ?

Vivek — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:34:21 +0000

These days i am torn between my urge to use WinPwn or wait for next release of Ziphone from Zibri. I had used Ziphone 3.0 eariler to be applied on my 1.1.4 iphone. The process then was really a breeze and my phone was unlocked within 5 minutes. With the release of iphone 2.0 SDK apple has applied more control measures around the software. With help from keys published by Zibri, it seems that winpwn team has been successful in developing iphone 2.0 unlocking. This process as of today is not entirely bug free and 100% perfect. Winpwn team is also planning to push winpwn 2.5 in August, 08 which promises to be much simpler and bug free. Ask me i really want to use Ziphone’s next release and this time i am going to donate to him. His work has been exceptional and he must be given recogonition for the same.

Updated: I have subscribed to Ziphone Status and i check it at least once daily. I am paitiently waiting for Ziphone though i am excited to apply WinPwn. The only reason pushing me for WinPwn is the huge number of free apps available in Apple Store. WordPress Iphone App is one of those.

Update : I unlocked my 2G Iphone using QuickPwn. No issues till now.

lazy me

Vivek — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:13:57 +0000

this is the second time i am writing a post like this. I have away from wordpress for a long time and it was blog of one of my friend in wordpress which reminded that i have not done anything for last few months. I had almost forgotten my password. lot has changed; i have been away from home, missing India and been busy with work.

lazy me.

Elephants vs Mouse

Vivek — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:09:28 +0000

Mythbuster’s is a show aired on discovery in which 2 people try to find reality behind myths. Here they unravel mystery behind a famous one : Are elephants afraid of Mouse?

Funny Prank on Telemarketer

Vivek — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:10:21 +0000

While stumbling on web I came across this funny conversation which really put a sales guy on phone is same position when we get a call during a meeting or bad times in a day.

Wish we could do something like this in India

Say goodbye to TimerTask for scheduling – use Quartz instead.

Vivek — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:21:26 +0000

In most of the web applications there is always a requirement to schedule task which can be repeated on certain interval. For one of our projects, it was required to call a method every fifteen minutes to monitor a table. Initial implementation was done using TimerTask and was a success. Problems arose when we wanted to configure TimerTask in a clustered environment.

A TimerTask once started will create a new Thread of execution. For a clustered environment it would mean configuring different sleep values for all clusters and also the need to test them at least once. Also our implementation was becoming hard to understand for support team who would be responsible for maintaining our application.

Welcome Quartz – From Quartz Web page http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/

Quartz is a full-featured, open source job scheduling system that can be integrated with, or used along side virtually any J2EE or J2SE application – from the smallest stand-alone application to the largest e-commerce system. Quartz can be used to create simple or complex schedules for executing tens, hundreds, or even tens-of-thousands of jobs; jobs whose tasks are defined as standard Java components or EJBs.

Example for integrating Quartz in a J2EE Application

1. Download Quartz latest release as a zip format from http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/download.action. From the zip file use quartz-all-.jar which contains almost all the files which are required for Quartz to work.

2. Download Java Transaction API’s (JTA) from http://java.sun.com/products/jta/ which are required by Quartz. Select Class Files to download from the page. This release will be in form of .zip file which has class files inside it. You can extract and again package them as a .jar or leave them as it is.

3. Move Quartz jar and JTA download to WEB-INF/lib directory of your application.

4. Add following lines to your application web.xml to configure Quartz.


Quartz Initializer Servlet
QuartzInitializer

	org.quartz.ee.servlet.QuartzInitializerServlet


	shutdown-on-unload
	true


start-scheduler-on-load
true

1



Scheduler Servlet
SchedulerServlet
com.test.SchedulerServlet
2

In the lines above the first Servlet Element defines a new Servlet of typeorg.quartz.ee.servlet.QuartzInitializerServlet which would initialise Quartz at the time of application startup.

The second element defines a new Servlet which would be started as part of Application Init and it is the place from where we configure Quartz.

5. Here is the SchedulerServlet Implementation in which i am configuring a Cron Job. This Cron Job is similar to Unix Cron Job but the difference is that it is managed entirely in Java and does not depend on Unix Cron.

package com.test;

import javax.servlet.GenericServlet;
import javax.servlet.ServletConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

import org.quartz.CronExpression;
import org.quartz.CronTrigger;
import org.quartz.JobDetail;
import org.quartz.Scheduler;
import org.quartz.SchedulerFactory;
import org.quartz.impl.StdSchedulerFactory;

import com.test.Worker;

public class SchedulerServlet extends GenericServlet {

/**
* Constant to represent property for the cron expression.
*/
private static final String CRON_EXPRESSION = "0 0/15 * * * ?";

public void init(ServletConfig servletConfig) throws ServletException {

super.init(servletConfig);

// The Quartz Scheduler
Scheduler scheduler = null;

try {

// Initiate a Schedule Factory
SchedulerFactory schedulerFactory = new StdSchedulerFactory();
// Retrieve a scheduler from schedule factory
scheduler = schedulerFactory.getScheduler();
// Initiate JobDetail with job name, job group and
// executable job class
JobDetail jobDetail = new JobDetail("RetryJob",
"RetryGroup", Worker.class);
// Initiate CronTrigger with its name and group name
CronTrigger cronTrigger = new CronTrigger("cronTrigger",
"triggerGroup");
// setup CronExpression
CronExpression cexp = new CronExpression(CRON_EXPRESSION);
// Assign the CronExpression to CronTrigger
cronTrigger.setCronExpression(cexp);
// schedule a job with JobDetail and Trigger
scheduler.scheduleJob(jobDetail, cronTrigger);

// start the scheduler
scheduler.start();

} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

}

public void service(ServletRequest serveletRequest, ServletResponse servletResponse)
throws ServletException, IOException {

}

}

Code above creates a Cron Job which will call Worker ( which implements Job) and calls its execute method. There are numerous types of triggers which can be created and CronTrigger is just one example.6. Worker class which implements Job Interface

package com.test;

import org.quartz.Job;
import org.quartz.JobExecutionContext;
import org.quartz.JobExecutionException;

/**
* worker thread
*/
public class Worker implements Job {
public void execute(JobExecutionContext context)
throws JobExecutionException {
System.out.println("Put task to be executed here");
}

}

Simple isn’t it.

Process Tree in Linux

Vivek — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:15:15 +0000

I mostly use `ps -eaf` to get all programs running on Linux Box in my organization. Accidently i entered `ps -ea f` on console and was getting ready to retype but to my surprise i got a process tree which
was much better than normal `ps -eaf`.

Here is a small sample
1988 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd 3736 ? Ss 0:00 \_ sshd: tomcat [priv] 3738 ? S 0:00 \_ sshd: tomcat@pts/1 3739 pts/1 Ss 0:00 \_ -bash 3781 pts/1 Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_12//bin/java -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager - 3817 pts/1 R+ 0:00 \_ ps -ea f

Great weekend drive from Bangalore …. Nandi Hills

Vivek — Mon, 28 May 2007 05:00:55 +0000

This summer go and visit Nandi Hills. Nandi Hills is 53 km drive on Bangalore – Hyderabad Road. The weather is awesome there. Go there and stand among the clouds. I went there yesterday ( May 27 ) and it was a pleasure drive. Sun is mild and no rain. Highway is good with only 3 small diversions in between. I don’t have pictures to add now but when i get i will surely add. I have visited Nandi Hills a lot many times but this visit beats it all. The weather with mist in air feels great. One change i noticed this time was there were lot of people staying around who have taken to begging. As you are strolling they will come close and pester you until you get some money out of your pockets. Apart from that everything is pleasant. Do make a visit.

Busybee …….

Vivek — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:33:24 +0000

Oh I have been working for the whole of Jan and early Feb went to attend my Friend’s Marriage. Lot of things happened around int his time. My most devoted reader Pankaj called me one day and said update the blog. I ignored it simply for lack of enthusiasm at that stage when i was neck deep engrossed in work and looking at my 15″ screen 10 hrs a day. At the end of the day i simply felt like going home and relaxing. Did i forgot to mention somewhere that i blog from my Office PC !

The blogging scene in India is changing and lot of blogs to read from. Since i am based in Bangalore i am a daily reader of MetroBlogging Bangalore. Today i came across one of the Indian Bloggers getting on Digg Front Page - Some Unforgettable moment captured in a frame. Really inspiring. Making it to digg front page must be every bloggers dream. With my current level of text composition i know i still have a long time to go but probably i will also make it there some day.

One more thing visit http://darkgate.net/comicif you want to get comic strips via RSS.

Till next post bye !

Do post some comments or your blog links.

Travel around Bangalore

Vivek — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:12:44 +0000

For places to travel around Bangalore I am compiling a list of information on web.

Hindu Business Line Lists of Places around Bangalore

Fact or Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil

Vivek — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:05:28 +0000

The title says it all. Read more details here.

WordPress has JavaScript errors with IE7

Vivek — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:37:06 +0000

I have using Mozilla Firefox for a long time but due to some unforeseen circumstances ( read Mozilla now being used for tunnelling ) i had to switch loyalty to IE7. Now what i have installed is not a beta it is Full fledged release from Microsoft. The About Internet Explorer looks like

What i am experiencing is definitely a nightmare for a wordpress blogger. I have compiled a list of problems that i am facing and expecting MS or wordpress to do something about ( so demanding of me but i can’t help ). Listed below are the issues :

Using write from My Dashboard leads to javascript error on page load.
Click on Save while writing a post and it takes a long time to load and first display the HTML code and after a javascript error shows the text box.
I have lost 2 posts when i clicked on Publish instead of Save.
If you try to expand the text box in which posts are written maximum chances are that text box may not expand and it swhrinks to one line display.
Do a spell check, incorrect words are underlined. Clicking on any of the options for correct word does not correct the word.

Feel free to add more if you see any.