Abhijeet Rathod 's Blog

Team - Multiple Branches Management Strategy | Flexibility | Productivity

2018-09-17T18:13:00.001-07:00

Oops…! It's an era of Agile-Scrum-Sprint.

This is still okay but What about Monthly Releases and delivering various features using Jenkins as continuous integration (CI) tool?

Nowadays single team is working on different modules and various stories around them.

Working as a Technical Leader/Development Manager one may face difficulties in delivering various features in the same release.

This may be due to below considerable points:

All features and issues are getting fixed on a single branch.
Late identification of Technical Feasibility.
Third Party dependency (UI/UX/Core Team).
DEV/QA Team runtime bandwidth.
Last moment urgent Production Bugs.

As a general practice and to avoid branch management, traditional teams have only one branch per release.

Changes done in that branch are targeting:

New Feature/Story
Bug Fixes
Performance Fixes.

If any of the story/performance fixes can cause a delay that will lead to impacting timelines for other stories.

This has to consider the overall effort to put in the last moment to roll back those changes.
Again this leads to compromising the quality of the deliverable.
Dev team gets less time to analyze the impact-areas.
QA Team will get less time to verify the changes done.
Marginally less/no time for regression.
*Most importantly Handling pressure from upper management and criticism.

Below diagram gives pictorial representation of Teams' changes in Single Branch:

Let's try to analyze the scenario – Time for WH Questions!

· What Team is doing?

o Creating a Single branch from the Production/Stable branch for a release.

o Making changes for Bug fixes, Performance issue fixes, and Story Development in a Single Branch.

· Why Team is doing changes in the Single Branch?

o Avoid extra branch management.

o Availability of QA Environments.

o Avoid Migration/Regression efforts on every branch.

· How is it impacting?

o Anything gets delayed entire feature suit is getting delayed for a release.

o Timelines are getting missed.

o Last moment extra efforts without deeper analysis.

o Compromising Quality of deliverables due to lesser Testing Time.

It's time to change the way changes are getting pushed in Single Branch and come up with multiple branching strategies.

Let's summarize what needs to be achieved & HOW?

Need to have Feature-Shelf so that based on decision any time any Merge-Ready Feature can be released in production with good quality.
Want to have no pressure from management for technical items.

· No impact of any Story development/release plan decision on other Story.

o How? à Separate Branch for each Story and Performance Fixes.

· Every Story branch should have the latest issues fixed in this release.

o How? à Separate Branch for Bug Fixes name it : team_fixes.

§ Create Story Branch from team_fixes branch and keep merging on regular basis.

· Where to push a fix for Story Defects?

o Every fix for Story Defect must be pushed in the respective team_story_x branch only.

· Single Environment for QA to validate all these changes.

o How? à Create team_story branch where all story (team_fixes, team_story_1…. team_story_N) and performance(team_perf) branches are merged on daily basis if those are stable. J

o Migration and Regression will be done on single environment. (Same Target as using Single Branch Previously)

· Jenkins/CI:

o Run Compile & Test Execution job on individual branch.

o If Selenium tests written have single Job for team_story branch.

Please refer below diagram for suggested Branching Strategy.

Please feel free to comment to this article for any suggestion and queries.

Team - On Track Concept Using JIRA and Confluence

2018-09-17T16:32:00.001-07:00

If you are using JIRA and used its Search Feature to look for particular issue or list of issues, it's very cumbersome to do that every time.

One may find lots of Drop-downs for various fields for creating JIRA Filter Criteria using BASIC Query.

To do advance querying, one may require Knowledge about JQL – JIRA Query Language and fields used in JIRA.

Considering overall efforts to look-up and get stats every time one can store such queries as a JIRA Filter.

For a Scrum Master or Development Manager keeping track of various Features, Story-defects and Product issues is not an easy task for every day.

One have to think, Dev Manager generally takes care of multiple modules and different teams.

To do this task more productively, we can use Confluence along with JIRA to have customize Dashboard.

This article will help to know more about what your daily-dynamic Dashboard should have and how to prepare the one using Confluence-JIRA-Filters.

As I have pure technical background and love to follow coding principles, I am trying to avoid repeating the items each time and each place.

Before we dive into knowing what are the things to be done for Tracking the Team Stats, we should be knowing which items we should look for.

On day-to-day basis, every team generally works on Sprint tasks, so it may be Stories, Story Defects, Bugs, Testing or Miscellaneous Items.

All these things can be tracked in JIRA against different issue types by creating tasks and sub-tasks for EPIC, Story, Story Defect, Bug, Sub-Tasks, etc.

There is a good article about Agile-Sprint Planning, refer this link:requirements-epic-feature-user-story-task-size-and-estimation-in-agile-and-scrum.

Considering all the things are followed and are available in JIRA, now we have below items with us to track:

· Product Backlog/Roadmap.

· Bugs/Issues in released Product.

· Current Sprint:

o Stories, Defects, Sub-Tasks, Testing, Bugs etc.

· Miscellaneous:

o Quality Stats.

o Performance stats.

I want to limit this article about Which things to be tracked in a Sprint using JIRA.

This who knows about JIRA Issue creation and its workflow usage, can move to next part of this article.

Please refer below diagram about creation of different issues and using JIRA attributes.

Every JIRA tasks has workflow associated with it. It is good to have information about respective workflow statuses.

Please refer below for EPIC/Story and can be customized based on your organizational strategy.

STS : Spring Roo Project Creation Gives Error mojo codehaus

2017-05-25T20:13:00.001-07:00

Those who started working with Spring-Roo for faster development but facing difficult to set up STS Spring Roo Project Environment.

It may turn to roadblock if below problems cannot be resolved:

Code is not compilable.
Maven Dependencies are not shown in project configurations.

This is having 3 fixes & you can start your development:

Update POM file for correct aspect version : 1.9 for JDK 1.8 onwards

<aspectj.plugin.version>1.9</aspectj.plugin.version>

Configure correct location for maven settings.xml

By default it will search in %USER_PROFILE%\.me\settings.xml
So set to MVN 3.5+ : %MAVEN_HOME%\conf\settings.xml

Maven Profile must be "development"

Follow Below instructions for Maven profile update:

accepted

You can activate the maven profile at the Eclipse by using the following step: -

Right click at your project and select properties .
At the Properties windows select Maven.
At the right hand panel you will see Active Maven Profiles text box.
Please enter your profile name, e.g. development or production.

----
Thanks & Regards,
Abhijeet

[Performance] java Map.containsKey() redundant when using map.get()

2017-03-06T22:17:00.001-08:00

In most of our code, we generally use HashMap.

Most of the operation we do:

· Prepare HashMap to process.

· Process the HashMap.

· Retrieve data from Map.

Following use-case needs to be avoided:

Most of the time to avoid NPE (NullPointerException) code is getting handled in below way:

dataMap.contains(key) ? dataMap.get(key) : someObject;

Avoid using above as it may impact performance because both below APIs do same operation:

· containsKey()

· get(key)

SO optimized code for avoiding redundant Map processing:

Object mappedValue = dataMap.get(key); // fetch only once

(mappedValue == null) ? someObject: mappedValue;

This is definitely useful for dealing bigger DataSet.

Also don't forget to use collection.clear(); if data is no more required.

III

Best Regards,

Abhjeet.

JavaScript - Why to use "var that = this;"

2016-11-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

Now a days most of JavaScript files are following Object Oriented Approach.

In simple words, it means it is possible to call super methods using child classes.

So not to lose a reference of function which is calling other one, that is smartly getting used.

Below are good examples explaining about that to refer this:

Keep sharing….!

III

Best Regards,

Abhijeet Rathod.

------------------------------

When 'I' is replaced by 'We',

Even illness becomes wellness.

------------------------------

WebLogic 10.3.x Error : NoSuchMethodError for javax.persistence.spi.PersistenceUnitInfo.getSharedCacheMode()Ljavax/persistence/SharedCacheMode

2016-05-10T03:36:00.001-07:00

As of now mostly trend is using newer frameworks or migrating from older framework to newer one.

One of the classic situation we started facing with Application Deployment once we have done migration.

Technology Stack we are using in our Applications is as below:

·         Java 7
·         JPA 2.0
·         Spring 3.0
·         Hibernate 3.0
·         EJB 3.0
·         Oracle 11g

While deploying we are getting below exception:

Caused By: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: javax.persistence.spi.PersistenceUnitInfo.getSharedCacheMode()Ljavax/persistence/SharedCacheMode;
at org.hibernate.ejb.util.LogHelper.logPersistenceUnitInfo(LogHelper.java:39)
at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.configure(Ejb3Configuration.java:516)
at org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(HibernatePersistence.java:73)
at weblogic.deployment.PersistenceUnitInfoImpl.createEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceUnitInfoImpl.java:352)
at weblogic.deployment.PersistenceUnitInfoImpl.createEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceUnitInfoImpl.java:332)

In development environment we are using below for deployment:

· WebLogic 12
· Oracle 11g

So what is cause for this?

· Pre-Production and Production environment having:

o WebLogic 10.3.5

o Oracle 11g

As database point of view there is no issue.

So it's mostly application server compatibility issue.

JPA Jars which WebLogic 10.3.5 is having are of different versions than application requires.

So as to resolve this issues, following are 2 possible solutions:

· Application Level Changes:

o Adding ANTLR specific changes to be done in weblogic-application.xml file located under META-INF.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<weblogic-application xmlns="http://www.oracle.com/technology/weblogic/wls_10.3.2.0.html" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<prefer-application-packages>

<package-name>antlr.*</package-name>

</prefer-application-packages>

</weblogic-application>

o Adding JPA specific JARs to application WAR/EAR only.

§ Hibernate-jpa-api.jar

§ Weblogic-fullclient.jar

· WebLogic Level – Configuration changes:

III Best Regards,

III Abhijeet.

Keyboard Shorcuts (Microsoft Windows)

2013-09-22T22:20:00.001-07:00

1. CTRL+C (Copy)
2. CTRL+X (Cut)
3. CTRL+V (Paste)
4. CTRL+Z (Undo)
5. DELETE (Delete)
6. SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
7. CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
8. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
9. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
10. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
11. CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
12. CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
13. CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
14. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text) SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
15. CTRL+A (Select all)
16. F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
17. ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
18. ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
19. ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
20. ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
21. CTRL+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents opensimultaneou sly)
22. ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
23. ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
24. F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
25. F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
26. SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item) 27. ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
28. CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
29. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu) Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
30. F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
31. RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
32. LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
33. F5 key (Update the active window)
34. BACKSPACE (View the folder onelevel up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
35. ESC (Cancel the current task)
36. SHIFT when you insert a CD- ROMinto the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)

Dialog Box - Keyboard Shortcuts

1. CTRL+TAB (Move forward through the tabs)
2. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the tabs)
3. TAB (Move forward through the options)
4. SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the options)
5. ALT+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command or select the corresponding option)
6. ENTER (Perform the command for the active option or button)
7. SPACEBAR (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box)
8. Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons)
9. F1 key (Display Help)
10. F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
11. BACKSPACE (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box)

Microsoft Natural Keyboard Shortcuts
1. Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
2. Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
3. Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
4. Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
5. Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restorethe minimized windows)
6. Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
7. Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
8. CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
9. Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
10. Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
11. Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
12. Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)
13. Accessibility Keyboard Shortcuts
14. Right SHIFT for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys either on or off)
15. Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN (Switch High Contrast either on or off)
16. Left ALT+left SHIFT+NUM LOCK (Switch the MouseKeys either on or off)
17. SHIFT five times (Switch the StickyKeys either on or off)
18. NUM LOCK for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off)
19. Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)
20. Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
21. END (Display the bottom of the active window)
22. HOME (Display the top of the active window)
23. NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder)
24. NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)

MMC COnsole Windows Shortcut keys
1. SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
2. F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
3. F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
4. CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
5. CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
6. ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for theselected item)
7. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
8. CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)

Remote Desktop Connection Navigation
1. CTRL+ALT+END (Open the Microsoft Windows NT Security dialog box)
2. ALT+PAGE UP (Switch between programs from left to right)
3. ALT+PAGE DOWN (Switch between programs from right to left) 4. ALT+INSERT (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
5. ALT+HOME (Display the Start menu)
6. CTRL+ALT+BREAK (Switch the client computer between a window and a full screen)
7. ALT+DELETE (Display the Windows menu)
8. CTRL+ALT+Minus sign (-) (Place a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
9. CTRL+ALT+Plus sign (+) (Place asnapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboardand provide the same functionality aspressing ALT+PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)

Microsoft Internet Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favorites dialog box)
2. CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
3. CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
4. CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
5. CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
6. CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
7. CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web address)
8. CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box,the same as CTRL+L)
9. CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
10. CTRL+R (Update the current Web )

Injectable Singleton - APIDesign

2013-09-12T00:07:00.003-07:00

Using Service Loader along with Singleton Design is really not possible.
Because Service Loader always going to return new object after loading.

To overcome this following is the useful approach to design such requirement.

This is about looking for :

Always getting Single Object
Using Service Loader

Refer:
Injectable Singleton - APIDesign

Using VIRTUAL Column in JPA Entity

2013-06-26T04:28:00.001-07:00

While working with Java Persistence using ORM Layer, new feature from Oralce 11g can be useful.
E.g. Virtual Column.

Whenever want to use Virtual Column in JPA Entity, it should follow:

Field should not be Updatable.
Field should not be populated while creating the entity.

For such scenario, one has to use below annotation on field:

@Column(insertable=false, updatable=false)

Below is Detailed Example JPA Entity with Virtual Column usage:

Virtual Column Should be added like:

alter table cosnumers add(

IS_ADMIN GENERATED ALWAYS AS ( CASE WHEN CONSUMER_ID IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)

);

JPA Entity Should define field for Virtual Column as shown below:

Package com.acp.jpa;

import javax.persistence.Column;

import javax.persistence.Entity;

@Entity

public class Consumer {

private Long consumerID;

@Column(insertable=false, updatable=false)

private boolean isAdmin;

/**

* @return the consumerID

public Long getConsumerID() {

return consumerID;

}

/**

* @param consumerID the consumerID to set

public void setConsumerID(Long consumerID) {

this.consumerID = consumerID;

}

//--- For Virtual Column - Provide only Getters.

/**

* @return the isAdmin

public boolean isAdmin() {

return isAdmin;

}

III Cheers!

Using Oracle SQL Developer as MySQL IDE

2013-06-20T00:19:00.001-07:00

Need to follow below steps:

- Download desired MySQL connector, unzip and place to desired directory.

- From SQLDeveloper -> Tools -> Preferences -> Databases -> Third party JDBC driver.

"Add Entry" for desired MySQL connector.

That's It!!!

Now you can observe MySQL tab in the DB Connections SQLDeveloper window.

References:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development/configuring-sql-developer-for-mysql/564

Cheers!

Eclipse Performance Enhancement!

2013-06-13T05:22:00.001-07:00

Hi,

Most of the time we suffer from Eclipse responsiveness or performance.

Below is the link for changing Eclipse Memory settings in "eclipse.ini" file:

https://gist.github.com/justingarrick/2588828

Notepad++ : Another good tool discovered for developers

2013-03-19T23:44:00.001-07:00

This is very handy tool having rich file types support and syntax highlighting.

I found it quite handy if you are dealing with any Character Encoding related issues or

Need to verify or view various characters like TAB, Carriage Return(CR), Line Feed(LF) or New Line Characters.

It also supports very reach support for Character Encoding.

Listed below the features from its official website:

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4
PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace
GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list
Document Map
Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and Function parameters hint
Multi-Document (Tab interface)
Multi-View
WYSIWYG (Printing)
Zoom in and zoom out
Multi-Language environment supported
Bookmark
Macro recording and playback
Launch with different arguments

You can DOWNLOAD this from below link:

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.3.1.html

Using style.display instead of style.visibility

2013-03-17T23:46:00.001-07:00

Hello,

HTML-CSS-JavaScript combination is little bit tricky to non-web developers.

There are few UIs which seems to be inconsistent as we are using JavaScript to enable/disable the HTML Components.

And it takes time to find out and align all the forms.

If you are using any JavaScript and CSS combination to hide/show any components, below information may save your time.

To maintain proper alignment of whole HTML and its elements, please use following:

Element Property	Value
style.display	'none' (To hide element)
style.display	'' (Empty string to show element)

Please try to avoid using style.display='block' and style.visibility='hidden'/'visible'/'inline' as it is affecting the CSS applied.

---

Cheers and Enjoy Scripting!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alphabet 'O' stands for Opportunity,

Which is absent in 'Yesterday', Is available once in 'Today'

And thrice in 'Tomorrow' So don't think about 'Yesterday'.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Differentiate : ClassNotFoundException & NoClassDefFoundError

2012-02-18T12:20:00.001-08:00

It is important to keep two different exceptions strait in our head in this case:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException This exception indicates that the class was not found on the classpath. This indicates that we were trying to load the class definition, and the class did not exist on the classpath.
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError This exception indicates that the JVM looked in its internal class definition data structure for the definition of a class and did not find it. This is different than saying that it could not be loaded from the classpath. Usually this indicates that we previously attempted to load a class from the classpath, but it failed for some reason - now we're trying again, but we're not even going to try to load it, because we failed loading it earlier. The earlier failure could be a ClassNotFoundException or an ExceptionInInitializerError (indicating a failure in the static initialization block) or any number of other problems. The point is, a NoClassDefFoundError is not necessarily a classpath problem.

Cheers!

OUTLOOK Shortcuts

2011-12-19T04:44:00.001-08:00

Some useful OUTLOOK shortcuts:

Alt + . (period) Open the Address Book with the To field selected
Alt + A Open the Action drop-down menu
Alt + B Open the Address Book with the BCC field selected
Alt + C Select message recipients for CC field
Alt + D Switch to Daily calendar view
Alt + E Open the Edit drop-down menu
Alt + F Open the File drop-down menu
Alt + G Open the Go drop-down menu
Alt + H Open the Help drop-down menu
Alt + I Open the Find tool bar / Open the Insert drop-down menu
Alt + J Move to the Subject field
Alt + K Check names in the To, CC, or BCC field against the Address Book (cursor must be in the corresponding message header field)
Alt + L Reply All
Alt + M Switch to Monthly calendar view
Alt + N Open the Accounts drop-down menu
Alt + O Open the Format drop-down menu / Switch to Today calendar view
Alt + P Open the Message Options dialog box
Alt + R Reply / Switch to Work Week Calendar view
Alt + S Send
Alt + T Open the Tools drop-down menu
Alt + V Open the View drop-down menu
Alt + W Forward an item / Switch to Weekly calendar view
Alt + Y Switch to Daily calendar view
Ctrl + 1 Go to Mail
Ctrl + 2 Go to Calendar
Ctrl + 3 Go to Contacts
Ctrl + 4 Go to Tasks
Ctrl + 5 Go to Notes
Ctrl + 6 Go to Folder List
Ctrl + 7 Go to Shortcuts
Ctrl + 8 Go to Journal
Ctrl + A Select all
Ctrl + B Bold when editing a rich text message
Ctrl + C Copy
Ctrl + D Delete an item (message, task, contact, etc.)
Ctrl + E Activate the Find drop-down menu / Center Align when editing a rich text message
Ctrl + F Forward
Ctrl + J Open a new Journal Entry from the selected item (message, task, contact, etc.)
Ctrl + K Check names in the To, CC, or BCC field against the Address Book (cursor must be in the corresponding message header field)
Ctrl + M Send/Receive all
Ctrl + O Open
Ctrl + P Print
Ctrl + Q Mark the selected message Read
Ctrl + R Reply
Ctrl + S Save a draft message
Ctrl + T Tab
Ctrl + U Mark the selected message Unread
Ctrl + V Paste
Ctrl + X Cut
Ctrl + Y Go to Folder
Ctrl + Z Undo
Ctrl + Backspace Delete the previous word
Ctrl + End Move to the end
Ctrl + Home Move to the beginning
Ctrl + Shift + A Open a new Appointment
Ctrl + Shift + B Open the Address Book
Ctrl + Shift + C Create a new Contact
Ctrl + Shift + E Open a new folder
Ctrl + Shift + F Open the Advanced Find window
Ctrl + Shift + G Flag message for follow up
Ctrl + Shift + J Open a new Journal Entry
Ctrl + Shift + K Open a new Task
Ctrl + Shift + L Open a new Distribution List
Ctrl + Shift + M Open a new Message
Ctrl + Shift + N Open a new Note
Ctrl + Shift + O Switch to the Outbox
Ctrl + Shift + P Open the New Search Folder window
Ctrl + Shift + Q Open a new Meeting Request
Ctrl + Shift + R Reply All
Ctrl + Shift + S Open a new Discussion
Ctrl + Shift + U Open a new Task Request
Ctrl + Shift + Y Copy a Folder
Shift + Tab Select the previous message header button or field
F1 Open Outlook Help
F3 Activate the Find toolbar
F4 Open the Find window
F7 Spellcheck
F9 Send and receive all
F10 Select File from the Outlook toolbar button
F11 Activate the "Find a contact" dialog box
F12 Save As
Alt + F4 Close the active window

Dropping all DB tables, views, indexes, sequences in one query.

2011-09-14T23:13:00.001-07:00

Most of the time one faces the issues like one need to delete all the tables, views, indexes or sequences in the database.
So following the query which generates DROP statements for all the components present in the Oracle database:

SELECT 'DROP TABLE ' || table_name || ';' AS statement FROM user_tables
Union
SELECT 'DROP VIEW ' || view_name || ';' AS statement from user_views
Union
SELECT 'DROP INDEX ' || index_name || ';' AS statement from user_indexes
Union
SELECT 'DROP SEQUENCE ' || sequence_name || ';' AS statement from user_sequences
Union
SELECT 'DROP SYNONYM ' || SYNONYM_name || ';' AS statement from user_SYNONYMs;

Cheers :)

Productivity Tool - PowerPro

2011-04-14T22:22:00.001-07:00

The PowerPro software provides the user with a launch bar that is both compact and powerful. It also includes a menu and tray icon functionality. The program integrates three functionalities. It can run commands such as tool bars, tray icons, scheduler, menus, timer, mouse and hot keys. The PowerPro software can also be used by the user to close, maximize, minimize, position, roll-up to caption and tray minimize other program's windows. The program also provides utility functions. It can send keystrokes to programs, provide virtual desktops, run commands when Windows first opens, serve as a clipboard extender, can shutdown, enable keyboard macros, show all folder files in a menu, enable sounds, wallpaper and screensaver activation as well as randomization.

In practical scenarios, software professionals can use this to :

·         Add List of putties to connect to various servers and get rid of typing username password each time.
Command is as follows:
putty.exe -ssh <UserName>@<ServerIP> -pw <Password>
·         Create shortcuts to various software.
·         Create shortcuts to documentation page(so no need to open browser and then search for bookmark if done).

You can more explore about this software using following link:

· Home Page: http://powerpro.webeddie.com/index.html
· Feature & Configuration Demo: http://powerpro.webeddie.com/tour/index.htm

So after exploring this, you can save time and concentrate on other work :)

Cheers!!!

Keynote NF : Handy and productive tool to manage notes.

2011-02-02T21:31:00.003-08:00

I would like to let you know about a good lightweight tool : Keynote NF

As we use notepad to save various important notes or mark some to-dos.

Due to this desktop gets messy and its trouble to find things which we have written for our simplicity :)

Using keynote one can save the important notes or any under process notes in single file.

It is having various features, I have found few of it while its usage:

Simple to use and Lightweight – When not in use keeps running in background.
Freeware – No licenses.
Supports Rich Text and various feature like MS Word.
Alarm / Reminders.
Tree based to arrangements of notes and multiple tabs.
Good search capabilities.
No need to install – Unzip and start using it.

You can explore it more and I am sure you may find it handy as compared to using notepad.

Here are details about Keynote NF:

http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/

Keynote NF Downloads (No need to install – Unzip and Use it):

Release_1.7.8.1 (true version).rar – Size 1.76 MB

Cheers!

Use Productivity Tool : StrokeIt !!!

2010-12-21T04:03:00.001-08:00

While working on various windows tired of minimizing, opening, doing various operations.
Now time to move on to StrokeIt - Mouse Gestures for Windows. : http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

Want to download StrokeIt, use the following link:
http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/downloads.shtml

It is also FUN to use this tool using your mouse :)

To get more information about how to use and other details, check out following link:
http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/wiki/index.php?title=Help:Getting_started

Replacing carriage-returns & line-feeds from a string/column in Oracle/Database.

2010-11-12T01:51:00.001-08:00

To replace the carriage-returns & line-feeds from a string in Oracle or database, replace() does not work properly.

There is a special handling required to replace new line or carriage-returns.

If the data in your database is POSTED from HTML form TextArea controls, different browsers use different New Line characters:

Firefox separates lines with CHR(10) only
Internet Explorer separates lines with CHR(13) + CHR(10)
Apple (pre-OSX) separates lines with CHR(13) only

So you may need something like:

update table_name set col_name = replace(replace(col_name, CHR(13), ''), CHR(10), '') ;

- Cheers!!!

message from server: "Host is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server"

2010-11-11T01:46:00.001-08:00

Today I came across the problem for remotely connecting to MYSQL database from an application hosted on different machine.

Solution for this issue is to run the following query for granting privileges to desired user:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '<USER_NAME>'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '<PASSWORD>' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Enjoy!!!

Productive Eclipse Plug-Ins : Easy Explorer !!!

2010-05-04T04:01:00.001-07:00

Easy Explorer is a very useful plug in, which helps you to browse resources with the native Operating system explorer.
In the Eclipse, select a file, right-mouse click, and select the 'Easy Explore'.
This way explorer will be opened and you desired file will be highlighted.

Direct Download link for this file : Easy Explorer for Eclipse(easy-explore-1.0.4)

Likewise there is also another plug-in : StartExplorer
StartExplorer is also having lots of options, but I feel Easy Explorer is more friendly as it can be used in the tree browser as well as in editor as well.

How to call my own JavaScript functions on onLoad or onUnLoad event???

2009-07-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

While working on the JSP or HTML pages, we are having some requirement to call our own JavaScript functions after execution of existing onLoad functions.

Also most of the time scenario is like - we are including different files & loading JavaScript files(may be 3^rd party). Due to this we are not able to know JavaScript function is getting called on the onLoad or onUnload event for the browser window.

And QUESTION arises : “How to call our own JavaScript functions on onLoad or onUnLoad event?”

Here is the ANSWER for that:

Just add the following JavaScript functions to your own file(JSP/ASP/PHP/JS).

1. addLoadEvent() : This function will append call of your function to existing queue for onLoad event of browser window.

2. addUnLoadEvent() : This function will append call of your function to existing queue for onUnload event of browser window.

function addLoadEvent(func) {

var oldonload = window.onload;

if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {

window.onload = func;

} else {

window.onload = function() {

if (oldonload) {

oldonload();

}

func();

}

function addUnLoadEvent(func){

var oldOnUnLoad = window.onbeforeunload;

if (typeof window.onbeforeunload != 'function') {

window.onbeforeunload = func;

} else {

window.onbeforeunload = function() {

if (oldOnUnLoad) {

oldOnUnLoad();

}

func();

}

How to call these functions:

In your files make a call to these functions as –

addLoadEvent(function(){

alert(‘Calling myFunction...’);

myFunction();

alert(‘ Hurray, myFunction gets called!’);

});

addOnLoadEvent(function(){

alert(‘Calling myFunction...’);

myFunction();

alert(‘ Hurray, myFunction gets called!’);

});

You can copy & paste these functions to your files & use in the similar way.

Also you can modify the logic of function gets called.

Java IDE selection :)

2008-05-08T05:12:00.000-07:00

This article contains mostly the links of articles which are about the IDE selection & comparison of their features.

Java developers are generally used to with the IDEs : Eclipse, NetBeans, Intellij IDEA.

Most of the developers use Eclipse & Jetbrains' Intellij IDEA.

So lets view the following link to compare those.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ecidea/?ca=dgr-lnxw06IDEA2Eclipse

http://trusoftware.blogspot.com/2006/11/eclipse-vs-intellij-idea.html

http://www.javafaq.nu/java-article1009.html

http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GRAILS/IDEA+Integration

http://memo.feedlr.com/?p=4

http://librenix.com/?inode=5533

http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2006/11/eclipse-vs-intellij/

http://blog.tremend.ro/2006/08/10/intellij-idea-versus-eclipse-part-i/

New version resin 3.1.3 pro is more stricter reagarding JSP/Servlet specification

2008-03-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

I came to know about this while upgrading the resin server.
Resin is stricter regarding the specification of JSP & servlet as compared to other web-containers like Tomcat.
Most of the JSP pages were created using the custom tags, so those were throwing exceptions.
Resin is strict about the valid return values in Class file of Tags and the value which we mention in JSP.