Talk to me on Technology

"ERP - Ruby On Rails Build It to Believe It"

2011-09-18T13:27:00.000+05:30

ERP with Ruby On Rails

ERP which means Enterprise Resource Planning is a heavy advantage of computational power. Enterprise level resources & their appropriate planning is the first goal of any ERP system. The most amazing thing about any system, is its just not one piece of software bundle to directly integrate with any other system. ERP means a large package of mutiple softwares each responsible of achieving its core capabilities and also ensuring the out come is safely & securely passes to other bridging system. The power of enterprise collaboration lies specifically in systems like ERP/MRP/MRPII Etc. Lets first understand what is a common behavior of ERP like systems.

They can consist of following modules

1. Resourcing - commonly understood as Human Resource or People Management

2. Attendance/Payroll/Leaves/Deputation/Appraisal/Primary/Secondary Information

3. Finance

4. MIS(Management Information System) or High Level Decision Making system

5. Recruitment System

6. Procurement System

7. Sales Modules

This list can go on and one depending upon the operational and functional areas in your organization. But the scenario is again different when you assist a manufacturing kind of process oriented system because majorly an Manufacturing or assembly/Demand & Supply system will work based on external demands and internal supplies. So their is a lot of information on WIKI how these system typically operate; while this is not the mantra for this discussion I am trying to explain how we can build such systems using Ruby On Rails.

Rails has been the latest cutting edge technology in the market, since twitter added scala and ruby was again in mainstream. So now their are less people complaining about the slowness and less optimizing factor of ruby on rails. Likewise I can list some typical features that will help us understand how this technology can be very well used to build a ERP like minded system.

1. Security

Security is the major concern when we try building such complex web based systems, so rails 3 has all major support related to security I guess with rails 3 you can also afford to build a banking website. so MD5/SHA1/Kerberos everything is possible; Top of this Rails 3 also addresses a major bundle of client server model based concerns like cookie hacking/session hijacking/CSRF cross site request forgery/javascript injection/SQL injection Etc. So you can pretty much make sure all your transactions are SSL based and highly secured. this also has password and sensitive data filtering which allows encryption is texts like passwords inside log files.

2. Interchange & Data Exchange

Ruby On Rails primitively supports REST based URL's which means all your resources are suddenly acting as restful resources. so the best way is to modular the code and allow people to access based on request their required resources. so data interchange is feasible and secondly all controller methods can expose your data or objects in XML/JSON formats which means data interchange is really inbuilt. The time that it takes to convert a rails object into XML is like 10 seconds - 1 minute, which means no technology in world can primitively achieve this. So data interchange and security on restful is also solved in Rails 3.

3. Beautiful Look and Dynamic Updating Information

Majorly ERP's or any other real time systems needs a good support like PUSH systems. If I post a tweet on twitter and my followers can only see when they refresh the page, which means its not real time. So twitter would had been never so dramatic in terms of WEB2.0, so they used the PUSH server approach which means I will get any post as soon as my following posts it. for this in Rails 3 their is unobtrusive JavaScript so you can use JQuery, Prototype or any other JavaScript styling engine(DOJO/YUI/Ext.js/Closures/Node.JS) to beautify you page. and on the other hand rails 3 has observing models scheme where the model callback pushes the data whenever its created. this is an amazing part in terms of rails 3.

Other than this, their are around 100 such reasons, which if required I can asnwer through comments, you can say this could a very devilish way to increase comments on my post. Buts friends and fellow readers believe me I bet rails is a elixir or Mirage which can solve many complex problems only if we are able to make necessary adjustments and tweaks in real time in sense to make sure, that we identify the cause of problem.

Yours Sincerely

Raghavendra Shet

ROR Programmer since 2005

Thanks & Regards

Raghavendra Shet

http://raghubetter.blogspot.com/

Technical Blogging a Science or Philosophy

2011-08-23T22:29:00.001+05:30

http://programmingzen.com/2011/08/23/an-update-on-my-technical-blogging-book/

First of all, i would like to dedicate my views to my friend, guide Antonio Cangiano. He is writing a very inspiring and purpose of help to all the dedicated and really interested people out in community, who want to become Good Technical Writers; and I can assure you friends this is surely going to work. This book is a must read for most of us and including me, as I am eagerly waiting for it to be launched. this adds a lots of value, I do not write too many or even few technical blogs, whatever I write is more a sense of theory and explanations. which means all gyan and talk kind of stuff.

Although I have good readers around in society may be people still like reading good things and motivational ideas. Well I believe writing technical blogs is a science in true sense because when you want to explain something important and more interestingly when its more a practical experience than it needs a valid procedure to explain each of it. you cannot just jump to conclusions and end up declaring some un connected links in the flow. so here I believe its a science and complete essence of this science lies in understanding the provisional aspects.

Philosophy? Should i say its a philosophy then yes, its a philosophy because here you cannot restrict the intention of interaction. so when one explains the idea of a purpose of technical procedure, then the process must be bonded in simple statements and clear thoughts because the readers must have a straight process to re produce the same output again.

So readers Please go and buy this new book and be better technical writers in the society, because we practically need very good technical writers as I can surely see that there is too much talent in this society and no one takes efforts to recite the same to global audience.

Best of luck to :- Antonio Cangiano

Google + || Facebook

2011-07-13T21:54:00.000+05:30

I am sure you must have read a lot of content on similar lines. But what seems more important is why are we trying to differentiate among social networks. Facebook predominantly held this position and possibly will always be holding it. But ideally the latest craze is anything that looks new makes end users feel nice. This is what something which has happened with Google+; If we take ourselves to some years in past we would remember that Google is trying to penetrate in Social market since they launched there desktop client "Google talk". Although severely after that they came with many such ideas Orkut / Wave / Buzz / +.

images are property of appropriate content owner

So if we practically understand & see their are many features that Facebook offers to make end users keep touching the site which currently not Google is able to provide. The most important fact is Google is doing great business in many different domains and sectors leaving apart the failures that they had in Social Domain.

In the same business domain fights a native player who has doing good enough is Linkedin. This website has been favorite for n number of reasons. And has always satisfied the way people tend to get around with it.

I am a follower of technology so I respect and try all the best & quality products that really appreciate end users want us to play with these toys. So I will bring you some similar interesting aspects in technology now and then.

Something about Google Wave

2009-11-13T16:13:00.000+05:30

Q1. What is Google wave?

Ans: - Google wave is a new technology playground by Google where you can do everything just like you do on Orkut, Gmail or any social networking website.

Q2. Why is it called wave?

Ans: - Wave is basically a frequency termed, as Google believes that users can do something with content they post, like you post something on BlogSpot, and you get comments but when you intend to create a blog with more than one user, and then maybe you need to allow multiple people to edit the same blog to add their suggestions, so just to make sure one wave can be edited and posted by multiple people you can share your content with fellow users who will add their suggestions or postings.

Q3. How do I create a wave?

Ans :- Creating a wave is simple just click on the new wave link and a new page opens in editable format, you can start writing anything you interest to write, and add users to view or make changes to that wave.

Q4. What does it means replaying a wave, what is the reply button doing?

Ans :- Replay a way means showing all the states of wave, for example person A creates a wave with content “can we come to office at 9:30 tomorrow ?”, then this wave which is basically a question is shared among may be 5 people, now the first person answers the wave by replying it as “Yes I am ready to come” and consecutively the other four people do the same thing, now when the user who is viewing the wave clicks on replay or next & previous buttons all the entries are ordered in chronological order of their posting and you can go through an whole flow, that how this wave has come to an end.

Q5. I still don’t understand the replay & next, previous options?

Ans: - OK, let’s do it with simple example like this

I want to explain a power point presentation for making tea so here are the points I can sue by wave

1. Go to kitchen

2. Take a bowl of water

3. Turn on the burner

4. Put the bowl on the burner

5. Add 3 spoons of sugar

6. Add 2 spoons of tea powder

7. When the water starts boiling with all ingredients in it

8. Add milk to the bowl

9. Tea is ready to be served.

If I replay this wave I will get one step at a time, and this will work as a power point slide.

Q6. How do I stop following a wave?

Ans: - by clicking unfollow you can be marked out of that wave.

Q7. How do I archive a wave?

Ans: - By clicking the archive button you can move the wave to particular folder, or archive it from inbox.

Some general information about wave, by clicking the request, link you can see all requests you have received from other wave users. Also the left panel has settings where you can add various add-ons.

Wave can be used to manage events, polling, ask questions, reply as comments, get help with respective people, although you cannot directly log on to wave with your Google account, wave users can invite up to 20 users they like.

I believe that this information must be helpful to people finding it hard to understand wave, any suggestions and comments are always welcome J

The Art of Presentation

2009-11-10T20:50:00.000+05:30

I believe its an Art of marketing yourself, through you is called presentation skills.

I recently had a chance to entitle myself for one of presentation skills enhancement training, and to my surprise the outcome was awesome.
Although possibly its just because my trainer was an expert guy with nearly five years of experience in brushing IT heads to the limit.
I saw a variety of people there, some were good tech geeks but they really lacked the art of presentation. I am highly impressed with the way he helped us overcome the notational fear of standing on stage.

The purpose of this post is to express my gratitude and resemble certain details which can be useful for any human being who is social and lives in society

Points to do before any meeting of presentation

Always make sure you reach early enough
Check all the arrangements like Mic, Projector, Lightning of room
Make sure of your position, so that when you speak you are visible to everyone and everyone else can see you
Always keep backup of your important documents on some second location so that last minute call, you can collect it from there

Designing your content

your content according to your audience
if your audience is a newbie plan accordingly
relevant visuals to suit your content
will keep lasting effect on the people, rather than just hearing
(What people hear, they forget, what they see they remember , what they do they never forget)
not put lot of text or complete explanation to your ppt slides , that people can merely read it out.
sure you have enough time for questions, because if you end without giving a chance to ask questions it can be a closed ended presentation.
Every time and in every presentation there are three forms of demonstrating or displaying information

Must Know (necessary or must be provided)
Should Know (statistics or relevant helping info)
Could Know (can be shared with the audience but not a part of presentation)

9. Follow an logical flow with designing your content don't just keep on jumping topics

How to start your presentation

Always start with an introduction
make sure you stand in right posture
Do not use (Basically | Actually) it kills the interest
Tell them what you have for them
Mention your targets and boundaries
Keep your laptop or organizer accessible to you, so that you don't keep running around on stage
Always keep a stimulus eye contact with all the audience so that they are notified of you watching them
Keep a small smile on your face
Be gentle with your tone, do not increase the tone with no reason
Always raise your tone, specifically you spell an verb or Noun (Like The Conceptt'tt is implementeddd successfully for more than 200 companiesss)
so when you stress on some words, your gestures must match the words
Speak with opening your mouth, so you speak at average rate and its audiable
Make sure you have covered topics, necessary for the audience
If you forget something, just don't try to remember it, as your audience never knew what you were suppose to say

Finally I end this post, with a small and useful proverb I was shared by my Trainer
"Great presenters aren't Born, They are trained "
by Kevin Kuri
Best Of luck..

Thank-You

libmysql.dll error with rails 2.2.2 and mysql gem

2009-08-16T13:36:00.000+05:30

I recently had a situation when my system was formatted, i had to install rails with MySql .
so i started with installation of ruby as always, got all gems with it, downloaded the MySql gem as they have removed the bundled gem of MySql with rails 2.2.2.

Now when i run gem install MySql-1.7.3 mswin32, i used to get an error saying cannot install Rdoc as # character found on line 71.

agreed i don't need Rdoc, so i thought may be the gem is successfully installed, but to my surprises, i saw the gem has [extconf.rb] file and no dll found in bundled installation.

after 29 hrs of struggle and some good experiences in past i was able to recognize that i had to add the [libmysql.dll] file from MySql bin folder, to this place where the gem is installed.

i figured this out and got my problems resolved.

now i have certain questions to David,
I agree mysql is moving out of the open source community so may be he removed the gem from rails bundled resource, agreed but why there exists no proper documentation which can guide the naive user with this change.
Neither the guys who developed MySql adapter have taken care of copying the [libmysql.dll] file from MySql root folder to gem installation folder.

I also searched the internet for some help, but I was not sure of the posts telling me to do lot of re-installations and get this issue cured.

so expect with rails being so popular and dynamic, how hard it would be to find the mysql installed on system and copy the dll to required location.

I don't know if this knocks the right doors, least it can help may developers like me who are stuck with installation process pose them right way.

so guys if anyone faces a similar problem then please copy your [libmysql.dll] file from MySql root location to gems/mysql/lib/ folder... restart system and you are set to go :-)

still facing native issues contact me :- raghubetter@gmail.com

Recently one of friend had one more problem, after resolving the issue

Problem:- Mysql::Error: query: not connected: SELECT version FROM schema_migrations

Solution:- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1343500/ruby-on-rails-

connection-problem

Get the libmysql.dll from the source above, and replace the dll copied in ruby/bin.

Nginx with THIN

2009-05-09T02:00:00.001+05:30

Nginx with thin is supposed to be very fast combination basically for RubyOnRails while the most advanced tour towards is making this a production ready environment. While the best affect of this flavour is generating the aspect of speedy web modes.

Just to ensure that this combination works fine, you need to have an upstream server configured provided by various web domains.

Configure Thin for your System

Each application will have a configuration file - this is similar to having a mongrel_cluster.yml in a Mongrel setup.

There are a number of options for how you configure your applications to be started/stopped - we prefer creating a directory for all Thin instances and then using the init script to control them. This is baked right in - to create the /etc/thin directory and install the init script simply run:

$ sudo thin install

Then, to configure thin to start at system boot:

on RedHat-like systems:

$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 thin on

on Debian-like systems (Ubuntu):

$ sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f thin defaults

on Gentoo:

$ sudo rc-update add thin default

Configure Thin for your Application

To generate the config file you can run the following from within the root of your application:

$ sudo thin config -C /etc/thin/.yml -c <rails-app-root-path> --servers  -e

Replace with the name of the configuration file, <rails-app-root-path> with the path to the root of your application, with the number of Thin processes to be started and with the environment in which to run the code. For example:

$ sudo thin config -C /etc/thin/myapp.yml -c /var/rails/myapp --servers 5 -e production

This will generate a configuration file in the /etc/thin directory we created earlier. This file will contain something similar to:

---
pid: tmp/pids/thin.pid
timeout: 30
log: log/thin.log
max_conns: 1024
require: []

environment: production
max_persistent_conns: 512
servers: 5
daemonize: true
socket: /tmp/thin.sock
chdir: /var/rails/myapp

You are now ready to start the thin service (which will start all of the Thin's configured in the /etc/thin directory):

on RedHat-like systems (you will need to substitute the relevant command to start the service on other distros):

$ sudo service thin start

Setup Nginx

If you already have Nginx installed (perhaps if you're moving over from Mongrel) then you can skip this step.

Installing From a Binary

Some operating systems have binary versions of Nginx available.

Windows

http://www.kevinworthington.com/nginx-for-windows/ (0.6.35 at the time of writing) is compiled currently for 32-bit Windows systems only and has been tested for Vista, XP, and 2000.

Ubuntu/Debian (Linux)

The version available for your setup can be determined by using

$ apt-cache showpkg nginx

Then, to install, run

$ sudo apt-get install nginx

Installing From Source

To install Nginx from source, grab the latest stable version of Nginx (0.6.35 at the time of writing) and build it:

$ curl -O http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.6.35.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf nginx-0.6.35.tar.gz
$ cd nginx-0.6.35
$ ./configure --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --with-http_ssl_module
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/nginx

This will put the binary at /usr/local/sbin/nginx (otherwise it will live under /usr/local/nginx/bin)

The configuration file will, by default, live at /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf - you can change this when building if desired.

We also use an init script to start and stop Nginx - courtesy of Geoffrey Grosenbach and Ryan Norbauer.

Grab the init script and install on your system as a service as before.

Configure Nginx to talk to Thin

The next step is to configure Nginx. The sample configuration will setup a single site using a cluster of Thin's over the unix socket interface. To use this config, ensure the paths are correct for your system and change the hostname and you should be good to go!

Coding Guideliness in Rails

2008-09-24T22:07:00.000+05:30

Rails an active framework in today’s web2.0 world, so to stay updated and make coding easy just with very little tricks and tips while you code.
The best part of rails is its truly flexible in terms of various programming paradigms. So for better coding standards we can use the below given styles and make our life easy, the best part is rails make code in human readable form.

Use the below given guidelines:-
Use Active record finders.http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/7/helping-activerecord-finders-help-you
Use named_scope for finding nested models.http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/3/24/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-has-finder-functionality
Pass params as params not @params.
@params is deprecated, in rails 2.x versions.
Only have instance variables which are needed in views.
Create local variables which are needed within methods.
Keep all initializers in config/initializers file.
Keep simple routes by using namespaces & resources.
Use proper rdoc commenting for documentation purposes.
Use understandable naming convention for methods, variables & other definitions.
Generalize structure before you start, like have certain flow diagrams which will help in better coding.

Sony Erricsson P1i

2008-09-09T21:35:00.000+05:30

P1i is basically a good phone lets have look at this Phone This phone has good abilities like

1. Good Sturdy Looks
2. Color scheme used for Body is Immpressive
3. Number keys are too short and lots in number, as they could have implemented nokia fancy styles.
4. 3.2 Megapixel Camera
5. Pcture quality is fine, but not very good.
6. Internet connectivity is achieved upto 408 kbps.
7. Good charging pad, looks highly dynamic with LEd insight to show charging.
8. Sound clarity is good even in crowd you can have better hearing advancements.
9. Storing contacts is Simple.
10. screen is Large enough to make visibility superior.
11. Touch screen enabled, lacks immense flowness like Iphone.
12. Easy navigation is acheived.

Cost's upto 17000/- INR .
Overall Ratings from me after using for a month, i believe this can have 6 star out of 10.new file
People have reviewed it well.
For more informtion Visit:-
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/p1i

iphone launches in India

2008-08-24T13:50:00.001+05:30

Hello friends,

I am here on this post to tell you some truths i have experienced with Apple Iphone.
I was basically using an iphone from april 2008, uf course unlocked. nothing went wrong this was fine peice of technology and art. After consecutive months i started understanding the pro's and con's of Iphone.
Pro's

Has a 8/16 GB of memory.
Ability to understand the handling is cool feature, rotate's clockwise and anti-clockwise.
Picture quality is quite appreciable.
Music out-put cannot be imagened, as inbuilt ipod is the server to your request.
Internet access is fine, that was 2G so it was good, can check emails and send emails like blackberry.
Battery capability is immense as once you charge completely can sustain upto say 10hrs standby, or 4hrs music.

Con's

Itunes is necessary to sync data.
cannot be used with multiple computers, cannot share your data to any other device.
Camera lacks flash, 2MP.
Speakers in Iphone are very less volumed.
No video recording, also if you wish to have recording of videos you can always go to Installers section download software which emmulate the iphone camera as video recorder, but you may need to register or pay for that software.
Bluetooth connectivity is useless, may be after this launch we can use it for (bluetooth)handsfree.
SMS(Short Messaging Service) is the heart of indian mobilization, we usually have the process of forwarding SMS to group or individual, but not possible with Iphone, neither you cannot copy them or do anything. but yes you can have a loop of all messages sent to each memeber .
For Citi travellers, no Radio.

Friends just brfore the launch, i moved from iphone to HTC diamond. but i Still miss the iphone, may be once it add all these features, i will be saluting it again.

Cost:- the present costing for Iphone is too much suggested is get it from US, and get it unlocked from some genuine dealer, pay 500 bucks, and save money.